Im Jahr 2022 wurde von Carmen Mörsch gemeinsam mit einem Autor*innenteam (Christiane Jaspers, Như Ý/Linda Nguyễn, Stefan Bast sowie Danja Erni und vielen mehr) ein umfangreiches Materialienset für die diskriminierungskritische Arbeit an der Schnittstelle von Bildung und Kunst veröffentlicht. Die Bildungsmaterialien dienen dazu, diskriminierungskritische Haltungen und Praktiken in der Kunstpädagogik, der kulturellen Bildung oder der Kunstvermittlung (weiter) zu entwickeln. Ziel der Materialien ist es, bei der künstlerisch-edukativen Arbeit soziale Gerechtigkeit entfalten zu können. Die Materialien sind sowohl auf einer Website als auch in begrenztem Umfang in Schachteln mit handgedruckten Blättern und Heften verfügbar.
Im Video führen Claudia Hummel und Nanna Lüth mit Carmen Mörsch ein Gespräch über die Konzeption der Materialien und deren Gebrauch. So ist ein Unboxing-Video entstanden, das alle, die an der Schnittstelle von Kunst und Bildung in Schulen, in Kunstinstitutionen oder an Kunsthochschulen arbeiten, einlädt, dieses umfassende Lernpaket zu benutzen.
Gender is performance. But how does it perform? On the occasion of the Medienhaus Lectures 2021 at Berlin University of the Arts, Paris based writer and researcher Claire Finch re-visited the queer-feminist notion of gender’s performativity. We publish the lecture together with an introduction by Annika Haas, who co-organised the two-day conference together with Henrike Uthe.
Claire Finch is a writer and researcher whose work samples queer and feminist theories as a way to intervene in narrative. Their recent projects include „I Lie on the Floor“ (After 8 Books, 2021), „Lettres aux jeunes poétesses“ (L’Arche 2021), „Kathy Acker 1971-1975“ (Editions Ismael, 2019) and their translation into French of Lisa Robertson’s „Debbie: An Epic“ (with sabrina soyer, Debbie: une épopée, Joca Seria, 2021).
Introduction by Annika Haas
Regarding the notion of performing gender, Claire Finch intervened into a common misunderstanding of the concept coined by Judith Butler right in the beginning of their lecture stating that “it’s not about acting, but more about interrupting the idea of what it means to be an actor, to be a self, to have a body […]”. In turn, even what has been called the “assigned sex” presented itself as “the residue, the result of citing re-citing gender gender gender as the body gets all solid in repetition”. Tackling this issue, Finch’s contribution to the conference motto “Performance? Performance. Performance!” was an exercise in stretching, bending, loosening and cross-cutting the identities that form and solidify in bodies and “the residue of sex and language” respectively. This exercise is physical, emotional, sensational and text-based, all at once. Finch proposes to utilize strategies like plagiarism, body functions like vomiting, technologies like sex toys, and last but not least language for what they broadly understand as “textual intervention” into the livid residue of our bodies and in order to cross-cut their identities.
In this way, seemingly separate spheres and practices in themselves – e. g. writing and using sex toys – creatively begin to inform each other. Considering for example, as Finch remarked, that “[y]ou can attach a sextoy to any part of the body and transform that part of the body into a sexual surface” not only decenters sex and the gendered body. It also inspires textual strategies: “What happens when we think of the sextoy as a textual graft, if we perform the same decentering and reorganizing operations on form, as we do on the body?”
Making these connections by translating and transposing concepts and practices from one medium and form into another and thus allowing for mutual interventions – e. g. of the body or the sex toy into the text and vice versa – is what drives their practice, as Finch underlined in the discussion that followed the lecture and that left the audience with an inspiring task: To develop further dissident strategies with their bodies and tools of their choice in order to practically do these things that we say we want to do in theory.
Annika Haas is a media theorist and works as a research associate at the Institute for History and Theory of Design of Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). She completed her PhD on Hélène Cixous’s philosophy and embodied writing practice. Annika’s practice at the intersection of art and theory includes art criticism and experimental publishing.
