Language as access and an invitation.

We approach our language with a learning mindset, not as a gatekeeping practice. When folks offer us the gift of educating us on where/how we can better communicate our work, center the communities we work with, or present a more inclusive message, we adjust our language and share what we learned with our team.

The language we use has an impact on the changemaking we do, and words can be co-opted, meaning that ultimately all of our words must be rooted in action and changemaking. Our work centers people, and therefore our communication centers people-first language. All language is powerful and political - without knowing it we communicate our values with everything we say. We don't want to focus so much on the words that we forget the people behind it. Names work best when possible. At the end of the day, people who are impacted are experts. We respect the language they choose to use. No group of folks is a monolith, and our language may vary to respect the preferences of who we’re working with, and that is subject to change.

Language is a group project. Often, the language we have is inadequate. It’s a gift to find and create the language we need to communicate across community and across experiences. As soon as we publish this, there may already be better language for any part of our work, and we’ll change our practices to reflect that. But, as of now, here are a few best practices we use and key definitions relative to our work:

We avoid the false binary of gendered language (ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, councilmen and councilwomen, etc.) and opt to use more inclusive terms like honored guests, folks, attendees, or councilperson.

We avoid needless gendering and make sure our work is as inclusive as possible (for example, not everyone who needs to access abortion care is a woman. We can talk about the issue in terms of people who are pregnant or people who are seeking abortion care. volunteers don’t man a table, they staff it.)

❋ Language is a Collaboration

❋ There's No Need to Deadname

Deadnaming transgender people is an actively harmful practice that is often used in an attempt to invalidate their identity and experience. We do not deadname people. This includes revolutionaries who adopted new names, like Assata Shakur, Kuwasi Balagoon, and Kwame Ture.

Similarly we avoid references to biology, anatomy, surgery, or genitals. All transgender people are valid, and they do not owe anyone a description of their body or changes to their body in order for that to be true.

We say what we mean, and we are especially mindful with regard to race. When we talk about Black people, we say that (and we capitalize Black).

❋ Clarity With Intention, As a Value

We respect the sovereignty of tribal Nations, and are mindful of language choice with regard to government and legal decisions that do or do not respect treaties (for example the federal government doesn't decide if there are reservations, the federal government does or does not respect reservation boundaries).

With regard to Indigenous peoples, we look to their language for themselves. We identify folks by tribal citizenship first if possible, and then rely on the term Indigenous (always capitalized) unless folks indicate another preference.

With regard to tribal citizens, if a preference is not noted, we use citizen over member to acknowledge tribes are sovereign nations, not clubs. We do not use blood quantums as differentiation or metrics that use colonial constructs that try to create false hierarchies of “how Indigenous” someone is.

When we talk about continued use of the R-slur to describe Indigenous people, we do not use or repeat the slur in our messaging or coverage.

Tribes are not a monolith, and we acknowledge that as we talk about our work with Indigenous communities or within particular tribes.

❋ We Respect Tribal Sovereignty

❋ We Don't Use Citizen as a Catch-All

We do not use terms like citizen unless we are explicitly talking about citizens. When we’re talking about community, words such as community member, resident, and constituent can be much more inclusive.

❋ A Commitment to Interrogating Our Own Language

We take pause to investigate the origins of common phrases or colloquialisms, knowing that we can challenge ourselves to remove phrases that perpetuate racism and/or ableism from our work.

When discussing medical care, avoid gendering body parts. People of all genders can have any genitalia or reproductive organs, and there is no singular, shared body experience for any gender. Avoid sweeping statements that suggest this, and, when possible provide context for how the history of gendering body parts and body experiences has been used especially to discriminate against intersex people.

❋ In Relation to Medical Care

❋ Avoid Perpetuating Stigma

We do not use harmful terms like “healthy,” “safe,” “clean” or “dirty” when discussing an individual’s health status, as to not contribute to hierarchical health culture and HIV/AIDS and STI stigma.

Oftentimes 2SLGBTQ+ have to engage in advocacy to see their rights protected and affirmed. When folks engage in this advocacy, we acknowledge them as advocates, avoiding terms like activists, which often carry a connotation meant to minimize the lived experience and necessity in engaging in advocacy.

