Category: identity

When I was a child I wanted to be a boy.

I didn’t want to be a girl who played sports. I wore blue instead of pink. I wanted my body to morph. I wanted a shocking metamorphosis. My mother let me keep my hair short, and I only wore boys clothing. One morning before school I stuffed a roll of socks down my pants and arranged it so it sat over my pubic bone. I felt invulnerable like I carried a pistol between my legs.

The girls in my class were hysterical. Why couldn’t they see I was a boy? They figured since they had known me since kindergarten they knew I was a girl. I just hid it well, I replied as they laughed at me, shrieking as they pushed me into the boys’ bathroom. What’s your name? They would leer, each day, just to check if things had changed. Jake, I would say, my name is Jake. 

I would sign all my classwork as Jake. My teachers said nothing. My parents said nothing. I was left with the quiet and gentle freedom of self-discovery unencumbered by time. 

I drew a lot; scribbled wolves, sharks, things with teeth. Everything I wanted to be was fanged. I was horrified by motherhood. Pop culture showed mothers to be women, once unbound to anything, then when they became pregnant, heavier and precious.  I imagined mothers to be always pink and slow moving, like beautiful and alien sea creatures who only knew fluidity and ate great chunks of love like it were watermelon.

I, on the other hand, wanted to tear at the world and crash into life like I was born in armor. Only boys and men were allowed to straddle a horse as if it were a woman. I did not want to be limited by what my body supposedly permitted. If women were perceived as the weaker sex I wanted to rally against pretty, against soft, against nice. I couldn’t understand why boys could be boys and I had to be better. So I played a boy and hacked at my hair and bared my teeth at anyone who said what a pretty girl.

Being in my body felt more than wrong, it felt accidental. As if I had tripped into the wrong wormhole and found myself in a parallel universe where everything was warped. By the age of nine, I thought if I willed hard enough I would stop the atoms inside me from hurtling me into puberty, into the dangerous kingdom that divided the sexes. It felt like an assault when my breasts began to grow. I would lie on the floor and push myself flat, imagining my breasts popping as if they were sores that needed to be lanced. I didn’t imagine a future — I waded through the present, watching carefully the way in which boys moved, the slight bow to their legs as they swaggered. I tried to remember to walk with ferocity.

My only friends were boys. I never played with dolls or Barbies. I intentionally fell out of trees so my body would bleed and tighten back up to reveal scars; reminders that I was brave enough to battle. When my friend told me that he ‘like liked’ me, I knocked him to the ground. I sat on his chest and watched as blood dribbled from his mouth and shook him until he took it back. 

I whimpered through the long years of change. Gradually, as I grew older my desires met each other at a crossroads. I suddenly woke up one morning and felt like the panic had waned. I told my mother that I was alright with being a girl. She shrugged and wrote the date down in her diary. Everything was alright, had been alright, and would be alright.

I cautiously allowed my hair to grow and marveled at the weight of it against my neck, the strange dip of density as I moved my head back and forth. I approached girls shyly and asked to be their friend. The language of girl was exotic; the way they worked their bodies with such sanctioned familiarity as if they had never once doubted the velvet of their figures or felt the lack of something. The slyness of females in a group was like being in a den of foxes. I thought of Daniel and his lions. But so long had I been half in the world of boy that I had no idea how to accept myself. Or how to forget Jake. 

By the time I was in middle school I had fully accepted my sex. It was the 1990s and girls’ clothing was shiny, tight, and plastic. I wore chunky heeled shoes and tight dresses and hollowed my eyes with silver eyeshadow. It was clumsy. I was transitioning. I was growing.

Some boys liked me and I let them kiss me. I was terrified and fascinated. By the time I was a teenager I had embraced my femininity because it gave me a power I hadn’t experienced before: I was watched. Boys and girls paid attention to me, the way I moved my body through the world. I learned how to arch an eyebrow and drop my jaw like a leopard at the waterhole. Female had a startling power to it I hadn’t expected. This too is a weapon.

I am unsure of labels. I am skittish of defining words for myself that have been invented by others. Had I been born later and to different parents maybe I would have been given hormone-altering drugs. I might have started a course of treatments that would have violently torn Jake out from inside the recess of me. 

