How Gay Am I?

LGBTQ+ is a big umbrella, and there’s room for everyone! While the community is made up of diverse people from all different backgrounds, what unites us is our experience of sexuality, gender, and relationships in general. So what does it mean to be LGBTQ+? Let’s take a look, one letter at a time.

L is for Lesbian , which is someone who identifies as a woman and is attracted to other women. Fun fact: “Lesbian” is the first letter of the common acronym in honor of the lesbian community’s role in helping gay men and others during the AIDS crisis.

G is Gay , which is someone who identifies as a man and is attracted to other men. More generally, though “gay” is also often used to describe anyone who experiences attraction to their same gender, whether they’re male, female, or otherwise identified.

B is for Bisexual , which is someone who’s attracted to 2 or more genders. There’s a joke in the community that everyone’s at least a little bisexual, and while there’s no data on that, it’s interesting to think about! This identity is closely related to Pansexuals , who sometimes prefer the “pansexual” term to indicate or stress that they’re attracted to any/all genders.

T is for Transgender , which is someone who identifies as a different gender identity than the one they were pronounced at birth. Crucially, being trans is a gender identity, as opposed to a sexual identity; someone can be trans and gay, or lesbian, or bisexual.

Q is for Queer or sometimes “questioning.” “Queer” is a catch-all umbrella term for anyone who has an experience with gender or sexuality that falls outside the commonly represented experiences in the broader culture.

A is for asexual, or aromantic . Asexual people generally don’t experience sexual attraction, and aromantic people generally don’t experience romantic attraction. Someone can be asexual but not aromantic, or aromantic but not asexual, or both asexual and aromantic.

Nonbinary refers to someone who doesn’t identify as strictly male or female, and who chooses not to consistently apply those labels to themself.

Gender refers to someone’s socially constructed identity, and how that identity relates to other people’s experience of gender. You might’ve heard something like, “gender is a social construct,” which means that it’s something that we as humans made up. It’s more of a personality trait than a biological marker.

Sex , on the other hand, refers to someone’s biological markers at birth, including their genitalia and chromosomes. Many people think sex is just male or female, with XY or XX chromosomes, but there are many combinations of these that occur in a significant portion of the population, and these people often prefer the term Intersex.