What Are Sexual Orientation and Identity?

You are different from everyone else you know. No one else looks exactly like you do. No one else feels exactly the same things you feel or thinks the same way you do. No one else perceives things in the very same way you do. Your identity is the combination of these unique qualities and sensibilities that make you who you are. Your identity is how you see yourself and how you let other people see you—it is your personality.

Your Identity

Try to describe yourself in fairly simple, basic terms. Are you male, female, nonbinary, or something else? Your gender—however you define it—is a piece of your identity. What is your race or ethnicity? How old are you? Your age and race or ethnicity are other pieces of your identity. Think about your likes and dislikes. Do you like sports? Do you like movies or reading or video games? Do you prefer nighttime or daytime? What is your favorite subject at school? Are you religious? Do you have strong political beliefs? Your answers to questions like these are also pieces of your identity.

Think about some other, more complicated questions: Do you know what kind of job you might like when you are an adult? Do you think you will marry and have children? What kinds of people do you find attractive and appealing? There are no right or wrong answers to any of these questions. You have probably not decided about careers or marriage yet. All these pieces of your personality—your likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and beliefs—make up your identity.

What Is the Difference Between Sexual Identity and Orientation?

The terms “sexual identity” and “sexual orientation” are often used interchangeably, and most people consider them to mean the same thing. In the most basic sense, the terms refer to whom you are attracted to both physically and emotionally—someone of the opposite gender as you, the same gender, people of more than one gender, or not experiencing attraction at all (asexual).

Generally speaking, sexual orientation refers to these basic forms of attraction. Your orientation depends upon whom you are attracted to—people of the opposite sex, same sex, or both. Sexual identity is the label you choose to describe your orientation. The standard categories are heterosexual (“straight;” attraction to people of the opposite gender), homosexual (“gay,” “lesbian;” attracted to people of the same gender), and bisexual (“bi;” attracted to people of more than one gender). Sexual identity involves orientation but can also represent a more elaborate emotional, physical, or spiritual conception of the self. Your sexual orientation will probably form the core of your sexual identity.

But your sexual identity may also involve how masculine or feminine you feel, how masculine or feminine the people you are attracted to are, your sexual likes and dislikes, even sometimes the way you get dressed up, the music you listen to, or the celebrities you admire. Things like clothes and music are not inherently “gay” or “straight.” Even masculinity and femininity, terms which we call “gender expression,” do not correspond to homosexuality or heterosexuality. Some gay men identify strongly with masculinity, while some heterosexual men resist their society’s traditions of masculinity. Similarly, lesbian women can be stereotypically masculine or traditionally feminine or anything in between, as can straight women. Such differences in gender expression have led some LGBTQ+ folks to see their gender expression as its own identity. A queer person may identify as “masc” or “femme” to describe their presentation and tastes, and some communities have defined their own such terms for gender expression. Gender expression is a part of identity, too, and is often separate from sexual identity.

The point is that things like masculinity/femininity, clothes, music, films, and books can all be components of your sexual identity, regardless of your sexual orientation. Whatever you find to be a turn-on, even if it’s not directly related to the people you’re attracted to, help form the complex mosaic that is your sexual identity. And it is complex. For example, some people may occasionally or even frequently sleep with people of the same sex, yet not identify themselves as gay or bisexual. Despite their sexual behavior, their sexual identity is heterosexual.

For the purposes of this database entry, “sexual orientation” will be used to refer to basic categories of sexual attraction, while “sexual identity” will refer to the larger, more complex sense of unique personal sexuality that each person has.

Beyond Sexual Orientation: Spectrums for Relationship Identity, Sexual or Romantic Drive, and More

Thinking about your relationship to sexuality, you might also be considering other aspects of yourself. You may have noticed other ways people can be different. Perhaps one friend is motivated by finding sexual experiences, while you don’t have a strong interest in sex. Another friend might be extremely interested in finding a single lifelong partner, while you are interested in pursuing relationships with multiple people. There are names for both of these ways of experiencing sexuality. There is a spectrum of sexual attraction, where “asexuality” describes not feeling sexual attraction to others, and “allosexuality” describes experiencing sexual attraction. There is also a spectrum of relationship orientation, where some are monogamous, and others are polyamorous (pursue and hold multiple romantic or sexual relationships). All of these are relationships with sexuality that are valid for you to have.