I still balk when someone refers to me as ‘she’. In the truest, oldest part of myself, I feel male. My soul is sexless but my mind is not. I allow my body to present itself as a young woman. I am in a relationship with a man. I keep quiet during a time when words like transgender, cisgender, non-binary, are loud. Sometimes I want to raise my hand and tell them, I’m Jake, he’s in here somewhere, but he is quiet and guides me in all things like a traveling warlock under a spell; this woman’s form is just a glamour. 

I don’t know if there are others who feel as I do if their secret selves do not mirror their physical shells. But I wonder and worry at the urgency in which we expect each other to decide. An absence of judgment allowed me to zigzag along the path until my limbs felt as if they were carrying a body not completely estranged from my mind. 

Sometimes I think apocalyptic, of who would I be if the world burned and afterward all that was left were me. Would it matter how I presented myself to ash and the ruined sky? Would I even bother with mirrors to monitor how I was looking? If there were no external expectation, and I never again saw my own face, who and what would I be? Would it even matter? Or would I just be the name I had given myself, with genitals I was born without a care to remember the name of any more or what they meant because nothing would matter except clean water and food? And adventure.  

Good things come to those who are beautiful.

Or at least that’s what I had been led to believe. During my younger years the girls with straight hair, big breasts, perfect teeth, and clear skin had a seemingly endless crowd of boys pining after them, while I (who had none of those features) did not. In fact, I struggled to get boys to remember my name at all. Despite not being “beautiful” in my peers eyes or mine, I found a sense of purpose through track, photography, and genuine friendships. However, it took time and effort to let go of these types of insecurities.

We don’t all have to be beautiful. I am not making this statement in order to refute the existence of beauty standards, whiteness in beauty, or discrimination within the beauty industry; the purpose of this essay is to discuss why being beautiful, particularly women’s beauty, is important at all.

For centuries, the value placed on a woman’s beauty has been placed above that of her intellect and character. These constructed notions suggest that one’s physical attractiveness is one of the most important traits to maintain while also upholding heteronormative beliefs. This type of feminine beauty criteria idolizes women’s physical figure, hair style, skin color, weight, sexuality, gender expression, and style. Essentially, narrowly defining what it means to be an “acceptable woman.”

Ideas of “acceptable womanhood” begin as early as children’s books, where the heroine is swept off her feet by a handsome prince who only notices her because of her shockingly beautiful features. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and The Little Mermaid draw attention to the physical qualities of their main characters rather than their personhood. In these stories physical attractiveness is rewarded while unattractiveness is reviled, which emphasizes the idea that good things come to those who are beautiful.

Later, people are introduced to more specific ideas of beauty through magazines, television, and social media. As various media outlets become more accessible and multifaceted, digesting highly damaging ideas of beauty becomes much easier. The women on the covers of magazines and in the starring roles on popular television shows are often thin, white, clear-skinned women with straight hair and teeth; diversity of representation is few and far between. These portrayals of beauty do not stop here; they exist in comic books, advertisements, and clothing stores, which mean that these ideas eventually trickle down into everyday speech and cognition. This epidemic is problematic because it forms a “perfect” ideal that is almost impossible to achieve because it is nonexistent, especially when airbrushing and Photoshop are such common tools.

Another thing to consider: is beauty itself highly valued or are the things that beauty can bring actually the source of worth? According to a Newsweek poll, 57% of hiring managers said that qualified but unattractive candidates are likely to have a more difficult time finding a job, and 61% (majority of them men) said that it would be advantageous for a woman to wear figure-flattering clothing to work. This suggests that the pressure to be beautiful lays in what can be gained from having these qualities rather than simply having the quality itself. Mass media helps illustrate this: Snow White found love because she was beautiful, the popular girls at my school were given attention/praise for being pretty, and hiring managers are likely to hire someone who’s more traditionally physically attractive. Beauty is power.

It is worth noting that I, a thin, lighter-skinned black person without acne, now have the privilege of separating myself from my looks and placing lesser value on them. Having these kinds of features and this type of beauty is an extreme privilege. However, this does not mean that I am above the constraints that feminine beauty standards place on women. I am not immune to fetishization, racism, or heteronormativity within these cultural ideas of beauty.

Being ugly, being pretty, and being anything in between society’s perception of both is not an illustration of one’s worth or character. These beauty standards were put in place to homogenize women’s physical presentation while simultaneously dictating their value and utility. We as a society need to own up to the fact that these beauty standards are outdated, irrelevant, and confining.

