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Boi (plural: bois) is a term used within LGBT and butch and femme communities to refer to a person's sexual and/or gender identities. In lesbian communities, there is an increasing acceptance of variant gender expression, as well as allowing people to identify as a boi. The term may denote a number of possibilities that are not mutually exclusive:
Boi may also refer to someone assigned female at birth, who generally does not identify as, or only partially identifies as feminine, female, a girl, or a woman. Some bois are trans and/or intersex people. Some "bois" identify as one or more of these, but they almost always identify as lesbians, dykes, or queer. Many trans bois are also genderqueer/nonbinary (in itself a trans/transgender group), or might identify as cis persons or trans men, and yet practice genderfuck in which they do not fit in either masculine or feminine binary gender presentation. Bois may prefer a range of pronouns, including "he", "she", or non-binary and gender-neutral pronouns such as "they", "co", "hir", "sie", "zie", "xe", and "ey". The term has found increasing usage in the larger LGBT culture.
The term was coined to refer to black LGBTQ people, especially black gay individuals, later being used to describe gender. "Boi" has found popularity in the Latino and Asian communities as well.
The term was also used as a variant of the spelling of boy when one could not register a username (particularly on AOL in the 1990s when so many names were already registered) with the normal spelling boy as a part of the name. It was generally picked by younger gay males (commonly called twinks today).