Abortion: A medical intervention that ends a pregnancy.

Abstinence: Choosing to refrain from certain sexual behaviors for a period of time. Some people define abstinence as not having vaginal intercourse, while others define it as not engaging in any sexual activity.

Age of Consent: The age a person is legally able to consent to sexual activity. It varies from state to state, but ranges from 14 to 18 years of age in the United States.

Abstinence-Only Programs: Programs exclusively focused on refraining from all sexual behaviors. They do not necessarily put a condition on when a person might choose to no longer be abstinent.

Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs: Programs focused exclusively on refraining from all sexual behaviors outside of the contexts of a heterosexual marriage.

AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). People do not die from AIDS, they die from one of the infections their body acquires as a result of a weakened immune system.

Biological Sex: Our sex as determined by our chromosomes (such as XX or XY), our hormones and our internal and external anatomy. Typically, we are assigned the sex of male or female at birth. Those who chromosomes are different from XX or XY at birth are referred to as “intersex.”

Bisexual: A term used to describe a person whose attraction to other people is not necessarily determined by gender. This is different from being attracted to all men or all women.

Body Image: How people feel about their body. This may or may not match a person’s actual appearance.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Sexuality education programs that build a foundation of knowledge and skills relating to human development, relationships, decision-making, abstinence, contraception, and disease prevention. Ideally, comprehensive sexuality education should start in kindergarten and continue through 12th grade. At each developmental stage, these programs teach age-appropriate, medically accurate information that builds on the knowledge and skills that were taught in the previous stage.

Consensual: When a person agrees to engage in sexual behaviors with another person. “Consensual sex” means that no one was forced or manipulated in any way to participate in a sexual behavior.

Contraception: Any means to prevent pregnancy, including abstinence, barrier methods such as condoms and hormonal methods such as the pill, patch, injection, IUD, and others.

Dating Violence: Controlling, abusive and/or aggressive behavior within the context of a romantic relationship. It can include verbal, emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse, be perpetrated against someone of any gender and happen in any relationship regardless of sexual orientation.

Gay: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of their same gender. Gay women will often use the word “lesbian.”

Gender: The emotional, behavioral and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. Gender can be understood to have several components, including gender identity, gender expression and gender role (see below).

Gender Expression: The manner in which people outwardly expresses their gender.

Gender Identity: People’s inner sense of their gender. Most people develop a gender identity that corresponds to their biological sex, but some do not.

Gender Roles: The social expectations of how people should act, think and/or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

Harassment: Unwelcome or offensive behavior by one person to another. Examples are making unwanted sexual comments to another person, sending unwanted sexual texts, bullying, or intimidation.

Heterosexual: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of a different gender from their own.

HIV: The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). The virus weakens a person’s immune system so that the person cannot fight off many everyday infections. HIV is transmitted through exposure to an infected person’s blood, seems, vaginal fluids or breast milk.

Homosexual: A term used to describe people who are romantically and sexually attracted to people of their own gender. Most often referred to as “gay” or “lesbian.”

Incest: Sexual contact between persons who are so closely related that marriage between those two people would be considered illegal (e.g., a parent or step parent and a child, siblings, etc.).

Lesbian: A term used to describe women who are romantically and sexually attracted to other women.

Puberty: A time when the pituitary gland triggers production of testosterone in boys and estrogen and progesterone in girls. Puberty typically begins between ages 9 and 12 for girls, and between the ages of 11 and 14 for boys, and includes such body changes as hair growth around the genitals, menstruation in girls, sperm production in boys, and much more.

Rape: A type of sexual assault that involves forced vaginal, anal, or oral sex using a body part or object.

Sexual Abuse: Sexual abuse is any sort of unwanted sexual contact often over a period of time. A single act of sexual abuse is usually referred to as “sexual assault”.

Sexual Assault: Any unwanted sex act committed by a person or people against another person.

Sexual Harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.

Sexual Intercourse: When a penis is inserted into a vagina, mouth, or anus.

Sexual Orientation: Romantic and sexual attraction to people of one’s same and/or other genders. Current terms for sexual orientation include gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual and others.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs): Diseases caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites that are transmitted from one person to another during sexual contact. Also called sexually transmitted infections or STIs.

Transgender: A gender identity in which a person’s inner sense of their gender does not correspond to their assigned biological sex.

*Taken from The National Sexuality Education Standards Core Content

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