Zu den Medienhaus Lectures werden einmal im Jahr Gestalter*innen zu unterschiedlichen Themenschwerpunkten an die Universität der Künste Berlin eingeladen. 2021 fanden die Medienhaus Lectures als Kooperation zwischen Gestaltung und Theorie statt und wurden von Henrike Uthe und Annika Haas organisiert. Unter dem Motto „Performance? Performance. Performance!“ stellten sie den menschlichen Körper als Akteur sowie Adressat von Design in den Mittelpunkt und fragten: „Wie divers sind die Körper, die an Entwurfsprozessen beteiligt sind? Wie differenziert ist das Körperbild im Design? Welche Normen und Regeln werden daraus abgeleitet? Und wie wirken diese auf unsere Körper zurück?“ Wir veröffentlichen hier die Aufzeichnung der Lecture der Gestalterin Hannah Witte zu gendersensibler Typografie sowie eine Tagungsnotiz von Annika Haas.
Hannah Witte (sie*ihr) ist Grafikdesignerin und lebt in Leipzig. Ihre gestalterische Praxis dreht sich hauptsächlich um feministische Themen, Gender-Stereotype und non-binäre Typografie und wurde 2021 mit dem iphiGenia Gender Design Award ausgezeichnet. Ihr Buch Typohacks – Handbuch für gendersensible Sprache und Typografie erschien 2021 im form Verlag.
Tagungsnotiz von Annika Haas
Sprache befindet sich in einem permanenten Wandel. Das zeigt sich nicht nur in gendersensiblen Sprech- und Schreibweisen, sondern auch im Schriftbild. Mit Typohacks (form-Verlag 2021) hat Hannah Witte den ersten Leitfaden zur Gestaltung gendersensibler Typografie im deutschsprachigen Raum vorgelegt. Auf den oft kaum beachteten Zusammenhang von Sprache und Typografie machte sie bei den Medienhaus Lectures mit der Wortschöpfung „Ortho-Typografie” aufmerksam. Kathrin Peters hob als Moderatorin des Talks zudem hervor, dass Typografie und Sprache voller Normen seien und der Genderstern diese Normiertheit kenntlich mache. Denn da es sich dabei um ein Sonderzeichen handelt, das in den meisten Fonts anders als Buchstaben skaliert ist, sticht es im Schriftbild hervor bzw. fällt heraus. Während es zunehmend Fonts gibt, die den Genderstern gleichrangig mit Buchstaben setzen1, regt Typohacks dazu an, den Genderstern variabel und kontextuell einzusetzen: Mal bedarf es vielleicht eines Unruhe stiftenden „Gender-Trouble-Sterns“, mal ist eine barrierearme Einbettung wichtiger. Etwa, wenn es um Texte geht, die für Menschen mit Legasthenie gut lesbar sein sollen. Dabei spielen, wie die Designhistorikerin Anne Massey zeigt, ganz andere Kriterien als die normativ formulierten für ‚gute Lesbarkeit‘ eine Rolle.2
Dass sich die Frage nach ‚guter Lesbarkeit‘ nur spezifisch beantworten lässt, zeigte bei den Medienhaus Lectures 2021 auch das Werkstattgespräch zwischen dem Designstudio Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann und den Direktor*innen der Kunsthalle Osnabrück Anna Jehle und Juliane Schickedanz über die gemeinsame Arbeit an der Website für das Jahresthema „Barrierefreiheit“. Fazit: Was barrierearm ist, ist eine Frage des*der jeweiligen Betrachter*in bzw. Zuhörer*in. So unterbricht der Genderstern den Textfluss auch auf akustische Weise, wenn Screenreader Texte vorlesen. Sie interpretieren z. B. „Gestalter*in“ als: „Gestalter, Stern, in“. Unabhängig von der Typografie verhalten sich Buchstaben und das nichtlautliche Zeichen * damit auf der akustischen Ebene weiterhin disparat zueinander. Sofern keine genderneutralen Alternativen gefunden werden können, empfiehlt der Deutsche Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverband den Genderstern dennoch, da er im Schriftbild besser als ein Doppelpunkt oder Unterstrich lesbar ist.
Rund um den Genderstern und die Fragen seiner typografischen wie technologischen Einbettung zeigt sich damit einmal mehr, dass die universalistische Rede von ‚guter Gestaltung‘ unhaltbar geworden ist. Wie auch zahlreiche queer-feministische und postkoloniale Design-Plattformen und -Publikationen zeigen, ist Design situiert und damit weder losgelöst von seinen Produzent*innen, noch von den Adressat*innen zu denken.3 Diversitätskritisches Design braucht also diverse Beteiligte und Perspektiven.
Annika Haas ist Medientheoretikerin und wurde 2022 mit einer Arbeit über Hélène Cixous an der Universität der Künste Berlin promoviert, wo sie wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Gestaltung ist. Kooperationsprojekte wie die Medienhaus Lectures 2021 prägen ihre Theoriepraxis an den Schnittstellen von Theorie, Kunst und Gestaltung.
