Sexuality and sexual orientation

Most people have a sexuality, regardless of if you’re old or young, what your gender, or religion is. Sexuality is about falling in love, getting horny, feelings of lust and wanting to do something sexual with oneself or with others. Sexualities can change over time, it’s often dependent on what other things happen in one’s life. For example, stress or different medicines can affect one’s sexuality. Many people ponder their sexuality. By sexuality, we often also mean sexual orientation, which is about which persons you can fall in love with or feel attracted to. There are different words to describe sexual orientation, we’ll go through some of them further down on this page.

Different sexual orientations

There are more words than these, we haven’t listed each and every one. People have started using these words to be able to describe their sexuality for other people. Only you know which word, or words, you see yourself in, and how you want to describe your sexuality. You don’t have to define your sexuality if you don’t want to.

Queer - Queer is an umbrella term for people who in some way deviate from norms. Norms are invisible rules in our society. But “queer” can also describe soeone’s sexuality. There isn’t just one definition of queer and many people think that you shouldn’t define queer.
Homosexual (lesbian, dyke, gay) - Homosexuality means that people of the same sex/gender as you have turn you on, and that you can fall in love with people of the same sex/gender as you have.
Bisexual - Being bisexual means that you fall in love with, and get turned on by, people of different sexes/genders.
Pansexual - Pansexuality means getting turned on by, and falling in love with people regardless of their sex/gender. In other words, for pansexual people, what sex/gender a person has isn’t that important when it comes to whom they fall in love with or get turned on by.
Heterosexual - Heterosexuality means getting turned on by, and falling in love with people who have another sex/gender than your own.
Asexual/Aromantic - Asexuality means that you don’t fall in love with, or get turned on, by anyone. You can be partly or fully asexual/aromantic.
Transgender - Being transgender (or trans) is not a sexuality at all. Rather, trans is about what your sex/gender is. Read more about it under Trans.

How do I know?

Some people know what sexuality they have from an early age, but it can take a long time for others. For some, it’s something they’ve always known and felt, for others, specific events can cause them to “discover” their sexual orientation. Some feel that they need to try how it is dating or having sex with different people in order to know, and others know without having to try it out first. Regardless, you can have a sexual orientation without having done anything sexual with other people. Your sexual orientation can change as life goes on.

Coming out

Telling one’s friends and family what one’s sexual orientation is is commonly called “coming out”. For some people, coming out is not a big deal, but some think a lot about how and when they’re going to tell someone. Thinking about how coming out will feel and how it will be received can make you feel anxious. If you need support to come out, you can tell someone you feel completely safe with or try telling someone you don’t know too well at all, for example an adult at your school or over chat with a support group.

Not everyone feels the need to come out, and some have other reasons for not coming out. The decision is completely up to you and you don’t have to come out at all.

The hetero norm

(Norms = the invisible rules and expectations in our society about how people should be, act, and look.)

The expectations that people are heterosexual, have one partner at a time, dress and act a certain way, depending on their sex/gender is what we call heteronormativity. If a person does not conform to the norms, they can be affected in many different ways because of that. Because of heteronormativity, many people who aren’t hetero feel that then need or want to come out for other people, because otherwise they are assumed to be certain ways that they aren’t. Very few people actually fulfill the ideals of heteronormativity, but it can still feel bad not to do it. For norm non-conforming people, meeting and talking to other people who are also similarly norm non-conforming can feel valuable. Finding places online where people are like you is easy. It can be more difficult IRL, especially if you are under 18 years old. You can ask a support group in the vicinity of where you live if they arrange LGBTQ-events, and attend them.

Text av Jona Mörn, Förenade tjej-, trans- och ungdomsjourer

Translated by Dannie Milve, Förenade tjej-, trans- och ungdomsjourer

Talk to a support group about sexual orientations