Many people think that ‘Gender’ and Sex’ mean the same thing but they don’t. In very basic terms, your sex type is given to you by a doctor or a nurse when you are born and is based on whether you have male, female or a combination of both male and female biological characteristics. Your gender is based on what other people think are personality characteristics that go with your sex type and so how they expect you to be.
For many people the expectations that others have of them do not match their own feelings about who they are and what feels comfortable to them. This means they have their own gender identity that is personal to them, it might be a very strong single identity that fits some expectations or might not identify with any gender identity at all, others see their gender as not fixed, feeling that parts of their gender identity are more fluid and frequently changing. You can’t tell another person’s gender just by looking at them. The only person who can really know your gender is you.
Sometimes it can be very difficult to understand how you feel about your gender identity, for some people they don’t ever think about it but for others it can take a lot of thought and time to figure it out. The Proud Trust have some helpful questions to support you thinking about how you feel about your identity.
A person’s sexual orientation, or sexuality, is the part of their identity that relates to who they find attractive. The attraction might not be sexual, it could be romantic. The attraction might be to a particular gender identity or to how a person is, their morals, values, humour, intelligence, all kinds of reasons and some we can’t quite understand!
There are many different terms that people use when talking about gender, and it is important to recognise that the language is very personal and can effect how a person feels and their wellbeing. Because of this, it is natural that many people feel nervous about the language and worried about ‘getting it wrong’. The Brook website has a helpful glossary of gender terms that you or someone you know might find useful, there are many other sites with similar resources that you might find useful.