Matching modern culture’s definition of beauty is not an adverse quality. Conforming to this definition of femininity is not necessarily a bad thing, either. What’s most important is expressing one’s gender and sexuality honestly. I believe that depicting oneself in the most authentic way possible is incredibly important, and if that type of expression happens to fit in with what is widely accepted, then so be it. Although, feeling pressured to look or feel a certain way is a completely valid and understandable feeling, especially considering that one type of beauty is constantly being highlighted while others are getting ignored.

This does not mean that one cannot or should not take pride in their perceived beauty, but treasuring beauty and youth as we have done for centuries is exceptionally damaging. Modern society has invested in certain models of beauty, and devaluing them will help lift the constraints of feminine beauty from billions of women worldwide.

We don’t all have to be beautiful, because fitting into this narrow description of “acceptable womanhood” is unnecessary. Contrary to what this world has led you to believe, your significance is not tied to your face, body, or physical appearance. You don’t have to be Gigi or Bella to be worth something.

I’ll start out by saying this is my personal experience of being non-binary. I cannot speak for anyone else.

I came out to myself as non-binary at 17. I’d had very little real-life exposure to the concept of non-binary; I learned about NB mainly online and through social media. It made so much sense to me, I had never connected with being a woman or identifying with my body parts in the way I was socialized to. “Pussy power” didn’t inspire me and I wasn’t proud of having a period, both things I felt pressured to feel growing up in Seattle. That cis-feminism second-wave bullshit is extremely exclusionary and hurtful to trans and gender non-conforming people. I  hated the huge “FUCK MEN” vibe I felt coming from those exclusive pussy-only spaces, a transphobic attitude that prohibited non-binary and trans people who hadn’t come out yet from feeling safe and comfortable in those places. Stepping away from that second-wave feminism and exploring the concept of being non-binary made me feel like I had a more powerful voice. This process allowed me to separate my identity from my body parts, and separate the ownership of body parts from the gender spectrum more generally.

I came out as queer a year later. Gender and sexuality are two completely different concepts and you don’t always understand how you identify on both spectrums at the same time. Embracing my sexuality helped me separate genitals from gender, and allowed me to become inclusive of all body types and genders. I had identified predominantly as straight growing up.  I was confused by my feelings for people other than cis men.  I thought my interest in queer people was platonic, and I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was just plain attracted to them. I experienced these confusing feelings about my first girlfriend, Butter, before we began dating. It wasn’t until we danced together one night that I realized I had a crush on her.  I had a lot of internalized homophobia to come to terms with, because growing up I felt like I could never date a girl, but maybe I could just make out with one. Shortly after we began seeing each other, I was able to overcome these feelings, because I felt like I’d found someone I wanted to be with for a long time. So far, Butter has been the love of my life, or at least of my first 20 years on this Earth (haha). We were in a polyamorous relationship for about 9 months and broke up about a year ago, but she is still my best friend and I’ll love her forever. During this time, I was extremely blessed to have been surrounded by an incredible group of friends who all began to come into our identities together and still continue to learn and grow.

Once I had accepted the fact that I was non-binary, I started to feel much more comfortable in my own skin. Since there was no idea or model of what I should be or look like, once I accepted myself, I felt more comfortable coming out to others. Currently, I feel pretty damn okay about myself. It changes every day, but that’s true for everyone. I think I’ve reached an ultimate understanding about myself, and my relationship to gender and sexuality. Sometimes I wish I looked more masculine. I tend to feel more comfortable and attractive when I dress in a more masculine fashion, and have at times experienced deep dysmorphia. At the same time, I think the association between androgyny and gender nonconforming is bullshit. You can look however you want and still be non-binary, and that’s something I need to remind myself of too.

It’s always interesting coming out to people. Sometimes I choose not to at all. Last year I came out to my work by emailing 50+ people at once. It was an interesting experience. Not everybody got it, but more importantly, a lot of people tried to. As long as someone is not trying to maliciously misgender me, it doesn’t bother me when people slip up. I prefer when people gender me correctly. I honestly don’t know who they are talking about when someone refers to me as “she”; I feel like they don’t actually know me. Again, this is just how I feel personally and I don’t want to speak for anybody else. An old co-worker asked me,“So you’re not a woman and you’re not a man, what are you?” I answered, “A person.” That is the simplest way to explain it. For me, it’s important to have patience with these people and help them understand. Getting upset or angry isn’t going to help anyone. Growing up, we were and continue to be only socialized to accept heteronormativity. As long as they are trying, that’s what counts. Many queer people are tired of having to explain themselves to every person questioning their identity and not everyone is in the position or comfortable enough to do so, therefore it’s always nice to have allies to help explain and understand.

