What are the three components that make up sexual orientation?

Answer 1

In its broadest sense the term 'sexuality' describes the whole way a person goes about expressing themselves as a sexual being. Every survey of human sexual behaviour reveals that there is a huge variety of sexual expression - the way we choose to behave sexually is usually as individual and as complicated as the ways we choose to dress or to earn a living. Human sexuality rarely falls into neat categories or lends itself to simple labelling. Human sexuality is a rich and complex area of human experience.

There are four components which make up human sexuality: biological sex, gender role, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Biological sex refers to the genitalia (the physical equipment), hormone levels, and the X or Y chromosome combination. The majority of people are clearly biologically male or female, although some people are born with genitalia which are not clearly one or the other.

Gender role, or social sex role, is about how we are expected to behave as males or females in our culture. This social role is in practice linked with the gender expectations placed on an individual by virtue of their physical genitalia at birth.

Gender identity refers to the psychological feeling a person has about being either male or female. It may not match biological sex, and is unrelated to sexual orientation. A lesbian woman is biologically female, and feels like a woman, but is attracted sexually to other women. A transgendered person will have the biological sex of one gender, but feel psychologically that s/he is of another gender, and could be either heterosexual or homosexual.

Sexual Orientation refers to the aspect of sexuality that is about who a person finds attractive. This involves automatic physiological and emotional responses, and is not the result of conscious choices. Sexual orientation appears to be determined early in life, perhaps from birth, and cannot be changed.

There has been a hot debate over recent years about why people's sexual orientation differs. Many theories have been put forward - citing genetic pre-determination, childhood influences and peer-pressure amongst other reasons. However, attempts to find a single cause for individual's choices of sexual orientation have not been successful. Nor have attempts to influence or change an individual's sexual orientation. Like many of our other characteristics, it seems to be largely a chance product of our individual nature which is then further developed by our early interactions. Like many other personality traits, our sexual orientation seems to be formed by the time we reach teenage -- although it may be many years later before we each understand and accept our sexuality. It seems resistant to attempts to radically change