What It Means To Be Asexual, Bicurious — & Other Sexualities You Need To Know

As the queer community organise a quite frankly spectacular response to COVID-19, it's important, if you're not queer yourself, to make sure that you've got the correct language to talk about it.

When we think about sexual orientation, what probably comes to mind for most people are the three listed in the well-known acronym: LGBT. That's lesbian, gay, and bisexual (the T stands for transgender, which is a gender identity, not a sexual orientation). Some might even think of the Q that's sometimes tacked on to the end of that acronym and most often stands for queer.

These (plus "straight") are the sexual orientations that get the most play in television and media (and even then, LGB representation is hardly stellar). But there are so many more ways someone can identify their sexual orientation than that little acronym suggests — and it's time that we start talking about them, too. Ahead, we've compiled definitions for some of these terms.

Keep in mind that this isn't a be-all-end-all list, and we'll be regularly updating this story with new definitions. After all, language around sexual orientation is always evolving.