Not familiar with some of the terms you've come across? You helpfl BMMC team has compiled a little cheat sheet. It's by no means exhaustive, but you gotta start somewhere...

Patriarchy- (Merriam Webster:) 1 : social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.
2 : a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy. (Liz L’s definition:) See ”Da Man.”

Status Quo- (Liz L’s definition:) The way things are, the current state of affairs. Patriarchy enforces the STATUS QUO in order to stay in power.

Compulsory Heterosexuality- (Liz L’s definition:) The idea that acting straight is something society demands/requires in order to gain acceptance. COMPULSORYHETEROSEXUALITY prohibits gay/lesbian/bi/transgender people from coming out for fear of backlash and being ostracized.

Debunk- (Merriam Webster:) to expose the sham or falseness of. We want to DEBUNK the myth that feminists always take themselves seriously at all times always.

Hegemony - (Merriam Webster) preponderant influence or authority over others; domination.

Counter hegemony- (suzanne’s definition) rejecting the preponderant influence or authority over others with cheeky websites like this.

Semiotics- (Merriam Webster) a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. (Liz L's definition) What you can tell about someone or something by the appearance of it. i.e: A kid on a skateboard with a hat on backwards, a Hurley sweatshirt on, Tony Hawk shoes, a wallet chain, and labret piercing. What kind of music would you expect? What about speech? Semiotics is when you analyze the components (skateboard, chain) to infer what they mean (listens to Good Charlotte, plays video games).

Gender as a social construction- (in three parts, Merriam Webster definition)
a.) gender: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
b.) social: living and breeding in more or less organized communities
c.) construction: the act or result of construing , interpreting, or explaining
(Suzanne) Put ‘em all together, and what do you get? The idea that gender is created by the socio-cultural environment in which we live, independent of supposedly natural notions of male/ masculine and female/ feminine.