Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Homogendered/Heterogendered Orientation

It's problematic that we have such well-established definitions of sex vs. gender (what's between your legs vs what's between your ears) for individual identity, but not to differentiate orientation and attraction. One can have an orientation that contains both heterosexual and yet homogendered (for lack of better term) attraction. Of course people might debate another layer of definitions, but I think there would be a lot of value in articulating orientation and attraction in a way that is more congruent with how we already think of identity.

I understand it's not perfect, but this isn't just for gender studies majors. This is the equivalent of pop-psych--a way for folks to address their own orientations with basic words that can be refined later. It gives another option to the guy who may one day bash a transgender girl because he thinks she's hot and and he doesn't want to be gay. He may not exactly be grad school material, but he needs something better than the vocabulary that is out there.