Romantic Orientation vs. Sexual Orientation

Hi Everyone! Heather here! Today, I'm going to tell you all about the differences between romantic and sexual orientation, as well as the differences between gender and sex.

Your sexual orientation is who you are sexually attracted to. This basically means physical attraction. For example, a woman who identifies as homosexual will likely be physically attracted to other women and/or want to have sex with them. Homosexual and heterosexual, as well as a few other terms, are relative to a person's gender. This means that the people they are attracted to are, or example, the same gender as them. However, some sexualities(sexual orientation) are not relative to gender. For example, a gynesexual person is attracted to women, but is not necessarily any gender. 

Romantic orientation is very similar to sexual orientation. The main difference is that, while sexual orientation is about physical attraction, romantic orientation is about(you guessed it!) romantic attraction. For example, you may like someone's personality and be mentally and/or emotionally attracted to them without being attracted to their physical appearance. Romantic and sexual orientation share a lot of prefixes that have the same meaning, but the root word is different. For romantic orientation, the last part of the word will be -romantic (ex: homoromantic), while the last part of a sexual orientation will be  -sexual (ex: homosexual). 

You may notice that sexual orientation is far better known in general than romantic orientation. Comment your thoughts as to why this might be. One theory that I have is that society puts so much emphasis on sex and physical relationships that emotional or romantic attraction was put on the back burner.

Later folks! See you on Wednesday!
-Heather