Many LGTBQIA+ people remain in the closet because of fear of rejection, harassment, and anti-gay violence. Experiential TerminologyĪlly - a person who supports and honors LGBTQIA+ diversity, acts accordingly to challenge homophobic/transphobic and heterosexist/cisgender centric remarks and behaviors, and is willing to explore and understand these forms of bias within themselves.Ĭloset - being "in the closet" means keeping your gender identity and/or sexual orientation a secret. Even positive stereotypes can have a negative impact, however, simply because they involve broad generalizations that ignore individual realities. Though often negative, can also be complimentary. Stereotype - A preconceived or oversimplified generalization about an entire group of people without regard for their individual differences. Prejudice - A conscious or unconscious negative belief about a whole group of people and its individual members. It involves institutional control, ideological domination, and the promulgation of the dominant group's culture on the oppressed. Oppression - the systematic exploitation of social groups by another for its own benefit. Internalized Oppression - The process by which a member of an oppressed group comes to accept and live out the inaccurate stereotypes applied to the oppressed group.
Institutional Oppression - Societial processes and expectations that benefit one group at the expense of another through the use of language, media, education, religion, economics, etc.
Although the symbolic use of bright colors has long been connected to queer culture, these flags, fittingly, are a highly visible, widerspread signal of queer identity compared to some of the slightly more covert LGBTQ+ symbols that preceded them. Today, there are dozens of LGBTQ+ flags representing just as many gender identities, sexualities and intersections of communities. Much like the communities they represent, these flags are in a constant state of evolution, expanding to better and more inclusively encompass every queer identity under the rainbow. Ever since the first rainbow-hued LGBTQ flag was created in 1978, pride flags have been a colorful symbol of queer identity.