JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.

For many parents, learning they have an LGBTQ child also means they have a whole new vocabulary to learn. So, we’re here to give you an introduction to new vocabulary, just a few new words each time.  These definitions won’t teach you everything there is to know about these new words, but they will give you a foundation upon which to build your future learning. And remember, this is an area where vocabulary is changing rapidly. We invite you to enjoy how our language changes as our understanding grows.

 This bonus episode we will have more four Mama Dragons to introduce and explain the following words: orientation, Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, homosexual/heterosexual, and the concept of internalized homophobia. Happy learning!

ORIENTATION shared by Zane Bates

My teen and I were just talking about orientation the other day and this is how we broke it down. Sexual orientation is about really who you’re attracted to and want to have relationships with. There are a bunch of identities associated with sexual orientation:

• People who are attracted to a different gender – for example, women who are attracted to men or men who are attracted to women – often call themselves straight or heterosexual.
• People who’re attracted to people of the same gender often call themselves gay or homosexual. Gay women may prefer the term lesbian. It’s a personal preference that only an individual can identify.
• People who’re attracted to people of more than one gender often call themselves bisexual.
• People whose attractions span across many different gender identities such as male, female, transgender, genderqueer, intersex, and whatnot. And those who experience attraction independent of gender may call themselves pansexual or queer.
• People who are unsure about their sexual orientation may call themselves questioning or curious.
• People who don't experience any sexual attraction for anyone often call themselves asexual or “Ace” for short.

 It’s important to remember that sexual orientation is different than gender identity. This means that being transgender isn’t the same thing as being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. It’s feeling like your assigned sex is very different from the gender you identify with. Orientation is who you love. Identity is who you are inside. 

KLEIN SEXUAL ORIENTATION GRID (KSOG) shared by Laura Webb

The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid or the KSOG was developed by Fritz Klein and it tries to measure sexual orientation by expanding upon an earlier, outdated model, known as the Kinsey Scale. Klein developed a multidimensional grid for describing sexual orientation. Unlike the Kinsey Scale, the Klein Grid investigates sexual orientation in the past, the present, and in the idealized future with respect to seven factors. For a total of twenty one values. The KSOG uses values of 1 to 7 rather than the 0 to 6 scale of the Kinsey scale to describe a continuum from exclusively opposite sex to exclusively same sex attraction. The seven factors of the KSOG include sexual attractions, sexual behaviors, sexual fantasies, emotional preferences, social preferences, lifestyle preferences, and self-identification as well as making space for the reality of bisexual and pansexual individuals.

HOMOSEXUAL/HETEROSEXUAL shared by Becky Johson

Physical attraction is a wonderfully mysterious thing, isn’t it? That magical feeling of seeing a person across the room, and suddenly wanting to be close to them. Spending time with a person, and then not being able to stop thinking about them afterward.  Sexual attraction most likely comes down to a mixture of biological, psychological, and experience-based factors, and no two people are going to agree on what makes someone attractive. However, sexual attraction is an emotional response sexual people feel where they find someone sexually appealing, and that attraction is outside of conscious decision making. It’s not something we actively choose. It’s something we experience. 

Homosexuality is the experience of being attracted to members of your own gender. Heterosexuality is the experience of being attracted to members of the opposite gender. Occurrences of both homosexuality and heterosexuality have been documented in over 450 species of animals worldwide. Both are found in every major geographic region and every major animal group in the world. Both are natural variations on sexuality. And we celebrate both in our family.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA shared by Melissa Taylor Hardin

We live in a world where being straight is the norm. Heterosexuality is both explicitly and implicitly taught everywhere we go.  Homophobia is seen in families, churches, schools, work places, and many other institutions. Internalized homophobia occurs when LGBTQ individuals are subjected to society’s negative perceptions, intolerance, and stigma towards LGBTQ people, and as a result turn those ideas inward believing they are true.  They believe that the negative things being said about themselves are true. This can lead LGBTQ people to feel shame, guilt, depression, and anxiety. Internalized homophobia may manifest itself in different ways. It may cause the gay person to remain closeted, or require their significant other to remain closeted with them. It might also show up through attempting to “pray away the gay,” trying to change one’s own sexual orientation, or feeling it would be better to be dead than gay. 

 Internalized bi-phobia or internalized transphobia would have parallel definitions – by substituting ‘bi-sexual’ or ‘transgender people’ in place of ‘lesbian and gay men’.

 JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamadragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.