Why So Many Young People Feel Confused About Sexuality, #613
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Why are parents, pastors, and mentors feeling overwhelmed by changing sexuality language?
If you are a parent, a pastor, or simply someone who wants to love this next generation well, you might have noticed how quickly the language around identity and sexuality has been changing. There's these new terms that are popping up all the time, terms like omnisexual and abrosexual and pomosexual. Do you even know what all that means? Boy, it sometimes can feel very overwhelming. And that's why I'm really grateful for the conversation that we're going to have today. I'm Julie Slattery, the host of this podcast, and today my guest is Dr. Julia Sadusky. Julia is a licensed therapist who works really closely with young people who are navigating questions of identity, faith, and sexuality. She has partnered with Dr. Mark Yourhouse to co-author the new book, Emerging Sexual Identities.
This book is a thoughtful and compassionate and really grounded resource for understanding what's happening in our culture and how we can respond with both truth and grace. In this conversation, we start out by talking about the difference between gender identity and sexual identity. But we also talk about why language seems to be evolving so quickly, the influence of things like queer theory on our understanding of sexuality, as well as how social media is impacting all this. And most importantly, we talk about how to stay relationally connected to the people that you love who might be in the middle of all of this. Okay, here's my conversation with Julia Sedusky. Well, Julia, you and Mark Yarhouse, who is a colleague of yours, recently released a book called Emerging Sexual Identities.
And this was sort of like a part two from a book that you all wrote together, Emerging Gender Identities. So I'd love for you just to tell me what is the difference between those two and where might there be some overlap?
Such a great question. And it's so good to be back with you, Julie. I would just say that Emerging Gender Identities was really a book trying to account for the shifts around people's experience of embodiment. So think in terms of how I experienced being a body and then what that means for language and categories around gender in particular. And so there was a shift in an expanding landscape Mark and I were observing clinically where people were using terms we hadn't heard before. So non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid. And we thought if we didn't know what those terms were, how much more so people in ministry and in the church might have felt like they were on their back foot, accompanying young people, especially asking those questions.
So that was that first book. And then Mark and I, over the last several years, have really wanted to write a kind of parallel mirror book that really looks more at the categories of sexual orientation and how queer theory and how just shifts in understandings about gender have really impacted how people use language to talk about who they're attracted to. And we were seeing a lot of expanding categories in that as well. And so again, we really wanted to give parents and ministers and really pastors, anybody who cares, as a Christian, a chance to really get the lay of the land here more effectively.
Yeah, thanks for doing that. It is a complicated landscape, and you have a list in your book of just different terms that people are using to identify themselves. And a lot of them, I'm like, I don't know what that means. I'll just read a few, like heteroflexible, omnisexual, panromantic, demisexual. It's like... I would have to Google those terms and figure out exactly what somebody is meaning when they say that. And my guess is that even since you finished this book, there's probably a few new terms that have been added. It seems like it's just a constantly evolving process or vernacular. Has that kind of been your experience as well?
Such a great question. I mean, I think so many categories of language are shifting over time. I mean, language is a tool to try to communicate, but it can be very overwhelming to, as you said, feel like you have to Google terminology and kind of get to the bottom of it.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why are parents, pastors, and mentors feeling overwhelmed by changing sexuality language?
0:02–4:57
2
What’s the difference between gender identity and sexual identity in the new book?
4:57–12:45
3
How are emerging sexual‑orientation labels like omnisexual, demisexual, and aro‑ace defined?
12:45–19:37
4
Why is queer theory influencing today’s sexual‑identity landscape?
19:37–28:29
5
How does social media create a feedback loop for teens trying on identities?
28:29–36:03
6
What practical steps can parents take to stay connected without compromising convictions?
36:03–41:07
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Java with Juli - Making Sense of God and Sex
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