Gender Versus Sexuality

I want to preface this post by stating that I am simplifying a much more complex topic for the sake of a Coles notes post. Ok, disclaimer out of the way.
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Gender identity and sexual identity are not the same. A lot of people get confused by this - so to help illustrate this, I’m sharing the #genderunicornthat once upon a time really helped me understand it visually! .
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While both gender and sexual identity can be understood on a continuum versus a binary system, they are very different. Essentially gender identity is how you identify your own gender, sexual identity is how you define who you’re sexually attracted to (this can also be broken down into physical and emotional categories).
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Ex. You can identify as a trans woman (gender identity) and be sexually attracted to men, women, neither or both (sexual identity). You can identify as gender fluid (gender identity, meaning that your gender identity can fluctuate day to day, moment to moment) and be sexually attracted to only gender conforming women or identify as asexual (more on this sexual identity in a future post). (These are only two examples- there are many more) .
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Additionally, these are labels we use to better understand one another but perhaps these ones don’t fit for you or perhaps labels of any kind make things more confusing versus easier to understand. The beautiful thing about your gender and sexual identity is they are yours and yours alone, and you don’t have to define them if it’s not what works for you!