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Figuring out who you are, in relation to your gender and sexuality, can be a long and painful process. For some people, it happens long before/during adolescence whilst, for others, it can happen much later in life. Having an identity that doesn’t align with being heterosexual, being cisgender or the gender binary can feel extremely challenging. Whether you yourself are questioning your identity, or you are someone that is trying to gain a greater understanding of someone who is, this webpage helps breakdown the terminology around sexuality and the plethora of ways we may identify using the popular 'Genderbread Person '.
Biological sex is medically determined by the chromosomes and reproductive organs an individual is born with. There are three categories for sex assigned at birth those are:
Gender identity is determined by the person themselves. The 'gender binary' assumes that the only options for gender are ‘male’ and ‘female’. However, historically a spectrum of gender identities have long been celebrated pre-colonalism, with many cultures traditionally recognising the broad spectrum that gender identities can fall under.
Native Americans celebrated 'two-spirited people and recognised over 100 gender identities.
There are three categories for someone’s gender which are:
It’s important to note that gender is a spectrum with Non-binary containing many different identities in itself e.g. demi-girl, genderqueer etc. Furthermore gender isn't always experienced as being ‘fixed’, some people experience fluidity whereby a person’s gender identity or expression changes over time.
Some Non-binary individuals do not wish to identify at trans whilst some do.
Someone’s sexuality refers to the presence/absence of attraction to certain genders. Attraction can be considered romantically, emotionally and physically. There are loads of sexualities, even more than the ones listed here:
Somebody’s expression is how they express themselves physically. It’s about how they appear to others based on how they talk, how they dress and their general mannerisms and behaviour. The categories are:
People can wrongly use a person’s expression to assume their gender or sexuality however, a person’s sexuality or gender are valid REGARDLESS of how they express themselves.