A guide to the language of gender, attraction, and acceptance.
Gender is complicated, and no one has it completely figured out. This primer was created with complexity in mind. Our goal is to take what might seem complicated or confusing about “all this gender stuff”, and make it accessible to folks who “don’t want to say the wrong thing” or “just don’t understand it at all”. Gender is extremely personal. Trying to express our understanding of gender is personal and complicated and sometimes challenging. We hope the Primer will help people express these things in ways that will help them understand each other and themselves.
Vocabulary, especially in and around the transgender community, has always grown to meet the very human need to figure out who we are as individuals and what that means for the ways in which we relate to one another. Many cultures – especially pre-colonization – had and have terms and gender expressions far beyond what is recognized by many government or other institutional powers today. There are countless words to express a countless number of genders and facets of gender(ed) experience. Sometimes they are reclamation of terms used to oppress us. That’s part of why this primer was created. It is an attempt to document the movement to express and identify the complexity of gender while acknowledging its history and intersections.
Over the years, we have expanded significantly. We now include some terms in this primer that are not immediately recognizable as being related to gender in the hopes of helping to explain the context within which the rest of the primer operates and help clarify some of the more gender-related entries.
- Check out the full index to view all 200-some terms in alphabetical order. Each entry includes part(s) of speech, definition(s), and example sentences. Many contain links to further reading for more context.
- Check out our Guided Tours Index to view our curated lists of terms to help contextualize different aspects of the trans+ community.
- Stuck on an acronym or a flag? Check out our Acronym Index or Flag Index!
Indefinite hiatus for the TLP and what that means
I think anyone who has found themselves reading this website are probably at least somewhat familiar with the way trans people are being used (unsuccessfully, and therefore extra aggressively) as a wedge issue in the United States and beyond. That doesn’t mean that anti-trans bias isn’t growing. Conservatives are using anti-trans talking points as a virtue-signal amongst themselves that they are “not like /those/ people” and we’ve seen anti-trans hate crimes and harassment increasing everywhere. When I started the TLP in 2015, I could see the trajectory and (optimistically, possibly naively) had hoped that maybe this project could help stem the tide by providing an entry point into the language of our communit(y/ies) and smoothing the lines of communication between trans people and the cis people that we interact with every day. Unfortunately, this timeline continues to be awful and we are where we are. (Thanks, politicians!).
This project was built by disabled trans people. My immediate community is mostly disabled trans people. Our lives have changed dramatically since 2015, beyond anything I think any of us could’ve imagined. And so, necessarily, this project has had to take a backseat to the mundane but all-important work of making sure my people and I stay alive. I’ve kept and will continue to keep the lights on. I’ve kept and will continue to keep doing the work here as I and my family are able. Your continued support on Patreon makes that possible. But for the foreseeable future, there will not be any major updates and I have shut down the Discord server.
Thank you for your support for the last decade. Thank you for spreading the word and helping educate the people in your lives. We have each others’ backs and we can all do our best. I know that’s what I’m doing. – Greyson, founder 2025
Where is the TLP being referenced?
The majority of these resources are not affiliated with the Transgender Language Primer and do not necessarily endorse the TLP institutionally. We can’t guarantee accuracy, services, or products. Community accountability is important, so if there’s something we should know about a resource listed here or if you’d like to recommend a resource, please let us know.
Send us an email at TransLanguagePrimer@protonmail.com
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Info@TransLanguagePrimer.com
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