The raised fist, or the clenched fist, is a long-standing image of activism, often a symbol of social revolution and political solidarity. It is also a common symbol of anarchism and communism, but can also be used as a salute to express unity, strength, or resistance. The origin of the raised fist as a symbol is unclear. Its use in trade unionism, anarchism, and the labor movement had begun by the 1910s. William "Big Bill" Haywood, a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, used the metaphor of a fist as something greater than the sum of its parts during a speech at the 1913 Paterson silk strike. The raised fist logo may represent unity or solidarity, generally with
… Read more oppressed peoples. The black fist is a variation of the logo generally associated with the Black Power movement. Its most widely known usage is by the Black Panther Party, a Black Marxist group in the 1960s.
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community. In the 21st century, queer became increasingly used to describe a broad spectrum of non-normative sexual and gender identities and politics. Academic disciplines such as queer theory and queer studies share a general opposition to binarism, normativity, and a perceived lack of intersectionality, some of them only tangentially connected to the LGBT
… Read more movement. Queer arts, queer cultural groups, and queer political groups are examples of modern expressions of queer identities.
Non-binary or genderqueer is an umbrella term for gender identities that are neither male nor female, which means identities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gender that is different from their assigned sex, though some non-binary individuals do not consider themselves transgender. Non-binary people may identify as having two or more genders (being bigender or trigender), or having no gender (agender, nongendered, genderless, genderfree), or having a fluctuating gender identity (genderfluid), or being third gender or other-gendered (a category that includes those who do
… Read more not place a name to their gender). Gender identity is separate from sexual or romantic orientation, and non-binary people have a variety of sexual orientations, just as cisgender people do.
- Agender people, also called genderless, gender-free, non-gendered, or ungendered, are those who identify as having no gender or being without a gender identity.
- Bi-gender, or dual gender is a gender identity that includes any two gender identities and behaviors. Identifying as bigender is typically understood to mean that one identifies as both male and female or moves between masculine gender expression and feminine gender expression, having two distinct gender identities simultaneously or fluctuating between them.
- Demigender is a gender identity of a person identifying partially or mostly with one gender and at the same time with another gender.
- Genderfluid people often express a desire to remain flexible about their gender identity rather than committing to a single definition. They may fluctuate among different gender expressions over their lifetime, or express multiple aspects of various gender markers at the same time.
- Transfeminine and transmasculine may be used by individuals to describe an aspect of femininity or masculinity within their identity. Transfeminine may be used by individuals who were assigned male at birth but align more closely with femininity, while not necessarily fully identifying as a woman.
LGBTQ an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. It functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. It may refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Other common variants also exist, such as LGBTQIA+, with the I standing for "intersex" and A standing for "asexual" or "aromantic". Longer acronyms also exists, such as LGBTTQQIAAP (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual). Various flags represent specific identities within the LGBT movement, from sexual or romantic orientations,
… Read more to gender identities or expressions, to sexual characteristics.