#1 Orientations and Choices Primer: Gender, Sexuality, Romantic, and Relationship Structures

This article also inspired me to post a series discussing the basic differences between gender, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, and relationship structures. As followers may have noticed, I try to post things related to all non-cishetmono communities, and through keeping abreast of all these facets I’m noticing that belonging to one non-mainstream group doesn’t guarantee any understanding of other non-mainstream groups. So, I’m going to take a crack at defining the different facets of human existence in western society. What’s the difference?

The Genderbread Person has always been my go-to for explaining the overall differences between biological sex, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, and romantic orientation. Version 3 does a good job, but I want to point out just a few things:

First, it doesn’t include a non-binary or third-gender aspect, which leaves a large part of the binary-nonconforming community out to dry.

Second, the there is an ongoing discussion in the trans* community about the use of “biological sex” because so many people outside the community try to define trans* people by their chromosomes or genitalia. Currently, in the medical community, there is a certain threshold where a transitioning person can legally change their “biological gender” (the little F or M on their driver’s license and other government documents) once their hormones are at levels common to someone with the opposite chromosomes (this also affects athletes in a major way). This has been a major debate in athletic events such as the Olympics, and I will post an article on Thursday discussing such.

Third, it under-addresses intersex individuals, though in its current format I don’t see how it could specify an attraction for someone possessing ambiguous external genitalia, in-between internal genitalia, or fully formed genitalia of both or neither end of the binary due to any number of chromosomal or hormonal tricks of nature.

And fourth, it leaves out aesthetic attraction, which is a point the asexual community works very hard to get across, and is actually addressed on the Kinsey Scale, which I will discuss in the next week’s edition of this post series, #2.

See why everyone gets these confused? Health class can barely teach us that urine doesn’t come out of the vagina; it’s clearly our responsibility to educate ourselves on all the wonderful iterations of people we may come to hold dear in our lives.