Gender And Sexuality

NIKITHA ANTO



The American Psychological Association (APA) defines gender identity as "a person’s deeply felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or male; a girl, a woman, or female; or an alternative gender, which may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth." Gender is a social construct. The society determines the norms that classify a person as a male or female or an alternate gender. The entire concept of what is considered as feminine or masculine and everything in between, has already been set down in the past. But now as the times are slowly changing, we are exposed to a lot more genders. Besides male and female, there are about 72 different genders.

Sexuality is about your sexual feelings, thoughts, attractions and behaviours towards other people. The attraction can be physical or emotional or both. Sexuality doesn’t restrict to the attraction between a male and a female (heterosexuality), it can happen between the people of the same sex. LGBTQIA+ acronym stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, and asexual. The + symbol in LGBTQIA+ refers to the fact that there are many more sexual orientations that are present in the community which is not a part of the acronym. Not only that, sexuality can be fluid. It can change in different circumstances or over time.

Gender and sexuality can be misunderstood as being similar but there is a vast difference between them. Gender has nothing to do with sexuality. ∎

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