2 Massey, Anne. “Design History and Dyslexia.” Design and Agency: Critical Perspectives on Identities, Histories, and Practices. Ed. John Potvin. Ed. Marie-Ève Marchand. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. 259–272. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 31 May 2021.
Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with differing physical and mental abilities and needs. It typically involves a negative assessment of a person’s body and mind due to skills and abilities, based on a supposed biological (physical and/or mental) norm of what an able-bodied, neurotypical person should be. Ableism can intersect with other forms of oppression such as racism and sexism.
Adultism
Adultism is the discrimination found in everyday life and law based on unequal power relationships between adults, on the one hand, and children, adolescents, and young people on the other.
General Equal Treatment Act
The General Equal Treatment Act (AGG), enforced since 2006, is the uniform central body of regulations in Germany for the implementation of four European anti-discrimination directives. For the first time, a law was created in Germany that comprehensively regulates protection against discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender identification, religion or belief, ability, age, or sexual orientation.
Antisemitism
Antisemitism is a belief system based on hatred/hostility towards or discrimination against Jewish people as a religious or racial group, Jewish institutions or anyone/anything that is perceived Jewish. Antisemitism varies over time and between cultures, with antisemitism intensifying in different historical moments.
Accessibility
Accessibility names the extent to which a product, service, or environment can be used and accessed by as many people as possible. Inclusive accessibility therefore assesses the needs and desires of all possible people—including those who are neurodivergent or who have varying abilities—and incorporates these into its design and function. Changes to enable those with different abilities to have equal opportunity and participation are often referred to as accommodations.
Harassment
Harassment is undesired and non-consensual conduct that violates the dignity of another person. Harassment can often create intimidating, hostile, humiliating, or offensive environments, and can be based on someone’s sexual orientation, religion, national origin, disability, age, race, gender, and more. Harassment can take a variety of forms, including verbal, physical, and/or sexual.
Gender Binary
The gender binary is the classification of gender into two distinct and opposite categories of man/masculine and woman/feminine. This belief system assumes that one’s sex or gender assigned at birth will align with traditional social constructions of masculine and feminine identity, expression, and sexuality. Assignment beyond the gender binary is typically viewed as a deviation of the norm.
Sex
Sex refers to a person’s biological status and is typically assigned at birth, usually based on external anatomy. Sex is typically categorized as male, female, or intersex.
Cisgender
Cisgender, or simply cis, refers to people who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Cis comes from the Latin prefix which means “on this side of.”
Dominance Culture
This concept, according to Birgit Rommelspacher, assumes that there is a system of hierarchies, rule and power in which the various racist, sexist, classist, and other forms of governance intertwine. In this interconnectedness, a dominant group maintains power, which is socially negotiated again and again. In a given society, the dominant group achieves their role by being perceived as pertaining to a majority of the population and having a significant presence in societal institutions.
Prison-Industrial Complex
The prison-industrial complex (PIC) is a term that describes the complex and interrelated dependencies between a government and the various businesses and institutions that benefit from practices of incarceration (such as prisons, jails, detention facilities, and psychiatric hospitals). Based on the term “military-industrial complex,” PIC urges a more comprehensive analysis of how imprisonment is used in a society, noting all the interest groups that prioritize financial gain over keeping people out of prisons.
Gender-Expansive
Gender-expansive is an adjective that can describe someone with a more flexible and fluid gender identity than might be associated with the typical gender binary.
Gender
Gender is often defined as a social construct of norms, behaviors, and roles that vary between societies and over time. Gender is often categorized as male, female, or nonbinary.
Gender Transition
Gender transition is a process a person might take to bring themselves and/or their bodies into alignment with their gender identity. This process is not a singular step nor does it have a definite end. Rather, it can include any, none, or all of the following: telling one’s family and social circles; changing one’s name and pronouns; updating legal documents; medical interventions such as hormone therapy; or surgical intervention, often called gender confirmation surgery.
Gender Expression
Gender expression is how a person presents gender outwardly, most typically signalled through clothing, voice, behavior, and other perceived characteristics. Society identifies these cues and performances as masculine or feminine, although what is considered masculine or feminine varies over time and between cultures.
Gender Dysphoria
Gender dysphoria refers to psychological distress that results from the incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. People of all genders may experience dysphoria at varying levels of intensity, or not at all.