“They” until proven otherwise is a nice default pronoun. It’s always important not to assume someone’s gender, but also be careful about the way you ask or where. You don’t know if they want to talk about it at that moment, or if you are in safe space. I find that in private is always the best place for that conversation. It is nice when people correct others who misgender you, but knowing the right way to is important. For example, I think a good way to correct someone would be saying something about them and including their correct pronoun, like “This is ___ and they make really good music!,”  instead of correcting someone in a more public manner like “This is ___ and they are non-binary and neither a man or a woman!”.

Collage is called “Trial & Error: Figuring Out Who I Was” by Chella Man

Watercolors by Aaron Tsuru

Feeling beautiful has always been a challenging aspect of my childhood and still is. When I was 10, I was transplanted from a world where everywhere I looked, people had my nose, my eyes, my skin to a world where everyone was white. Immediately, I believed I wasn’t beautiful. The sad part was I was only 10 years old when the process began. At my public school in suburban New Jersey, almost everyone was white. I saw beauty as thin, blonde, with blue eyes. I equated beauty with whiteness. Even at age 10, I was worried that my differences made boys not like me in the same way they liked a white girl. There was nothing in the media for me to look up to either. There was no show on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel that featured an Asian girl who I could relate to, who I could find inspiration in. All I saw were girls that resembled the white girls in my classes. I wanted to be one of them. I hated being different.

As I grew older, I slowly began to notice that being an Asian woman had other connotations as well. Before, I just didn’t want to be the nerdy, ugly Asian girl. Now, I realized that Asian women were considered sexy and exotic. But, I also realized that those were the only roles Asian women could take on. Either, her looks were degraded as being less desirable than white features or her looks were hyper-sexualized and exoticized. I can already hear some men lashing out saying “what’s so wrong if I find Asian women to be beautiful? Isn’t that a compliment?” As an Asian woman, I can attest that there is nothing worse than feeling like someone’s attraction stems from their curiosity for being with an “exotic” person. Being fetishized is being degraded to just your sexuality. Asian fetishes are eerily connected to connotations of domination and colonization. That goes for all white folks who fetishize people of color. To desire someone purely based on their skin color is no more admirable than to hate someone purely based on their skin color.

I wanted to be desired but not fetishized. As I grew older, I became more confident in my own beauty. I finally saw my eyes, nose and hair as being beautiful, but the desire I received from boys often times made me uncomfortable. I remember the summer after my senior year of high school, I was at a party with my then boyfriend. One of his friends went up to him drunkenly and said “Is that your girlfriend? Good work man! she’s not only hot but she’s Asian so her pussy must be really tight.” My boyfriend told me about the incident. Initially, my reaction was to laugh it off, but I soon grew uncomfortable. How could someone take one look at me and immediately think “her pussy must be really tight”. I felt so small. It was a a creepy generalization about the sexuality of Asian women that sounded like a compliment. I felt like my pussy was this object to be leered at by the men who fetishized me. This is an experience that all people of color can relate to, especially women of color. It was such a brief moment, but it has not left my mind.

The Asian woman’s body has been colonized in the US media. in Hollywood and in pornography alike, Asian women are represented as docile, dominated and exotic beings. They’re often the lovers, the counterparts, the dominions of white men. It’s not only a fetishization but also an attempt to align being Asian with whiteness, or at least with being better than other minorities. I do not condone my body, my sexuality to be something that’s conquered and objectified. I am not a fetish. I am a person of color, and I do not desire to be aligned with whiteness. We are not undesirable because of our distinct features. We are not sex objects either because of our distinct features. Our bodies are ours and not tools of sexual gratification for others.

Imagine an awkward silence you cannot avoid. Imagine a situation where the outcome is inevitable, where if you try to run away, you’re seen as a coward or conformist, where if you confront the issue, you’re seen as overly sensitive, malicious, and a bitch. You are imagining what it’s like to be a black woman.

