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Sex, gender and sexuality
Your sexuality
Your sexuality or sexual orientation is who you are attracted to romantically and/ or sexually.
We should also include romantic orientation because we may have strong romantic relationships which do not necessarily involve sex, and where sex in itself is not necessarily the final goal or endpoint.
- Gay and lesbian (or homosexual) if you are attracted to people of the same sex or gender
- Bisexual or bi if you are attracted to both men and women
- Pansexual is the sexual, romantic or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity
- Straight (or heterosexual) if you are attracted to people of the opposite sex or gender
- Asexual if you are not sexually attracted to either men or women
- Others self-identify as Queer because they feel sexual attraction isn’t about labels and/ or it's a political statement
There are other ways to identify your sexuality but you should not feel pressured to label yourself (or be labelled) in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable. While the sexual orientations listed here are more usual, more emerge as we learn, and LGBT+ people self-define. For example:
- "The survey received 108,100 valid responses from individuals aged 16 or over who were living in the UK and self-identified as LGBT or intersex. Sexual orientation: 61% of respondents identified as gay or lesbian and a quarter (26%) identified as bisexual. A small number identified as pansexual (4%), asexual (2%) and queer (1%)." | The National LGBT Survey | Government Qualities Office; pg.8 | 2018
- "More than 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth described themselves as something other than gay, lesbian, or bisexual. While 78% responded that their sexual orientation was gay, lesbian, or bisexual, a full 21% selected the option for “something else.” These included demisexual, panromantic sexual, ace spectrum, grey sexual and polysexual. | Research Brief: Diversity of Youth Sexual Orientation | Trevor Project | 2019
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