Words carry weight in Miami's LGBTQ+ community. Some mark identity. Some mark history. Some have shifted meaning in a single decade. Britannica describes language as the system through which people express themselves as members of a social group, and lists the expression of identity among its core functions. That is exactly what this vocabulary does.
This guide walks through the terms you will hear at a Pride festival in June, at a community center meeting in October, and everywhere in between. The goal is confidence, not a vocabulary test. Language changes, people define their own identities, and a respectful question beats a confident guess every time.
Why does the vocabulary keep changing?
Because the community itself keeps growing in how it describes itself. Terms that were standard twenty years ago can read as clinical or dated now. Others have been reclaimed from insults. As our coverage of queer nightlife in Miami shows, even the word "queer" has traveled that road, from slur to a term many people now use proudly as an umbrella label.
Linguists have long noted that languages evolve as communities change, a point the reference works above make at length. What matters practically is this: when someone tells you the word they prefer, use it. Preference outranks any glossary, including this one.
What do LGBTQ, LGBTQ+ and related acronyms mean?
The acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, with the plus sign standing in for identities the letters do not cover. You will also see older and shorter forms. "LGB" drops the T in contexts discussing sexual orientation alone, though dropping the T from community-wide usage is widely criticized as excluding transgender people. Longer versions add letters such as I for intersex and A for asexual.
There is no single official form. Newsrooms, organizations and event organizers choose their own, and Miami organizations differ among themselves. When writing about a specific group, match the wording that group uses for itself.
Which terms describe sexual orientation?
Orientation describes who a person is attracted to. The core terms:
- Lesbian — a woman attracted to other women.
- Gay — a person attracted to people of the same gender; most often used for men, but many women use it too.
- Bisexual — attraction to more than one gender. Bisexual people are frequently misread as gay or straight depending on their partner. The erasure is real, and the word matters.
- Pansexual — attraction regardless of gender. Some people use bisexual and pansexual interchangeably; others draw a distinction. Both are theirs to make.
- Asexual — experiencing little or no sexual attraction. Asexuality is an orientation, not a choice or a phase.
- Queer — an umbrella term, as noted above. Use it for yourself or for people who claim it. Do not apply it to someone who has not.
One caution runs through all of it: orientation is a person's own to state. Presence at an event, a friendship, or someone else's guess is never evidence.
Which terms describe gender identity?
Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender. It is separate from sexual orientation, which is about attraction. The two get conflated constantly, so it helps to keep them in different drawers.
- Transgender — a person whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. "Trans" is a common short form. Use it as an adjective: "a transgender woman," never "a transgender."
- Cisgender — a person whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. The word is descriptive, not an insult.
- Nonbinary — an identity outside the man/woman binary. Some nonbinary people also identify as trans; some do not.
- Gender-expansive — a broader umbrella for identities and expressions that bend or exceed conventional gender expectations.
- Intersex — born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions of male or female. Intersex is about biology, not identity, which is why advocates argue for its own letter in the acronym.
How do pronouns work, and what if I make a mistake?
Pronouns are the small words that stand in for a name: he, she, they. Many people list theirs in email signatures and event name tags. "They" used for a single person is grammatically old, standard in speech, and the usual choice for nonbinary people who use it. Some people use neo-pronouns such as ze or ae. The respectful move is the same in every case: use the pronouns a person gives you.
When you slip, the fix is short. Correct yourself, move on, do not turn the moment into an apology performance that makes the other person manage your feelings. If you genuinely do not know someone's pronouns, sharing your own first is a low-pressure way to open the door.
What about drag, and words from ballroom culture?
Drag is performance, not identity. A drag queen or drag king is a stage persona, and performers of any orientation or gender take the stage. Our profile of Ocean Drive's Palace covers one Miami institution where that distinction plays out nightly. Calling a performer by their stage name while they are in character is standard courtesy; the persona is the professional identity in that room. We covered a connected angle in The Palace at 30-Plus: Ocean Drive's Drag Institution.
Ballroom and queer slang have given mainstream culture words like "serving," "reading" and "slay," much of it via the city's own Black and Latino LGBTQ+ communities and the ballroom scene whose Miami footprint we traced in our coverage of queer Latinx culture on Calle Ocho. Borrowing the words while ignoring the communities that made them is the textbook pattern of rainbow-washing. Use the vocabulary with some sense of where it came from. Readers following this should also see Queer Latinx Miami: Culture on and Around Calle Ocho.
What this means for readers
Our analysis comes down to three habits. First, mirror the words people use for themselves. Second, keep orientation and gender identity separate in your thinking. Third, treat a mistake as a small correctable event, not a moral crisis. Confidence in this vocabulary is not about memorizing a list. It is about the habit of letting people name themselves.
Terminology will keep evolving, and this guide will age with it. The durable part is the principle underneath: language is how a community expresses identity, and in this community, the person you are talking to always gets the last word on what they are called. If you want to see the vocabulary in its natural habitat, our events calendar runs all twelve months, and our culture coverage follows the community's words and work year-round.