As a black woman, I need to justify my emotions when speaking out against the inequalities that come with my gender and the color of my skin. But even when expressing raw emotions, I still have to take precautions. Don’t be too angry unless you want to get the “angry black woman” stigma placed on you, don’t be too sad or else you’ll be seen as weak, don’t be too confrontational because… and so on. Society has ingrained in me all of the things that I should and shouldn’t do, but has yet to do the same to others. Many times, I have been caught in different predicaments that were as painless as someone touching my hair without permission, as annoying as being told by a tanned white girl that they are “blacker” than me, and as hurtful as being told that my darker skin complexion was the reason why I wasn’t pretty enough for the guy I liked. When an inconvenient situation happens, everyone is there, but no one is there to help me, a black woman. Some may say that this has nothing to do with the fact that I am a black woman, but in all actuality, it has everything to do with being a black woman. We are taught from a young age that we have to “hold our own” and that we should strive to be a “strong independent black woman”. But despite this, people of different backgrounds learn those stereotypes and roles that are placed on us and assume that all black women are also like that. Although most of us are “strong” and tolerant, some of us can be just as sensitive and vulnerable as anyone else and other people need to learn that we are not our “strong black woman” stereotype, but we are emotionally diverse people too.

Given that we have the double barrier of being black and women, we have to consistently take on the injustices of sexism and racism.  This could mislead people (particularly those who do not fit the black woman description), to view us as fiercely strong creatures because of what we have to deal with on a daily basis. But they also need to understand that we have feelings, goals, pasts and futures.When it comes to different social situations, we do feel alone, isolated, and hopeless. Yes, we are strong, but we are also compassionate and vulnerable. When no one else realizes this, we are dehumanized and left to fend for ourselves emotionally and socially – and you know how that goes.

It could be because of the recent election of a president who references minority or marginalized groups as “the blacks” or “the gays”. It could be because of the recent societal rejection of ‘political correctness’.  Regardless of the reasoning, I find myself constantly in conversations about race. One that keeps coming up is the years long debate over the use of the N-word. Specifically, why it’s socially acceptable for the N-word to be used by African American people and why it is off limits to others—specifically Caucasian people. People ask me how I feel about white people specifically using the word, when it’s okay to use it, whether or not I use it, and the classic question “If you can say it, why can’t I?”.

Let’s get one thing straight: The word ‘Nigger’ is a derogatory term that emerged in the 19th century to refer to slaves, and continued even after the 13th Amendment to refer to all black Americans. Prior to it’s derogatory usage, in the 16th century, the French ‘negre’, and Spanish ‘negro’ were words used to reference people who were dark-skinned. The history of it’s usage in the United States should be reason enough not to use it, though it has proved insufficient. Within the last couple of decades, the reclamation of the word by the Black community inspired debate over who is and isn’t allowed to say it. The enunciation is modified by dropping the “-er” and adding an “a” and most importantly, it’s a term of brotherhood and sisterhood endearment – a racial connectedness that reflects the same sentiment as saying “I see you, I am you”.  Generationally, whether or not it is a good flip of the meaning, or a self-fulfilled prophecy is another article altogether – my grandparents have more violent memories associated with the word and do not deem it as acceptable to use.

Which brings me to my answer. I believe there should be a place of reflection prior to using the word. What connects you to it? I’m a black woman, and with this I’ve been able to experience the word in a positive and negative light. The derogatory historical significance of the word deters me from using it entirely. Though, right or wrong, accepted or rejected, it’s a part of my sub-cultural vernacular. Imagine being in a jam-packed frat party at 1 in the morning, at a primarily white university, and hearing your white peers shout it to “N***as in Paris”.  You can imagine the surprise I felt. It is a word that comes with racial ‘hate’ baggage, although pop-culture treats it as a new taboo. My point, it isn’t new. It’s personal to the people who were negatively labeled by it. I would dare to ask, if you could think of the most deplorable word that is racially motivated, would you want to be reminded of it by the race of people who created the stigma? People who probably shouldn’t be using the word, often will defend their use of it by describing it as an entirely different word due to its positive connotation. They’ll tell me that I’m wrong because it’s the equivalent of saying “my friend”. The word “friend” was not derived from a slanderous word used to label a community of people taken from their home-continent and enslaved for hundreds of years. The N-word was originally touted to inflict black inferiority to black people who were stripped of their identity due to slavery.  And while I don’t think it’s any more acceptable for those of other minority backgrounds to use the word, the historical significance of the word must be kept in mind. Who was calling who what, and when?

In this day, time and age of political and racial unrest, it is not a word to be taken lightly. Much thought should be taken, starting with your personal ancestral relationship to it.

