Debunking the Gender and Sexuality Binary
For a long time, there has existed confusion regarding gender and sexuality. Are they different? How are they different? These are a few questions we hope to answer today!
Sexuality means your sexual thoughts, feelings, attraction, and behavior towards other people. Gender, on the other hand, can get a bit tricky because it includes both your gender identity as well as your gender expression.
Let’s talk about gender first.
Gender identity includes how we feel about our own gender. For a really long time, gender-just meant man and woman. But this is a narrow understanding of it. Terms like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ portray one’s gender in two categories. This is considered to be a binary view of gender but we now know there exist different understandings beyond the binary view. There is also the non-binary gender that does not identify with either the masculine or the feminine gender exclusively. Many cultures across the world have broader ideas of gender beyond the parameters of masculine and feminine. Gender is a spectrum; you can feel more like a woman and less like a man or vice versa, or even something beyond that. You may also not have a gender identity, called agender, and that’s alright too.
Gender expression is the way you exhibit your gender. This mostly depends on how you dress, walk, talk, act, your haircut, etc. Some examples of gender expression are androgynous, feminine, masculine, etc. Generally, your gender expression is heavily influenced by circumstances and societal expectations. But a person is most comfortable when they express their gender the way they feel is true to their identity and that’s the best way to be.
Your gender is not the same as your biological sex. When you’re born you’re assigned a sex based on your physical characteristics. You’re male, female, or intersex based on your reproductive organs, chromosomes, and hormones. However, the sex given to you may or may not always match your gender identity.
We know that the sex assigned at birth is a fixed category; however, your gender tends to be more fluid. When gender identity and sex assigned at the birth match this is considered to be cisgender. Transgender people are those whose gender identity and sex assigned at birth don’t match
Now let’s talk about sexuality.
As we already know, sexuality is the sexual thoughts, feelings, attraction, and behavior you have towards another person. Sexuality includes both physical and emotional attraction.
Physical attraction basically talks about the sexual or physical attraction you have towards another person. Emotional attraction is when you feel romantically or emotionally attracted to another individual. Both emotional and physical attraction is based on a lot of factors like someone’s gender identity or expression, their personality or even the sex they were assigned at birth, etc.
Attraction, like gender, is a spectrum, some are attracted to the opposite sex (heterosexual), some to the same sex (homosexual), some people are attracted to multiple genders in different ways (pansexual or bisexual) and some may not have any desire for romantic relationships (aromantic). Some people may also only experience emotional attraction but not physical attraction (asexual). Many people tend to feel that their attraction cannot be explained by any of these labels.
There are multiple points on this spectrum beyond the ones mentioned here. It is important to remember that we may or may not fit into labels or categories. Our gender identity or who we are attracted to may not be something that can be easily explained, but that’s alright. What we need to be is ourselves and that’s what matters at the end of the day.
“ To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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