Content Warning: Intersexism (discrimination against intersex people). This is an important post by ipso-faculty about intersex misconceptions and how to be a better ally:
Source: ipso-faculty
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In addition to the intersex blurb being extremely wrong (which was very excellently explained above), the trans, asexual, and queer blurbs are also wrong to a lesser extent.
First of all, trans people do not “identify with a sex” (which is terrible phrasing). It is about gender, which is a separate thing. Suppose you were put in a robot body, which is a machine. Machines are referred to as an it. Would you be happy with being called an it because that’s what matches your body? Most people I’ve asked have responded no and that they would consider it rude. Either they’d want to keep being called what they were before and still consider themself the same as before (and maybe change their body to look more masculine/feminine), or they would just go with whatever they’re used to out of familiarity. Some people do respond that they’d go with something different, but the majority of them end up being trans (or transhumanist).
Non-binary people – people who are neither male nor female – also fall under the trans umbrella. Many of them have similar experiences to binary trans people (the ones who are male or female) and many of the same challenges. However, this blurb explicitly excludes them. Which is very weird given that the gay blurb states ‘valid for all genders’ and the bisexual blurb states ‘attracted to multiple genders’. So they do acknowledge more than two genders, but go for a strictly binary definition in the category where it matters the most?
A better blurb would be “Their gender does not match the gender they were assigned at birth.” Though at least they’re correct that it has no relation to sexual or romantic orientation.
In the asexual blurb, being asexual means that you are not sexually attracted to other people. Orientation is not about behavior, it’s about attraction. Which is something they got right with the lesbian, gay, and bisexual blurbs, so how did they get this one so wrong?
For the record, while some asexual people are indeed repulsed by the idea of sexual contact, others are indifferent to it and some enjoy it. People who aren’t sex-repulsed could be interested in it because, for instance, they want to engage in a fun activity with their partner. All being asexual means is that one reason for it (i.e. looking at someone and thinking “wow, they’re hot”) isn’t there.
As for the queer blurb, it’s less wrong than the others. The main issue is that queer refers to both sexuality and gender. Basically, it’s an umbrella term to describe the entire group, but can also refer to people who don’t fall neatly into one of the other categories. Also, why is this blurb an imperative while all the others are descriptive?
This infographic sounds like someone who was completely clueless – not even an ally – just threw the “info” together from various sources, some of them VERY sketchy, and then didn’t bother to make sure it was correct or even self-consistent.
Side note: if you want to refer to body types without referencing gender (female/male), there are the terms mullerian/muellerian and wolffian, respectively. For instance, “He thought he was completely wolffian, but the doctor says he has an underdeveloped uterus.” Both of them refer to perisex (non-intersex) parts according to the embryonic ducts they stem from: Mullerian ducts develop into the uterus and associated parts, Wolffian ducts develop into the body tube system for the other set, and usually one gets developed and the other shrinks/disappears. They’re fairly new terms, but they make it much easier to talk about intersex people without accidentally invalidating their gender. Plus, they’re half the syllables as ‘biologically [gender]’.
I know this is a bit of thread necromancy, but I thought you’d be interested to know that the “binary” part of “bisexual” is actually the binary of “like me/not like me” – we define heterosexuality and homosexuality in relation to the gender of the person experiencing attraction, and bisexual is the same. So while in practice it’s correct to say that bisexual people experience attraction to two or more genders, it’s more correct to say we experience attraction to both people of the same gender as ourselves and people of other genders 👍 🩷💜🩵
Not necessarily. Suppose a non-binary person is attracted to men and women, but not other enbies. In that case, they’re not attracted to people of the same gender, but it wouldn’t be wrong for them to call themself bisexual. Similarly, what about a woman who’s attracted to men and non-masculine enbies, but not women? By that definition, she would not be bisexual because she’s not attracted to her own gender. However, while calling her heterosexual is technically accurate, most listeners would assume that her attraction is completely man-based. Therefore, it would be more correct to call her bisexual because that’s more representative of the totality of her attraction. Even if you want to dive into the microlabels to find something that’s as accurate as possible, like uranic, torensexual, or nofinsexual, all of those are under the bi or m-spec umbrella, so the most accurate label would still be calling herself bisexual.
And, speaking as a bi person myself, let’s be honest here: we’re trying to retcon a name that’s based on bad science into something inclusive. See, originally, bisexual referred to someone or something that had characteristics of two sexes. (Which was most often used in botany to refer to flowers that could produce both pollen and seeds instead of just one of the two, but there were cases of it being used to refer to humans or fantastic creatures as well.) It was first used to refer to sexuality in the 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis, and the name should tell you something about how it was viewed. The author had the opinion that humans were one of two sexes and were naturally attracted to the opposite sex and anything else was caused by insufficient “genetic purity”. Which is incorrect because eugenics is not scientifically sound and even if it was, it couldn’t get rid of queer people. The author also believed anyone who was attracted to both men and women had to have characteristics of both; essentially, they had to be intersex. Which is incorrect because most bi people are not intersex and intersex people can have any orientation. But that’s why we have our name: because a guy who used bad science borrowed a word from botany so he could inaccurately call us intersex.
(Incidentally, the scientific community also applied this concept to gay people as well; up until the 1980s, the general medical opinion was that gay people were mildly trans. Which caused a lot of problems for the trans and feminist communities that continue today, but I digress.)
Over time, the word has been reinterpreted as who we’re attracted to, not the characteristics we supposedly have. Which has led to some people interpreting it as implying that there are only two genders. The definition you’re giving is a modern attempt to redefine it again into something more inclusive while still fitting the bi- prefix. Except the problem is, that definition doesn’t cover all bi people. We have enough problems with erasure as it is without defining our own people out of the group.
The most accurate definition, which includes all bi people, is simply someone who’s attracted to more than one gender. We don’t need to force the definition to fit the name.