Sexual orientation and gender identity are two very different things. When talking about sexuality people seem to think of the two as interlinked when they are describing how someone feels about themselves and how they feel romantically about other people. Both sexual orientation and gender identity are personal to everyone and everyone ultimately is different, it is learning to accept other people’s differences and being accepting of everyone! We still have a long way to go with this but I think having these important conversations helps people understand their sexual orientation.
Gender identity is how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves, it can be as a male, female, a combination of both or neither. The identity can be what someone was assigned at birth or it can be entirely different. Gender is a complex concept and there are so many genders outside of man or woman that people identify with.
Sexual orientation is the emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people and who you would be interested in dating or being intimate with. To name a few, homosexual, heterosexual and pansexual. People need to be more understanding of these groups and the education of LQBTQ studies in schools is helping challenge the conventional nuclear family model which has been prevalent for hundreds of years.
It is a difficult topic and hard to define which is why people get confused and label a transsexual man as gay, when in fact his sexual orientation could be any one from a long list. Sexuality isn’t black and white; people are beginning to feel comfortable with their selves and not fit into this one size fits all. Sexuality is incredibly complex and can’t be understood in a short article like this. For the people who are struggling to understand, there are so many materials out there for you, tv shows, documentaries, books, podcasts, whichever way you want to receive this information it is out there available for you.
Gay pride month is an incredibly important celebration to the country, it is something that needs the recognition it gets for the one month a year. The last few years have seen big artists coming to the events last year it was Britney Spears, and this year Ariana Grande. The big acts are attracting huge crowds and it is important to spread the message of love and acceptance for all. Large numbers of people will go for the atmosphere and large amounts of drinking and socialising – but even these people are being touched by the message gay pride is trying to spread.
With the growing amounts of queer characters on TV and LGBTQ movies being made it is easy to say that there is progress within people becoming more accepting. But then there are issues outside of TV & Film with so many stories of LGBTQ inequalities all over the world, gay purges in Chechnya, Beirut was forced to cancel what would have been the world’s only Arab pride event. Events like pride are so important for showing our support for the people across the world still not being treated as equals for simply loving the wrong people. We need to send a message to these other countries and people that we stand with LGBTQ communities and we always will.
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