A long time ago, LGBTQ+ people came to understand that sexual identity is a spectrum. In more recent years, people have been recognizing that many aspects of our identity are the same way. Such spectrums might include your level of interest in either sex or romance, your gender expression alongside your gender identity, and more. Not all of these categories are meaningful for everyone, but they can be useful to help understand yourself. As you form your own identity in conversation with other people, you might learn additional terms, and additional ways to be yourself.

To Whom Are You Attracted?

Have you ever dated? Have you ever had strong feelings for romantic or sexual feelings for another person? Was that person male or female? If you have not dated, do you find yourself attracted to men or to women? If you do not find yourself feeling attracted to other people that is OK. Attraction to other people occurs at different times in our lives, and not everyone feels attraction in the same way, to the same degree, or all the time.

The majority of people in the world feel strong emotional and sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex. These people would identify their sexual orientation as heterosexual, or straight. However, there are many people in the world who do not feel attracted emotionally or physically to people of the opposite sex. Many people in the world are attracted to people of the same sex. These people would identify their sexual orientation as gay. There are also people who are attracted to those of the same gender or to those of another gender. These people define their orientation as bisexual.

It’s important to note, too, that sexual orientation falls along a continuum. In other words, someone does not have to be exclusively gay or straight, but can feel varying degrees of attraction for both genders (again, this is believed to be more common among women than men over time). Sexual orientation may already be present at birth but different people realize at different points in their lives that they are straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Some people have always known they were gay, while others may not come to fully realize and accept their sexual orientation until later in life.

Some people find that their assigned gender fails on a deep level to describe who they are. It does not allow them to live comfortably as themselves. These people realize that their gender is different from the one assigned to them at birth. Some come to understand that they are trans women: women who were assigned male at birth. Others may recognize themselves as trans men: men who were assigned female at birth. Often, trans people develop new understandings of their orientations after they come out as transgender. For example, a trans woman who primarily dated men before transitioning may have presented herself to the world as a gay man at that time in her life. If she continues to date men after coming out, she may call herself a straight woman, even if she is in the very same relationship she called a gay relationship in the past. It is also not uncommon for transgender people to experience changes in whom they are attracted to. For example, a trans man may have been attracted to men before he came out. At some point during his transition, he might begin to date women instead and consider himself a straight man.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning people (often referred to collectively as LGBTQ+) all experience emotional attractions to other people. Loving someone else and being loved by someone in return are wonderful feelings no matter who is feeling them. Yet because gays and lesbians are the minority in most societies and often experience discrimination, coming to terms with one’s sexual identity or orientation can be a difficult and sometimes frightening process. The important thing to remember is that being attracted to people of the same sex or gender is normal. It may be less common than being straight, but it is not a disease or an abnormality. And there are lots of organizations, support groups, and outreach counselors to help you as you explore your sexuality and contemplate coming out to your friends and family.

What Influences Sexual Orientation?

Sexual orientation is not something that is visible, like the color of your eyes or the length of your hair. It is not possible to be certain of someone’s sexual orientation by the clothes they wear. LGBTQ+ people come in all shapes, sizes, races, and religions—just like everyone else. So what makes our sexual orientations different?

People who are curious about LGBTQ+ people often ask questions like, “What makes people asexual?”; “Is there a ‘gay gene’ that causes someone to be LGBTQ+?”; “Am I transgender because of a particular life experience?” From one point of view, these might seem like very reasonable questions to ask. Many psychologists, biologists, and other researchers have spent time on them. People have not found clear answers to many of these questions, but we now know there is no ‘gay gene,’ and people don’t arrive at their sexual/gender identities because of something that happened to them.

From another perspective, such questions miss the point, and presume that LGBTQ+ people are departures from cisgender heterosexuality that require explaining. Scholars of sexuality and gender have observed that we often talk about such subjects in “essentialist” terms, meaning that we think of them as fixed, uniform across history and culture, and thus easy to assign a cause to. A look at sexual identity both across cultures and within the animal kingdom shows that everywhere there is sex, there is enormous variety of sexual expression. History exhibits many people we would consider LGBTQ+, and traditional cultures spanning from Mexico to Indonesia have gender and sexual identities that don’t match cisgender heterosexuality. The rest of the animal kingdom is no different; same-sex mating has been observed in over 1,500 different animal species.

That’s not to say that we won’t continue to learn about what makes sexuality so varied. The more people research, the more people realize what LGBTQ+ people have always understood about themselves: their experiences are natural and “normal,” and play a part in every society.