A Talk on Gender and Sexuality (2023)

I have been asked many times over the years "if you are a woman, why do you date women" and "why did you change to a woman if you don't like men" and several variations on those. In November 2023, I made a public response about it ... probably for the fourth or fifth time.

TL;DR: There are as many ways to be human as there are humans. Gender does not imply sexuality or romance.

This week I had someone who was a friend in high school reach out and have a conversation with me. We've both come a long way, and seem to be doing well for ourselves. My being trans came up, and she asked an innocent question, which I'll paraphrase here because it comes up a lot in the shadows.

Why, if you like women and not men, did you feel the need to transition?

Since I am nothing if not happy to educate folks, I provided a short version of the answer. I'd like to take this opportunity to provide a longer answer without calling out anyone, so that folks might take something away from this genuine and harmless curiosity by said person.

When we talk about gender, sex, sexuality, romance, and several other concepts, we often think of them being entwined. For example, we think

• girl parts = girl = attracted to boy

But that is only one possible arrangement. It's not at all shocking to find people like

• girl parts = girl = attracted to girl

And again, this is fairly simple. But it can be much more intricate.

When we talk about gender identity and sexuality, there are a lot a lot a lot more parts. Here are a few

1. Gender identity - your gender as felt
2. Gender expression - your presented self to the world
3. Sexual orientation - who you are or are not attracted to sexually
4. Romantic orientation - who you are or are not attracted to romantically
5. Sex assigned at birth - the interpretation of your genitals when you were born

In a lot of cases, these things align in very straightforward ways, like the example up above. In other cases they vary drastically.

I know, for example ...

• a girl who loves girls romantically, loves no one sexually, and presents as a boy.
• guys who were assigned female at birth, use they/them pronouns, only date men, but don't want to "settle down" ever.
• several guys who love guys romantically but are asexual
• women who love men and present in a masculine way

There are more variations of these than you could possibly try to label because it's not always 100% on one side or the other. Sometimes it's in the middle, sometimes it's neither, sometimes it's both. And in general it can go all sorts of places.

And it's okay to not understand this if you don't have much exposure to it, but stay curious folks. It's so important to keep learning.

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For point of reference, I identify as

• A trans woman
• A demisexual lesbian (or sapphic if you prefer)

And for further reference, I tend to present as either soft punk femme, high femme, or feral goblin, depending on circumstance.

Feel free to ask more about any of this. I choose to be open and public about my identity because I want people to feel like it is safe to ask me about who I am.

Author's Note

Now. Since I am by no means the authority on gender variance or sexual differences, please do some reading on the topics, since there are people far better equipped than me to cover these topics. For me, they're very intertwined with each other. For some, they are separate. The point is to build your understanding and grow from the learning.