Gender and Sexuality

Gender and sexuality are related but distinct concepts. Sexual orientation refers to who someone is attracted to and has a demonstrable biological component that becomes established early in development. ‘Gender identity’ refers to an inner sense of whether someone feels like a man, a woman, or something else; this is a theoretical construct whose scientific basis is much weaker. It is important not to conflate the two—not only to avoid confusion, but also because current practice in youth gender care disproportionately affects gay young people.

The distinction between gender and sexuality

Sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual) describes a pattern of attraction and, as far as science can determine, has a substantial biological basis: twin studies, prenatal hormone research, and persistent patterns throughout history all point in that direction. Homosexuality is not a choice or an identity in the sense of a feeling; it is a persistent characteristic.

‘Gender identity’ is a much newer and contested concept (see Gender Identity and Gender Expression). It is not objectively measurable and relies on self-reporting. Placing both concepts on an equal footing as though they were of the same nature suggests a scientific equivalence that does not exist.

Historical conflation of gender and sexuality

In the nineteenth century, homosexuality and gender variation were indeed conflated, in what was known as the ‘inversion’ theory: a homosexual man was said to have ‘a female soul in a male body’. Sexology gradually clarified this conflation in the twentieth century: homosexuality is not a gender issue but a matter of sexual orientation.

Ironically, something strongly resembling the old inversion theory is returning in contemporary ‘gender-affirmative’ discourse. When a masculine girl or feminine boy is automatically interpreted as ‘actually trans’, the old erroneous framework—that inappropriate gender expression indicates the ‘wrong’ bodily sex—is reactivated, now accompanied by medical interventions. LGB activists such as Bev Jackson and organisations such as the LGB Alliance have protested this sharply.

Sexuality and trans identification

The relationship between sexual orientation and trans identification is documented in the clinical literature. The classic study by Steensma et al. (2013) showed that a substantial majority of children with gender variance, when allowed to develop without intervention, do not become trans but instead grow up to be homosexual or bisexual adults. Comparable findings come from earlier studies by Zucker, Bailey, and others. This phenomenon is known as desistance. The relationship between trans identification and homosexuality in the literature is discussed at transgenderidentiteit.nl.

This fact is of major practical significance. A ‘gender-affirmative’ pathway for prepubertal children with gender variance—social transition followed by puberty blockers—has as its statistically expected outcome that a significant proportion of those who would have grown up to be homosexual are instead medicalised into a sterilised ‘cross-sex’ person. Clinicians such as Susan Bradley and Kenneth Zucker and the British Cass Review have pointed to the iatrogenic homo-conversion component of this practice.

Among adult men who transition, there is a second pattern documented in science: autogynephilia, a sexual orientation in which a man is attracted to the idea of himself as a woman (Ray Blanchard, Anne Lawrence, J. Michael Bailey). This hypothesis is highly controversial within activist discourse and is often suppressed, but it is widely recognised in the clinical literature as a real phenomenon.

LGBTQ+ and the relationship to gender

The linking of transgender activism to the gay rights movement under the umbrella term ‘LGBTQ+’ is being viewed critically by a growing number of LGB people. The arguments for gay rights (equality based on an innate orientation, and the right to enter into relationships with whomever one chooses) differ fundamentally from the arguments of trans activism (the obligation of society to recognise subjective gender identifications, including the medical alteration of the body accordingly). An increasing number of LGB organisations, particularly the LGB Alliance in the United Kingdom, have therefore broken away.

Another area of tension concerns ‘cotton ceiling’ rhetoric and social pressure within LGB communities to accept transgender people as sexual partners, regardless of biological sex. Lesbians in particular have reported feeling pressured to revise their attraction to women—defined on biological grounds—on pain of being labelled ‘transphobic’. This touches on fundamental rights to sexual self-determination.