Sexual Orientation: Key Terms
Labels will vary from person to person, and from place to place. Different terms are used by different cultures and mean different things. Some terms are exclusive to people of a certain group, like Two-Spirit or Bakla because of the specific cultural and historical contexts they come from. Even if a term does exist in another culture, it doesn’t always appropriately translate into other languages like English and that’s okay! Using different terms and labels to describe ourselves will always be a bit messy and inaccurate because sometimes the things we feel are just too fluid and complicated to capture with words.
You can sort of think about it like your emotions: when you’re angry, are you ever just angry? Or are you frustrated, maybe a bit sad, resentful, jealous, or hurt? Your emotions are complicated, they change often, and you can experience a lot of them at the same time. You might even be feeling too many at once to list them all, so instead you just say “I’m angry.” If someone were to sit down with you and go through all the things that happened to make you feel all the specific ways you feel, you’d likely come up with a clearer but much longer answer about your emotions–labels describing our sexuality or gender work the same way!
All that being said you can check out our Gender and Sexuality ABC’s to read about a few labels you may want to use, or check some out below:
| TERM | DEFINITION |
| Aromantic | Someone who does not experience romantic attraction to others |
| Asexual | Someone who does not experience sexual attraction to others |
| Biromantic | Someone who is romantically attracted to multiple genders |
| Bisexual | Someone who is sexually attracted to multiple genders |
| Demisexual | Someone who only experiences sexual attraction after developing an emotional relationship with someone |
| Gay | Someone who is attracted to their own gender |
| Homoromantic | Someone who is romantically attracted to their own gender |
| Homosexual | Someone who is sexually attracted to their own gender |
| Heteroromantic | Someone who is romantically attracted to the opposite gender |
| Heterosexual | Someone who is romantically attracted to the opposite gender |
| Lesbian | Most commonly refers to someone who isn’t a man, attracted to other folks who aren’t men |
| MSM/MLM | Men who have sex with men/men who love men |
| Omniromantic | Someone who is romantically attracted to all genders, and may even reject the idea of gender binaries |
| Omnisexual | Someone who is attracted to all genders, and may even reject the idea of gender binaries |
| Panromantic | Someone who is romantically attracted to people regardless of their gender |
| Pansexual | Someone who is sexually attracted to people regardless of their gender |
| Queer | An umbrella term to describe anyone who identifies as a non-normative sexuality |
| Questioning | Someone who is in the process of figuring out their identity |
| WSW/WLW | Women who have sex with women/women who love women |
Remember this is not a complete list, and even the definitions listed here don’t fully reflect all the different ways people use terms, but it’s a good starting point to understanding some of the more common labels you might see or hear people using.
