- bigotry
- Intolerance or bias towards an identity or group of people.
- calling in
- Approaching problematic behavior or language with sympathy; asking why the behavior occurred, explaining why it is oppressive, and devising a new course of action collaboratively.
- calling out
- Approaching problematic behavior or language combatively; striving to shame a group or individual for their behavior to serve as a warning to others.
- camp
- An aesthetic that privileges “poor taste,” shock value, and irony, posing an intentional challenge to the traditional attributes of high art. It is often characterized by showiness, extreme artifice, and tackiness.
- content
- The “what” of a story, typically entailing narrative, characters, and dialogue.
- form
- The way a story is told, including choices such as editing, cinematography, wardrobe, framing, etc.
- gender binary
- The idea that there are only two genders, men and women, and that everyone should and will identify accordingly.
- gender expression
- The external presentation of gender, through body language, pronoun choice, and style of dress
- heteronormativity
- The way to describe policies, beliefs, and behaviors that assume everyone adheres to the gender binary or that everyone is heterosexual.
- heterosexist
- Policies, beliefs, or behaviors enacted by straight people that discriminate against queer people.
- homonormativity
- homonormativity is a political and sometimes narrative approach that works to establish LGBTQ lives as no different from straight lives beyond the gender(s) to which one is attracted. It is an assimilation-based approach that invokes the rhetoric of sameness in appeals for civil rights and social acceptance.
- homophobia
- Fear or hatred for queerness and queer people.
- marginalized
- To be rendered less important, less powerful, and less visible than what is considered the norm or mainstream.
- nuanced
- Containing layers of meaning, having subtle differences.
- pathologize
- To represent a trait, behavior, or identity as a sickness or inevitable tragedy.
- prejudice
- A preconceived positive or (usually) negative feeling toward someone or something.
- privileged
- Entitled to advantages that are not available to everyone.
- queer
- Pertaining to a person or group that does not fall within the gender binary or heterosexuality.
- quinceañera
- A Latinx tradition of celebrating a girl’s 15th birthday as a transition from girlhood to womanhood.
- representation
- Portrayal of a person or group by a representative who acts for them or in their interests.
- scapegoating
- Making someone else take the blame to avoid consequences.
- trope
- Patterns, phrases, rhetorical devices, or plot points that have been used so often they can be categorized and anticipated.
