sexual orientation

Letters from the author to himself in his teens and early 20s, as he tries to sort out multiple facets of his identity.

There are a lot of binary ideas and definitions happening in your questions. By that, I mean you're viewing things as only having two possible options, when really there are more than that. Let's tackle the question with the simplest answer first. If you like a trans guy, then you like guys, because...

First off, in case it helps to hear this: it's all right to want to break up with your boyfriend. You're allowed to end a relationship for any reason, and "I only want to date women, and my partner is now very clearly not a woman" is a perfectly valid one. Sometimes, a person's gender transition...

Ben shares the moments and realizations that helped him understand his sexual orientation.

If you're unsure of your sexual orientation, that uncertainty can feel overwhelming. You're not alone in this feeling, though! We've compiled the experiences of several people who've gone through that questioning process in the hope that their experiences might be relatable or comforting.

I'm sorry to hear that things have been so strained between you and your girlfriend when it comes to your transition. Gender transition is a pretty intense experience; a good thing for you, to be sure, but it’s still full of a lot of changes in a relatively short period of time. And it can be tough...

I think one of the coolest things about sex is that it's a lot like our taste in music. When it comes to music, we get to like what we like, and listen only to what we want to listen to when we get a choice. Obviously, in the grocery store or at a club what we hear not going to be up to us, but that...

The term "sexuality" can be used a lot like the word "sex." They're both terms we say and hear a lot, but which often aren't clearly defined. We take for granted everyone knows what sexuality means, a heck of an assumption to make with something that covers so many important things and can feel as murky as Lake Erie. So: what's it all about?

Words for gender, sexual or other kinds of identity don't usually mean the same things to all people. In fact, they very, very rarely do. Those words also can never tell us all or even most of what someone is comfortable with sexually, what their sexual boundaries and limits are and what they are...

Many people who identify as heterosexual have had some kind of sexual or affectional feelings or interactions with someone of the same gender, especially in childhood or adolescence. When Alfred Kinsey's data was published in the late 1940's in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a cultural ruckus...