4. Gender or sex assigned at birth.
Someone's gender assigned at birth is what the parents and/or medical professionals decide the child's gender is when they are born. Since the baby can't talk yet, this is basically the same thing as "Sex assigned at birth". Notice that the liberals don't say that someone's gender or sex at birth simply is their gender or sex at birth. They say that's their "assigned"gender or sex.
They believe that gender or even sex can change throughout a person's life or be re-assigned.
So let's say that you or your wife gives birth to a baby boy. Liberals would say that the boy is assigned a male sex (based on his anatomy) and male gender (his birth certificate will say male). When the boy gets older, he may continue to identify as a male, or, according to liberals, his gender identity might change. If he later gets surgery to re-assign his sex to female, then his sex will have a different assignment.
Conservatives think of gender and sex as being inherent to the person and set the moment someone is born. So a baby girl will always be female sex and female gendered, and a baby boy will always be male sex and male gendered.
Liberals think of human beings as basically being blank, like dolls. The gender and sex is "assigned" to this otherwise genderless/sexless person, and subject to change over the course of a person's life.
Sometimes liberals too can make the argument that there's something inherent about gender identity or the person's sexual identity or sexual orientations, but only when they are defending transgendered people or people with deviant sexual orientations.
5. Gender identity
This is the gender that the person identifies himself or herself as, regardless of physical anatomy. There are several different gender identities someone can have, but the most common are male or female.
I'll try to explain others in later posts.
6. Sexual orientation
This indicates the type of person or other entity that the person is sexually attracted to. The most common of these would be heterosexuals (attracted to the opposite sex), homosexuals (attracted to the same sex), and bisexuals (attracted to both sexes). There are other types of sexual orientations too that I'll try to explain later.
Important NOTE: Gender identity and sexual orientation are two separate things.
A person who has a male sex assigned at birth might have a female gender identity but be sexually attracted to women. Conservatives would say he has a straight sexual orientation because he's sexually attracted to women and he's a man physically. He would be described by liberals as having a homosexual orientation because of his female gender identity even though he's got a physically male body.
Liberal terminology quiz:
1. Someone who is physically male, self-identifies as female, and is attracted to other people who are physically male is:
A. Homosexual female
B. Homosexual male
C. Heterosexual female
D. Heterosexual male
Conservatives are likely to say that he's B, a homosexual male. This would be based on the fact that he's physically male and he's attracted to other people who are physically male.
Liberals on the other hand, would say just the opposite. They'd say he's C, a heterosexual female. They would say this because his gender identity is female, which to them means he is female. So as a female attracted to males, he (or she, as they would say)
Would be a heterosexual female.
Believe me, it only gets more confusing from here on out, but if you want to be able to debate with liberals, this stuff is important to try to understand. They often define things in exactly the opposite way that conservatives would. This is a great example of that.