Sexual Orientation Labels Used by Transgender and Gender Diverse Adolescents and Young Adults Seeking Gender Affirming Hormones

Not enough is known about the labels that transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals – and especially adolescents and young adults – use to describe their sexual orientation. This is likely due to a historical conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity, where both researchers and the public have failed to examine the ways that these constructs differ. Consequentially, there are few statistics about TGD young people’s sexual orientations. The present study aims to help address this gap by examining the sexual orientation labels 208 TGD young people (13–22 years old) used at time of an assessment for readiness to start gender affirming hormones. Results indicate that the vast majority of youth in the sample used non-heterosexual orientation labels, with the most commonly endorsed label being “bisexual”. Fischer’s exact tests reveal that participants who affirmed a male/transmasculine gender were more likely to use the label “heterosexual” compared to female/transfeminine and non-binary young people. Findings underscore the importance of mindful sexual orientation and gender identity demographic information collection for TGD young people.