Gender Identity
Gender identity is one’s own internal sense of self and their gender. Unlike gender expression, gender identity is not externally visible to others.
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality—romantic and/or sexual attraction between people of the “opposite” gender—is the normative or acceptable sexual orientation in a society. Heteronormativity assumes the gender binary, and therefore involves a belief in the alignment between sexuality, gender identity, gender roles, and biological sex. As a dominant social norm, heteronormativity results in discrimination and oppression against those who do not identify as heterosexual.
Hormone Therapy
Hormone therapy, sometimes called gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) or hormone replacement therapy (HRT), is the process by which sex hormones or other hormonal medications are administered. These hormone changes can trigger physical changes, called secondary sex characteristics, that can help better align the body with a person’s gender identity.
Institutional Discrimination
Institutional discrimination refers to prejudiced organizational policies and practices within institutions – such as universities, workplaces, and more – such that an individual or groups of individuals who are marginalized are unequally considered and have unequal rights.
Inter*
Inter*, or intersex, is an umbrella term that can describe people who have differences in reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones that do not fit typical definitions of male and female. The asterisks (*) emphasizes the plurality of intersex realities and physicalities.
Intergenerational Trauma
Intergenerational trauma refers to the trauma that is passed from a trauma survivor to their descendent. Due to violent and terrifying events—such as war, ethnic cleansing, political conflict, environmental catastrophe, and more—experienced by previous generations, descendants may experience adverse emotional, physical, and psychological effects. As the original sources of trauma are structured by forms of discrimination such as race and gender, intergenerational trauma also occurs along intersectional axes of oppression. For example, Black communities have brought to light the intergenerational trauma of enslavement. Intergenerational trauma is sometimes called historical trauma, multi- or transgenerational trauma, or secondary traumatization.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality names the interconnected nature of systems of oppression and social categorizations such as race, gender, sexuality, migratory background, and class. Intersectionality emphasizes how individual forms of discrimination do not exist independently of each other, nor can they be considered and addressed independently. Rather, addressing oppression should take into account the cumulative and interconnected axes of multiple forms of discrimination.
Islamophobia
Islamophobia is a belief system based on hatred/hostility towards or discrimination against Muslim people as a religious or racial group, muslim institutions or anyone/anything that is perceived Muslim. Islamophobia varies over time and between cultures, with Islamophobia intensifying in different historical moments.
Classism
Classism is a term that describes discrimination based on the belief that a person’s social or economic status determines their value in society. Classism, as a form of discrimination and stigmatization, is based on actual or assumed financial means, educational status, and social inclusion. “Inferior” classes in the hierarchy are problematised and stereotyped, and often receive unequal access and rights within society.
Colonialism
Colonialism is the control and dominance of one power over a dependent area or people. In subjugating another people and land, colonialism entails violently conquering the population, often including mass displacement of people and the systematic exploitation of resources. Beyond material consequences, colonialism also includes processes of forcing the dominant power’s language and cultural values upon the subjugated people, thereby effecting cultural, psychological, and intergenerational trauma.
Culturally Argued Racism
Culturally argued racism is directed against people based on their presumed cultural or religious background. This form of discrimination can occur regardless of whether they actually practice one culture or religion and how religious they are (e.g. anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism).
Cultural Appropriation
Cultural appropriation is the act of taking on aspects of a marginalized culture by a person or an institution who is outside of that culture, without comprehensive understanding of the context and often lacking respect for the significance of the original. Cultural appropriation, when promoting negative cultural or racial stereotypes, reproduces harm. Acts of cultural appropriation can often reveal power dynamics within a society: for example, a white person who wears a marginalized culture’s traditional dress is praised as fashionable, while a racialized person could be isolated from the dominant group and marked as foreign.
Marginalization
Marginalization describes any process of displacing minorities to the social fringe. As a rule, marginalised groups are presumed to not correspond to the norm-oriented majority of society and are severely restricted in their ability to behave freely, have equal material access, enjoy public safety, and more.
Microaggression
Microaggression names individual comments or actions that unconsciously or consciously demonstrate prejudice and enact discrimination against members of marginalized groups. As small, common, and cumulative occurrences, microaggressions can comprise of insults, stereotypes, devaluation, and/or exclusion. Microaggressions often negatively affect the person on the receiving end, affecting their psychological and physical health and wellbeing.
