Cultural attitudes, linguistic variation, and historical pathology have led to a plethora of terms concerning gender, sex, and sexual orientation that have caused confusion and uneasiness among both lay people and relevant professionals. For members of the LGBTQIA+ community, these negative reactions are compounded by identities which have historically and contemporarily been mistreated by medical professionals. In an effort to provide a reliable resource for patients and clinicians, we have created the Gender, Sex, and Sexual Orientation (GSSO) ontology, which currently includes over 4,000 entities from multiple disciplines. The GSSO is a manually curated resource utilizing related glossaries from biology, medicine, psychology, sociology, and gender studies. With links to over 20 other ontology resources such as SNOMED-CT and MedDRA, the GSSO aims for accessibility and interoperability with existing systems. It is also open-source and features an easy-to-use web interface (https://github.com/Superraptor/GSSO). Future work involves multiple language support efforts and empirical evaluation.
Keywords: Linguistic; Sexual and Gender Minorities; Social Determinants of Health.