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Your Gender TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION Glossary

All the key terms you need to understand when preparing for Gender Transformative Education, quickly and effectively.

What is Heteronormativity?

Definition

Being heteronormative (noun: heteronormativity) means giving power and privilege to persons, communities and beliefs that are heterosexual (i.e. intimacy and sex between a woman and a man). Heteronormative language makes being heterosexual seem like the only option and exclusively “natural”. 

Cisgender refers to people whose gender identity corresponds to their assigned sex at birth. This means someone who is born with female reproductive body parts and feels like and believes they are a woman or girl or someone who is born with male reproductive body parts and feels like and believes they are a man or boy.

Transgender describes people whose gender identity is different from their assigned sex at birth. This means someone who is born with reproductive body parts that feel/ are incompatible with the gender they express and experience.

References

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.

Robinson, B. A. (2016). Heteronormativity and homonormativity. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 1-3.

Ward, J., & Schneider, B. (2009). The reaches of heteronormativity: An introduction. Gender & Society, 23(4), 433-439.

Elshimy, G. Garg, G. & Marwaha, R. (2020) Gender Dysphoria

Tudor, A. (2021). Decolonizing trans/gender studies? Teaching gender, race, and sexuality in times of the rise of the global right. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 8(2), 238-256.

Keenan, H. B. (2017). Unscripting curriculum: Toward a critical trans pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 87(4), 538-556.

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