Abortion: A medical intervention that ends a pregnancy.

Abstinence: Choosing to refrain from certain sexual behaviors for a period of time. Some people define abstinence as not having vaginal intercourse, while others define it as not engaging in any sexual activity.

Age of Consent: The age a person is legally able to consent to sexual activity. It varies from state to state, but ranges from 14 to 18 years of age in the United States.

Abstinence-Only Programs: Programs exclusively focused on refraining from all sexual behaviors. They do not necessarily put a condition on when a person might choose to no longer be abstinent.

Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs: Programs focused exclusively on refraining from all sexual behaviors outside of the contexts of a heterosexual marriage.

AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). People do not die from AIDS, they die from one of the infections their body acquires as a result of a weakened immune system.

Biological Sex: Our sex as determined by our chromosomes (such as XX or XY), our hormones and our internal and external anatomy. Typically, we are assigned the sex of male or female at birth. Those who chromosomes are different from XX or XY at birth are referred to as “intersex.”

Bisexual: A term used to describe a person whose attraction to other people is not necessarily determined by gender. This is different from being attracted to all men or all women.

Body Image: How people feel about their  body. This may or may not match a person’s actual appearance.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Sexuality education programs that build a foundation of knowledge and skills relating to human development, relationships, decision-making, abstinence, contraception, and disease prevention. Ideally, comprehensive sexuality education should start in kindergarten and continue through 12th grade. At each developmental stage, these programs teach age-appropriate, medically accurate information that builds on the knowledge and skills that were taught in the previous stage.

Consensual: When a person agrees to engage in sexual behaviors with another person. “Consensual sex” means that no one was forced or manipulated in any way to participate in a sexual behavior.

Contraception: Any means to prevent pregnancy, including abstinence, barrier methods such as condoms and hormonal methods such as the pill, patch, injection, IUD, and others.

Dating Violence: Controlling, abusive and/or aggressive behavior within the context of a romantic relationship. It can include verbal, emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse, be perpetrated against someone of any gender and happen in any relationship regardless of sexual orientation.

Gay: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of their same gender. Gay women will often use the word “lesbian.”

Gender: The emotional, behavioral and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. Gender can be understood to have several components, including gender identity, gender expression and gender role (see below).

Gender Expression: The manner in which people outwardly expresses their gender.

Gender Identity: People’s inner sense of their gender. Most people develop a gender identity that corresponds to their biological sex, but some do not.

Gender Roles: The social expectations of how people should act, think and/or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

Harassment: Unwelcome or offensive behavior by one person to another. Examples are making unwanted sexual comments to another person, sending unwanted sexual texts, bullying, or intimidation.

Heterosexual: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of a different gender from their own.

HIV: The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). The virus weakens a person’s immune system so that the person cannot fight off many everyday infections. HIV is transmitted through exposure to an infected person’s blood, seems, vaginal fluids or breast milk.

Homosexual: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of their own gender. Most often referred to as “gay” or “lesbian.”

Incest: Sexual contact between persons who are so closely related that marriage between those two people would be considered illegal (e.g., a parent or step parent and a child, siblings, etc.).

Lesbian: A term used to describe women who are romantically and sexually attracted to other women.

Puberty: A time when the pituitary gland triggers production of testosterone in boys and estrogen and progesterone in girls. Puberty typically begins between ages 9 and 12 for girls, and between the ages of 11 and 14 for boys, and includes such body changes as hair growth around the genitals, menstruation in girls, sperm production in boys, and much more.

Rape: A type of sexual assault that involves forced vaginal, anal, or oral sex using a body part or object.

Sexual Abuse: Sexual abuse is any sort of unwanted sexual contact often over a period of time. A single act of sexual abuse is usually referred to as “sexual assault”.

Sexual Assault: Any unwanted sex act committed by a person or people against another person.

Sexual Harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.

Sexual Intercourse: When a penis is inserted into a vagina, mouth, or anus.

Sexual Orientation: Romantic and sexual attraction to people of one’s same and/or other genders. Current terms for sexual orientation include gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual and others.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs): Diseases caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites that are transmitted from one person to another during sexual contact. Also called sexually transmitted infections or STIs.

Transgender: A gender identity in which a person’s inner sense of their gender does not correspond to their assigned biological sex.

*Taken from The National Sexuality Education Standards Core Content