The other night I was teaching my human sexuality college class. The topic was gender and sexual orientation. My goal was to explain the difference between sex, gender and sexual orientation.
To do so I gave out signs to the students that read:
- What is between your legs
- What is between your ears
- Biological maleness and femaleness
- The behaviors, identity and activities that a society considers appropriate for men and women
- Feeling like a boy or a girl (or a man or a woman)
- Being straight, gay, lesbian or bisexual
- Being transgender
- Who you are attracted to romantically and sexually
Then, I asked them to tape their signs under the term they felt was the most appropriate.
After a little shuffling we got something that looked like this:
Sex
- What is between your legs
- Biological maleness and femaleness
Gender
- What is between your ears
- The behaviors, identity and activities that a society considers appropriate for men and women
- Feeling like a boy or a girl (or a man or a woman)
- Being transgender
Sexual Orientation
- Who you are attracted to romantically and sexually
- Being straight, gay, lesbian or bisexual
I like to have people visualize these concepts because I think it helps them understand that sex, gender and sexual orientation are actually separate things, and that a person’s sexual orientation usually reflects their gender identity, not their sex.
An example of this could be a person whose biological sex is female, and was born with XX chromosomes, but who has a male (transgender) gender identity. If that person is attracted to men, he would likely consider himself to be a gay man, even if he had a vagina.
Understanding that sex, gender and sexual orientation work independently can help explain why people don't always identify themselves in a way that mainstream society expects.
We live in a world that generally assumes that:
- people with penises are men
- men are attracted to women
- women have vaginas
and vice versa. But as you know, this is not how things line up for a lot of people.
Not everyone has given these concepts a lot of thought, and when folks are presented with experiences that don’t reflect their own, they may react with confusion, or even hostility.
But clearing up confusion is a really important step towards eliminating hostility and ultimately gaining acceptance for all people, not just those who fit into a neat gender and sexual orientation box.