Misogyny
Misogyny is a term for sexist oppression and contempt for women that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thereby maintaining patriarchal social roles. Misogyny can indicate an attitude held by individuals and a widespread cultural system that often devalues anything perceived as feminine. Misogyny can overlap with other instances of oppression and hate—such as homophobia, trans*-misogyny, and racism.
Neurodiversity
Neurodiversity is a term that describes the unique ways each person’s brain structures function. The basic assumption of what kind of brain functioning is healthy and acceptable within a norm-oriented majority society is called neurotypical.
Nonbinary
Nonbinary is a term that can be used by persons who do not describe themselves or their genders as fitting into the binary categories of man or woman. A range of terms are used for these experiences, with nonbinary and genderqueer often used.
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system whereby cis men dominantly hold positions of privilege both in public and private spheres. In feminist theory, patriarchy can be used to describe the power relationship between genders that favors male dominance, as well as the ideology of male superiority that justifies and enacts oppression against women and all non-normative genders.
Pronouns
Pronouns, or personal gender pronouns (PGPs), are the set of pronouns that an individual uses to refer to themselves and desires for others to use when referring to them. The list of pronouns is continuously evolving. An individual may have several sets of preferred pronouns, or none. The intention of both asking and using a person’s pronouns correctly is to reduce the negative societal effects for those whose personal pronouns don’t match with the gender identity that’s assumed by a cisnormative society. Using gender-neutral wording and terms to refer to groups of people (such as “folks,” instead of “guys”) are also inclusive steps that resist the gender binary and cis-normativity.
Racism
Racism is the process by which systems, policies, actions, and attitudes create unequal opportunities and outcomes for people based on race. More than individual or institutional prejudice, racism occurs when this discrimination is accompanied by the power to limit or oppress the rights of people and/or groups. Racism varies over time and between cultures, with racism towards different groups intensifying in different historical moments.
Sex-Gender-Difference
Sex-gender difference names the distinction between the concept of “sex” as a biological fact and the concept of “gender” as a product of cultural and social processes, such as socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and gendered identities.
Sexism
Sexism is the process by which systems, policies, actions, and attitudes create unequal opportunities and outcomes for people based on their attributed or supposed sex and the ideology underlying these phenomena. It is mostly used to name the power relations between dominant and marginalised genders within cisheteronormative patriarchal societies.
Sexual Orientation
Sexual orientation is the term that describes which sex or gender a person feels emotionally, physically, romantically and/or sexually attracted to.
Social Origin
Social origin describes the socio-cultural values and norms into which one is born, including factors such as environment, class, caste, education biography, and more. The values that accompany one’s social origin are constructed, but often have material impact that privileges or under-privileges certain groups and people. For example, someone whose social origin includes living in a Western country, inheriting intergenerational wealth, and having a consistently good education will increase their chances for a high-paying job as an adult. Their social origin must therefore be taken into account, rather than their inherent worthiness for such a job.
Social Norm
A social norm is a shared belief in the standard of acceptable behaviour by groups, both informal as well as institutionalized into policy or law. Social norms differ over time and between cultures and societies.
Socioeconomic Status
Socioeconomic status, usually described as low, medium, or high, is a way of describing people based on their education, income, and type of job. The values and norms assigned to each socioeconomic class are socially constructed but have material impact.
Structural Discrimination
Structural discrimination refers to patterns of behaviour, policies, and attitudes found at the macro-level conditions of society. This discrimination of social groups is based on the nature of the structure of society as a whole. Structural discrimination is distinct from individual forms of discrimination (such as a single racist remark, which is a microaggression), though it often provides the contextual framework to understand why these individual instances occur.
Tokenism
Tokenism is a superficial or symbolic gesture that includes minority members without significantly changing or addressing the structural discrimination of marginalization. Tokenism is a strategy intended to create the appearance of inclusion and to divert allegations of discrimination by requiring a single person to be representative of a minority.
White Supremacy
White supremacy names the beliefs and practices that privilege white people as an inherently superior race, built on the exclusion and detriment of other racial and ethnic groups. It can refer to the interconnected social, economic, and political systems that enable white people to enjoy structural advantages over other racial groups both on a collective and individual level. It can also refer to the underlying political ideology that imposes and maintains multiple forms of domination by white people and non-white supporters, from justifying European colonialism to present-day neo-fascisms.
