Identity

Sexuality

Sexual orientation

Gender

Female

Male

Sexual orientation

Originally: (the process of) orientation with respect to a sexual goal, potential mate, partner, etc. Later chiefly: a person's sexual identity in relation to the gender to whom he or she is usually attracted; (broadly) the fact of being heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual.
In early use prob. not a fixed collocation.

1931 J. P. LICHTENBERGER Divorce xv. 369 Courtship..is a normal, but in the absence of sex knowledge often a bungling process of sexual orientation. 1946 G. H. SEWARD Sex & Social Order xi. 153 Deviant sexual orientation in later life may originate in the child's inability to identify himself with his like-sexed parent. 1953 Amer. Q. 5 340, I was dealing with..psychoanalytic characterologies which are based on sexual orientation Freud's oral, anal and genital types. 1967 N.Y. Times Mag. 3 Dec. 32/2 He calls for research on how homosexuals become homosexuals... We must research why heterosexuals become heterosexuals or rather, what forces determine sexual orientation in general 2002 Independent (Electronic ed.) 28 Mar. 8 Heterosexual teachers don't realise how often they reinforce their sexual orientation... They wear a wedding ring, talk about their spouse in class and relay stories about their children.

Gender

1. Kind, sort, class; also, genus as opposed to species. the general gender: the common sort (of people). Obs.

1784 R. BAGE Barham Downs I. 274, I..am a man of importance, a public man, Sir; of the patriotic gender.

b. In mod. (esp. feminist) use, a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes. Freq. attrib.

1963 A. COMFORT Sex in Society ii. 42 The gender role learned by the age of two years is for most individuals almost irreversible, even if it runs counter to the physical sex of the subject. 1972 A. OAKLEY Sex, Gender & Society viii. 189 Sex differences may be 'natural', but gender differences have their source in culture. 1981 Heresies XII. 67/3 Our ideology and practice of sex roles construct..two mutually exclusive categories, that is, genders.