❋ Activism vs. Advocacy

We center people first: people who are incarcerated, people living outdoors, people without a fixed address, person living with HIV.

❋ People First

We treat people how they want to be treated, and we talk about people with the language they want to be used. That means sometimes we work outside the norm of guidelines presented here (e.g. saying disabled instead of people with disabilities, autistic instead of people with autism).

❋ We Treat People How They Want to Be Treated

We try to avoid or explain jargon, and try to reiterate the meanings behind acronyms.

❋ Clarity is Kindness

❋ When Possible, Degender!

When speaking broadly, the best practice is to minimize pronoun use, and when necessary, use they/them pronouns.

When using traditionally gendered terms, especially in other languages, seek out alternative options, many of which are readily available due to the work of 2SLGBTQ+ organizers (e.g. Latine or Latinx instead of Latina/o).

When we discuss 2SLGBTQ+ (Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, plus) communities, we respect the whole humanity of people. This means we always include 2S in our acronym--we do not exclude Two Spirit people from being named for a matter of character length or convenience.

❋ 2S to the Front (intentionally)

There are occasions when it is necessary to discuss assigned sex at birth, but we never use offensive terms such as biological sex.

❋ We Don't Use the Opposition's Language

We do not use identify or preferred relative to people’s gender or pronouns. People’s pronouns are a part of their identity–other people do not get to have a preference around which pronouns they use for them. A person is nonbinary, a transgender woman is a woman, qualifying this with identifies only seeks to invalidate what is a valid experience.

❋ No Qualifier Needed

❋ Lead By Example, with Language

We note pronouns in our work, including at the bottom of press releases, because we believe in normalizing by example. We never assume pronouns.

No person or body is illegal. Our existence isn’t criminal, but it is criminalized. The state uses a crime/criminalization framework to other folks and cause harm. We avoid language which perpetuates that stigma.

❋ Criminalization is a Construct

❋ Ableist Language Takes Work to Disrupt

We acknowledge that ableist language is pervasive, and that it takes necessary attention to remove words and phrases rooted in othering and mocking people with disabilities from our work.

We avoid identifying people based on their conviction or arrest status, which means we do not use terms such as offender, convict, rapist, abuser, addict, or criminal.

Much of the common language around the criminal punishment system dehumanizes the harm, and we have a responsibility to disrupt that. People should be humanized and not only referred to based on their carceral status or relationship to other people. Because people with a history of conviction or arrest are not a monolith, that may change from person to person. And we acknowledge and respect that.

We work as much as possible to avoid the false dichotomy of violent versus nonviolent. In all criminalized behavior there is harm done. Our social definitions of violent crimes are arbitrary, as are the way people are charged. We see that people of color, especially Black people, are more likely to be charged with statutorily violent crimes because of racism in the criminal legal system. The narratives that suggest only a certain group of people should receive relief, based on their type of criminalized behavior, deviates from the broader problems within the criminal punishment system.

We try to talk about the way people engage in behavior that is criminalized rather than talking about crimes.

We avoid focusing on the false dichotomy of innocence. People who did engage in the criminalized acts they are charged with and/or convicted of deserve a response free from the harm of the criminal punishment system, too.

❋ Abolition as a Value

We talk about marriage without modifiers. When discussing the wins for equal access to rights for 2SLGTBQ+ people, we use the term marriage equality in the context of how the campaign was framed in the movement, noting that many people still do not having equal marriage access including some non-citizens, folks who receive disability benefits, and people with more than one partner.

❋ Marriage

Often exacerbated by policies, targeted efforts, and personal experiences that seek to demean, delegitimize, and actively harm 2SLGBTQ+ people, along with barriers to affirming medical care, members of our community face especially high rates of suicidality. When discussing suicide and violence relative to 2SLGBTQ+ people, we limit facts to those necessary and do not engage in exploitative trauma. We never use the phrase committed suicide, instead, when it is the case, acknowledging someone has died by suicide. Any efforts we make that discuss these issues directly, we provide relevant information for people to seek affirming, low-barrier help, and encourage media and partners to do the same.

❋ Suicide

Language will not be a gatekeeping mechanism, but rather a learning opportunity. Folks don’t have to have the right words to do the work, but together we can learn and use more inclusive language.