 Returning to sexual orientation, its popular conception relies on dubious assumptions (Corvino 2006a; Dembroff 2017). (1) It assumes three basic orientations: homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual. (2) It includes the gender or sex of the person who has the orientation as an essential element of the orientation; X’s being gay means that X has the same sex/gender as the target of the orientation. (3) It is ambiguous between sex and gender: is a straight man attracted to the gender or the sex of women? (The same question arises regarding the person with the orientation.) (4) It assumes a binary of gender/sex for both parties, excluding people who exist outside the binary. (5) It is ambiguous between sexual and emotional attraction: if a man is emotionally attracted to other men, does that mean that he is gay or something else? (6) It is silent on what counts as the basic components of the orientation: is it behavior, desires, or fantasies? Finally, (7) it assumes the cross-temporal and cross-cultural existence of the three sexual orientations: there were gay men and gay women in 15th century Russia just as there were in 21st century North America, albeit with adjustment for cultural variances.