“The labels don't work very well”: Transgender individuals' conceptualizations of sexual orientation and sexual identity

ABSTRACT

The conceptualization and measurement of sexual orientation for transgender individuals is uniquely complicated by the way sexual orientation is rooted in dichotomous notions of sex and gender. The present research investigates the conceptualization of sexual orientation among transgender individuals by exploring the sexual identity labels they choose, the descriptions they provide for these labels, and their general descriptions of their sexuality. Participants included 172 adult U.S. residents, ranging in age from 18 to 65, who self-identified as transgender, transsexual, gender variant, or having a transgender history. Participants individually completed an online survey. Qualitative responses were analyzed via thematic analysis. Six themes were identified related to transgender individuals' descriptions of their sexuality: (1) trans sexuality as complex; (2) shifts in trans sexuality; (3) focus on beloved; (4) relationship style and status; (5) sexuality, bondage & discipline / domination & submission / sadism & masochism (BDSM), and kink; and (6) separating sexual and romantic attraction. Discussion focuses on the ways that transgender individuals' descriptions of sexuality fall outside the traditional research frameworks that problematize transgender experience, conflate gender identity and sexual orientation, and inherently define transgender experience in both cisnormative and heteronormative terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender identity
• sexual identity
• sexual orientation
• transgender

Funding

This research was supported by a research grant from the American Institute of Bisexuality awarded to the first author.

Notes

1. We use plurisexual to refer to identities that are not explicitly based on attraction to one sex and leave open the potential for attraction to more than one sex/gender—for example, bisexual, pansexual, queer, and fluid. The term plurisexual is used instead of nonmonosexual because the former does not linguistically assume monosexual as the ideal conceptualization of sexuality (see Galupo, Davis, Grynkiewicz, & Mitchell, 2014).

2. When discussing the results of the present study and when referring to our participants, we use the term trans as an inclusive term to be sensitive to the range of gender identities endorsed by our participants.