edwardspoonhands:

shorm:

edwardspoonhands:

A graphic I’m working on for tomorrow’s Vlogbrothers video. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to discuss for a long time, but have been somewhat afraid of making people angry. Let me know if there’s anything I got wrong. 

Few things!

- Gender role isn’t a binary either. Lots of people fill both or alternate or neither or just don’t give two fucks.

- Trans men are men; trans women are women. Putting “transgender” as a third option implies that they’re different. A better third option would be “non-binary”, but there are plenty more (genderqueer, agender, bigender) that could be there.

- Same with sexual orientation - there’s lots more there. Also there should be a distinction made between sexual and romantic orientation - asexuals can be aromantic, but many are romantic, and can be heteroromantic, biromantic, panromantic, homoromantic, etc.

- DO NOT CONFLATE BEHAVIOUR WITH ATTRACTION. They are two completely separate things. A gay man who has sex with a woman is not bisexual if he says he’s gay. An asexual person can enjoy the physical sensations involved with sex and still be asexual, because they are not sexually attracted to anyone. Really sexual behaviour if you have to have it on here shouldn’t make reference to gender at all - better things would be kinky/vanilla, polyamorous/monogamous, celibate.

- Better than having sex be “Male/Female/Intersex” would be an explanation about the terms AMAB and AFAB (Assigned Male/Female At Birth) and how they relate to both trans* and intersex people. Listing sex as separate from gender can help but it can also really hurt because lots of transphobes use the distinction to go WELL YOU’RE *REALLY* A <BLANK> and then claim they only care about sex, not gender.

As this post encompasses many of the comments and suggestions I’ve seen, I’m responding to this one specifically (thank you to /everyone/ who has responded.)

1. I’m going to take categories off gender roles completely, and just discuss what a gender role is in the video.
2. I’ve already fixed the “transgender” under gender and replaced it with “non-binary/agender.” I don’t think I need to say “trans-man” as I don’t think “trans-man” is a different gender than “man.”
3. I’ve put in a note about romantic orientation and I’m going to be emphasizing in my script that sexual orientation is not a collection of isolated types, but instead a fluid continuum that can and does change over time. 
4. Sexual behavior is indeed not confused with sexual attraction and I will make that clear in the talky bits.
5. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on sex in the video, even though it’s fascinating and complicated, I’m aiming to clear up the more complicated stuff. But thank you for the note on some people’s perpetual linking of sex and gender, I think I cover that well in the script as well.

Super excited for this video! I used a very simplified version of a graphic like this for a sexuality session at a high school here in the Philippines. (I had to remove a lot of really important complexity, sadly, because you have to meet people at their level. That’s one of the biggest lessions I’ve learned here.)