Table 1.
Key terminology.
| Gender | Social characteristics differentiating women/girls, men/boys, and gender-diverse people, including gender identity, gender expression, gender roles, and institutional gender. |
| Sex | Biological characteristic differentiating females, males, and intersex people, including chromosomal, anatomical, and physiological factors. |
| Transgender (trans) | A person whose gender identity does not align with that associated with their sex assigned at birth. Adjective |
| Cisgender (cis) | A person whose gender identity aligns with that associated with their sex assigned at birth. Adjective |
| Transmasculine (tM) | An individual assigned female at birth who identifies as male, man/boy, masculine, non-binary and/or something other than a woman/girl. Adjective |
| Transfeminine (tF) | An individual assigned male at birth who identifies as female, woman/girl, feminine, non-binary and/or something other than a man/boy. Adjective |
| Transgender and gender diverse | An inclusive term for those who have a gender identity that is incongruent with the sex/gender they were assigned at birth. This can include many different identities such as transmasculine, transfeminine, trans, non-binary, two-spirit, genderqueer, agender, and many others. |
| Gender dysphoria (generic) | Discomfort or distress caused by a discrepancy between an individual’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender and/or primary or secondary sex characteristics. |
| Gender dysphoria (diagnostic label) | A diagnostic label used when an individual meets the full set of DSM-5* criteria for gender dysphoria. |
| Gender-affirming medical care | The process through which individuals alter their primary and/or secondary sex characteristics to align with their sense of gender identity through medical treatment. |
| Vaginoplasty | The surgical construction of a vaginal cavity. Vaginoplasty is a gender-affirming surgery that is undergone by some transfeminine individuals. |
| Full-depth vaginoplasty | A vaginoplasty surgery that creates a neovagina with sufficient depth, approximately 9cm or more |
| Vulvaplasty/Zero-Depth Vaginoplasty | A vaginoplasty surgery that does not create a vaginal cavity. |
| Neovagina | A term used to refer to the vagina that has been surgically constructed through vaginoplasty. |
| Vaginectomy | The surgical closure of the vaginal cavity. |
*DSM-5, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. DSM–5 is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States.