Gender Differences Between Gender And Sexuality

In the current state of our society, as well as in much of human history, an individual’s gender and sexuality, in addition to their expression thereof, determine much of their social standing. Men and women face vastly different realities, as do cisgender and transgender people, and heterosexual and non-heterosexual people (to whom I will hereto refer as queer individuals, as a reclamation of the slur). Exactly how separate are gender and sexuality, though, and how do they correlate? While carried by each of these facets of identity are much different implications for one’s life, gender and sexuality in all their forms are deeply intertwined. The separate groups of people who break the cisgender, heterosexual norm are even combined in one …show more content…
For instance, queer men and women are not pressured by the same sorts of roles as their heterosexual counterparts. While straight men are encouraged to be the active party in pursuing a significant other (i.e. the one who is to initiate), gay men are not given a clear role here. Much of this is due to homophobia and heteronormativity, which usher LGBT+ people to stay closeted and keep any relationships out of the public eye, or even to internalize the widespread homophobia and deny their own sexuality. Additionally, the traditionally enforced heteronormative roles for men versus women persist beneath the surface in queer individuals, which can complicate the narrative of their relationships (Katz, 1990/2010). Part of the way heteronormativity complicates other sexualities is by enforcing their taboo status, such as how queer people, especially the questioning youth, are told that their sexuality is impermanent – “just a phase” – because it is not the norm. Further, the way in which relationships are portrayed in media is vastly different when considering gay versus straight relationships for protagonists of the same gender. With a male protagonist, as is most commonplace in television and film, heterosexual love stories are almost always shown in a relatable, empathetic fashion; meanwhile, homosexual love stories (on the occasions when they do exist in media) are more …show more content…
Taking an intersectional standpoint, anybody who goes against the default of heterosexual, cisgender male will face some combination of these types of discrimination. Though Simone de Beauvoir describes the cultural definition of a woman particularly, this idea can be expanded: “She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other,’” (De Beauvoir). If we qualify “He” to be not only male, but more specifically a straight cis male, we can see that the concept of a secondary, “other” identity applies to sexuality as well as a more modern definition of gender outside of biological sex. In this way, gay (or queer, more broadly) is never defined independently – it is not straight, the secondary sexuality. Likewise, transgender is not cis, as a transgender person identifies as something other than their assigned sex. This othering concept creates an identity binary, defining one half to be the superior and the other to be the inferior (McNamee & Miller, 2004). The binary “other” principle is what connects gender and sexuality most deeply, in the sense that there is a recognized default for each segment of an identity and each combination of these