Sexual Identity

This is as fine a place to ask as any. :) You know, this is the case with most people with any kind of emotional maturity who knows that people are more than two-dimensional and sex is about people, not appearances or our ideas about people based on appearance. Of course, we can look at someone in a…

What if it’s not about her coming out of her shell, but about the fact that she is NOT strongly attracted to girls, or attracted to girls at all? A person’s gender identity doesn’t determine their sexual orientation. In other words, very “girly” girls can be and are attracted to women (or people of…

It is okay to have a desire to explore sex with the same gender; it is okay to have a desire to explore sex with people of a different gender. We also don’t need to view any of that exploration as an “experiment,” nor is same-gender sex somehow more of an experiment than mixed-gender sex is. I mean…

Hey there, Hartley. We DO know – experientially and statistically speaking – that young adults do tend to be less selective when it comes to their attractions and/or partners than older adults. Why is that? That’s where we don’t have such solid answers. By all means, you guys do have a lot more…

I want to be accepted for who I am, not what I am. I don’t want to be straight if it’s just a VIP pass for friends.

There’s nothing like starting to put together all of the myriad complexities, preferences and desires of our sexuality to point out how silly it really is to suggest that human sexuality, sexual orientation or gender can be easily divided into such tiny boxes, is there? The short of it is that I…

(Charleten’s question continued) Last summer, I came out as a lesbian to my family and friends, because after about a year and half of questioning and soul-searching and doubting and ALL that fun stuff, I concluded that I was romantically and emotionally (and sexually, though again I just am not…

For most people, whether we’re talking about sexual orientation or something else, trying to live a life as anything but yourself is more painful than living a life working to come to peace with something about yourself that you or others are uncomfortable with. Really, if you read the stories of…

I came out of the proverbial closet when I was 15, in high school, and in the student newspaper. A sophomore had decided to print an editorial about the moral degradations of homosexuality, stating that God created Adam and Eve, “not Adam and Steve.” I was so enraged by this sophomoric (literally) editorial that I sent a letter to the editor responding on behalf of the gay community, which was published, and which publicly announced my sexual orientation for all the student body to read.

Many teens have a lot of questions when it comes to homosexuality and bisexuality. In a culture that is often so damning of orientation and sexual identity outside heterosexuality, many teens become nervous when they feel attracted to those of the same sex, worried that they might be gay. Others suspect (or are even very sure) that they are homosexual or bisexual, but are afraid to say so either because they aren’t completely sure and feel they will be branded in some way, or simply because they fear being rejected, outcast or scolded by their friends, family or community. While at least 8 million people in the United States are homosexual, about 70 million people still think it is an “illness” or “perversion.”