Separating Sex, Gender & Sexual Orientation

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:

1. people with penises are men
2. men are attracted to women
3. 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.