LGBTQI: Stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex.

Lesbian: A woman who experiences sexual, romantic, physical or spiritual attraction to other women.

Gay: A term used in some cultural settings to represent males who are attracted to males in a romantic, erotic or emotional sense. Not all men who engage in homosexual behaviour may identify as gay.

Bisexual: A person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical or spiritual attraction to people of their own gender as well as other genders, not necessarily at the same time. There may be a preference for one gender over others.

Transgender: A person who identifies with, and lives as a member of, a gender that does not match the one assigned to them at birth on the basis of their physical attributes. Such a person’s sexual orientation may vary and is not dependent on their gender identity.

Queer: An umbrella term that can be used to refer to all LGBTQI people. Often viewed as a “reclaimed word” that was once used as a slur but is now used by many members of the group as a term of defiant pride. But a sizeable proportion of people to whom this term might apply still hold “queer” to be an insult.

The term is often used to explain a complex set of sexual behaviours and desires. For example, a person attracted to multiple genders may identify as queer.

Intersex: A person whose sex is medically difficult to categorise as male or female. Intersex people are born with sex chromosomes, external genitalia, or internal reproductive organs that differ from expected patterns in males or females. The existence of intersex people shows that there are not just two sexes and that our ways of thinking about sex is socially constructed.

(Extracted from LGBTQI definitions on the websites of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Vanderbilt University)