Whiteness
Whiteness is a socially and politically constructed behaviour that perpetuates an ideology, culture, history, and economy that results in the unequal distribution of power and privilege favoring those socially deemed white. The material benefits of whiteness are gained at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and people of color, who are systematically denied equal access to those material benefits. On our blog, white is often written in small italics to mark it as a political category and emphasize the privileges of whiteness which are often not named as such, but rather taken for granted as the invisible norm.
Xenophobia
Xenophobia names the hostility towards groups or individuals perceived as “outsiders” based on their culture. Xenophobic attitudes are often associated with hostile reception of immigrants or refugees who arrive in societies and communities that are not their homelands. Xenophobic discrimination can result in barriers to equally access socioeconomic opportunities, as well as ethnic, racial, or religious prejudice.
Abolition
Abolition is a term that names officially ending a system, practice, or institution. Rooted in 19th century movements to abolish slavery, present day abolitionism is often invoked to end the practice of policing and military and/or the interconnected carceral systems of prisons, refugee camps, detention centers, and more. For more, see the definition of prison-industrial complex).
Accountability
Accountability is the obligation and willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions. In the context of social justice, accountability refers to the ways in which individuals and communities hold themselves to their principles and goals, as well as acknowledging the groups to which they are responsible. Accountability often requires a transparent process and continuous self- and collective awareness.
Ageism
Ageism is discrimination or prejudice based on a person’s age, such as when skills and abilities are questioned and assessed based on one’s older or younger age.
Agender
Agender is an adjective that can be used by persons who do not identify as any gender.
BIPoC
BIPoC stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color. A term that originated in the U.S., it is a self-designation intended to center the specific experiences of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized groups, who are severely impacted by systemic racial injustice rooted in histories of enslavement and colonialism, and to unite people and groups affected by racism.
Colorism
Colorism is a term that describes the prejudice or discrimination favoring people with lighter skin tones over those with darker skin tones. This is especially used to describe the nuanced discrimination faced within a racial or ethnic group.
Critical Diversity Policy (UdK)
The Critical Diversity Policy at UdK is a document whose intention is to emphasize and enforce the idea that differences in values, attitudes, cultural perspective, beliefs, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, gender identity, abilities, knowledge and life experiences of each individual in each group of people should be considered and overcome within the university.
Deadnaming
Deadnaming is the act of calling a trans*, nonbinary, or gender-expansive person by their birth name, or an incorrect name, when they have changed their name as part of their gender expression. It is never okay or necessary to use a person’s deadname when they have changed their name, including when describing past events. If you deadname someone, take accountability by apologizing and commit to not doing so in the future. Take steps to know someone’s current name and commit to using it.
Doing Gender
This sociological term focuses on how people observe, (re-)produce, and make gender relevant in everyday life. Rather than taking gender as an innate quality, the acts of “doing gender” emphasize how gender is a social construct that is prevalent in daily human interaction.
Misogynoir
Misogynoir is a term, coined by Black feminist Moya Bailey in 2010, that describes the gendered and racial oppression faced by Black cis and transgender women (the latter sometimes referred to as trans*-misogynoir). Taking an intersectional lens, misogynoir examines how anti-Black racism and misogyny combine into a particular form of oppression and discrimination.
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. It Is used for a broad spectrum of non-normative sexual and/or gender identities and politics.
Safer Space
Safer spaces are intended to be places where marginalized communities can gather and communicate shared experiences, free of bias, conflict, or harm perpetrated by members of a dominant group. Recognizing that there is no such thing as a perfectly safe space for marginalized people under the current systems of our society, the term “safer” indicates the goal of temporary relief, as well as acknowledging the fact that harm can be reproduced even within marginalized communities. Examples of safer spaces created in organizations and institutions are queer-only spaces and/or spaces only for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Social Justice
Social justice is a form of activism and political movement that promotes the process of transforming society from an injust and unequal state to one that is just and equitable. Social justice is rooted in the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political, and social rights and opportunities, and the fundamental right to feel psychologically and physically secure. Social justice therefore aims to change governing laws and societal norms that have historically and presently oppressed some groups over others. Social justice is not just the absence of discrimination, but also the presence of deliberate systems and supports that achieve and sustain equity along lines of race, gender, class, ability, religion, and more.
Trans*
Transgender, or simply trans*, is an adjective that refers to people whose gender identity is different than the sex assigned at birth. Trans comes from the Latin prefix which means “across” or “beyond.” The self-designation is not an identity feature that automatically indicates whether this person identifies with a different gender, no gender or multiple genders. Thus, there are several trans* identities. The asterisks (*) emphasizes the plurality and fluidity of trans identities.