Why Aren't People More Educated on Sexualities?

            In our modern society, people may more freely identify as many different genders and sexualities other than the “standard” gender binaries. Some people though do not recognize this, either because they refuse to for moral reasons, or because they’ve never learned about these identifications. The question, though, is why are some people uneducated on these topics? It may be because heteronormitivity, the installation of gender binaries in everyday life, is pushed onto us from a very young age, as Joshua Gamson and Dawne Moon write in their book, The Sociology of Sexualities: Queer and Beyond. A few examples of heteronormitive behaviour are: Women’s bathrooms and Men’s bathrooms/locker rooms, and dress codes or school uniforms where it is mandatory for girls to wear skirts, and boys, slacks and a tie, and boys and girls toys. This behaviour leads young people to believe that acting like/doing some things they’re “not supposed to”, that’s “too masculine” or “too feminine”; a girl playing football, a boy getting a manicure or wearing a dress, is disgraceful and/or degrading, when it’s not, because being a girl is not degrading, and neither is being a boy, or anything in between. 

          Some people associate these behaviours with homosexuality (being attracted to someone of the same sex) – as being something taboo, some thing to shy away from. Gay is used as a derogatory slur, and being gay is looked at as the breeding of an entirely different people, who are only their behaviours by some people, which is, again, completely untrue. Gay people are not their actions or ‘not people’; they are exactly the same as “other people”, they just love people of the same gender. There are even more sexualities than this, though. There is asexuality, where one feels no sexual or romantic attraction to anyone at all, but can love someone platonically (non-romantic close relationship). Pansexuality is the attraction to anyone, whether they be biologically male, or female, or trans*gendered, because one is attracted to their personality etc. and not their gender.  This is commonly confused with bisexuality because of the attraction to more than one gender, but bisexuality only refers to the attraction to two genders on the spectrum, not all of them. Lastly, monosexuality is the attraction to one specific gender, and no other. This can refer to heterosexuals or homosexuals.

Trans*- is an umbrella term for every identification on the gender spectrum when there is an asterisk. With out it (trans) it refers to the transgender identifying group exclusively.

Aside from so many different, mostly unrecognized, sexualities, there are many more genders that will be covered in the next blog post!