Public Health, Political Solidarity, and the Ethics of Orientation Ascriptions

Abstract

H ow ought we to categorize individuals with respect to sexual orientation? It might be the case, as Esa Díaz-León (2022: 301-305) argues, that we ought to use ordinary categories such as homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual. Or perhaps, as Robin Dembroff (2016: 22-23) argues, we ought to employ alternative categories such as female-oriented, male-oriented, woman-oriented, and genderqueer-oriented.In this paper, I argue that the normatively important aims of LGBTQIA+ social movements provide reason to endorse a categorization scheme that (i) includes the categories heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, and queer, (ii) distinguishes between attractions to sex features and attractions to gender features, and (iii) allows an element of interpretation, such that individuals have authority over which of their attractions (related to sex and/or gender features) matter to their orientation.Here's the plan. In the first section, I'll outline the desiderata for a theory of how we ought to categorize individuals with respect to sexual orientation. In the second and third sections, I'll argue against the respective theories of Díaz-León and Dembroff. Then, in the fourth section, I'll explain and defend the aforementioned categorization scheme.