GMEOW Sexuality Module

• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/sexuality
• Tier: core
• Group: core

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 24 terms and contributes 19 mapping or projection rows. Use it when its terms match the native fact you want to preserve; use the linkage tables to see how those facts leave GMEOW for consumer vocabularies.

Dependencies

• gmeow:slices/entities
• gmeow:slices/gender

Consumers

• Identity facets on persons (P16: core by commitment); the 7-axis orthogonality matrix.

Local Map

Examples

Split Attraction

• Source: slices/core/sexuality/examples/split-attraction.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:IdentityFacet, gmeow:Person, gmeow:RomanticOrientation, gmeow:SexualOrientation, gmeow:facetSubject, gmeow:facetVantage, gmeow:hasRomanticOrientation, gmeow:hasSexualOrientation, gmeow:name, gmeow:orientAsexual

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: the split-attraction model ( P9). Sexual orientation and
# romantic orientation are SEPARATE, mutually independent axes — each a reified,
# self-asserted gmeow:IdentityFacet on the shared base. Because the axes never
# collapse into one another, an asexual-biromantic person is directly expressible:
# asexual sexual attraction AND biromantic romantic attraction, neither inferred
# from the other nor from gender, expression, sex-assigned-at-birth, or address.
# Values are open vocabularies of individuals; both facets are co-equal with no
# preferred orientation, and self-assertion is the top authority.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/sexuality/> .

ex:robin a gmeow:Person ;
    gmeow:name "Robin"@en ;
    gmeow:hasSexualOrientation   ex:sexual ;
    gmeow:hasRomanticOrientation ex:romantic .

# A facet is an Observation: gmeow:facetSubject is whose facet it is, and for a
# self-asserted facet the gmeow:facetVantage is the person themselves (P9).

# --- Sexual orientation axis: asexual.
ex:sexual a gmeow:SexualOrientation ;
    gmeow:facetSubject           ex:robin ;
    gmeow:facetVantage           ex:robin ;
    gmeow:sexualOrientationValue gmeow:orientAsexual ;
    gmeow:selfAsserted           true .

# --- Romantic orientation axis: biromantic — independent of the sexual axis.
ex:romantic a gmeow:RomanticOrientation ;
    gmeow:facetSubject             ex:robin ;
    gmeow:facetVantage             ex:robin ;
    gmeow:romanticOrientationValue gmeow:romanticBiromantic ;
    gmeow:selfAsserted             true .

Terms

Classes

Properties

Individuals

Linkages

• Rows: 19
• Projection profiles: -
• External vocabularies: gsso, homosaurus, wd, wdt

Guide

Sexuality — split-attraction orientation on the shared facet base

Slice: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/sexuality · tier: core Sexual and romantic orientation as two separate, self-asserted, co-equal identity axes.

Where most models offer one sexualOrientation slot (if they offer anything), GMEOW applies the split-attraction model: sexual orientation and romantic orientation are separate, mutually independent axes, each a reified self-asserted facet on the gender slice's gmeow:IdentityFacet base. Asexual-biromantic, aromantic-bisexual, and every other combination are directly expressible because the axes never collapse into each other — and neither is ever inferred from gender identity, gender expression, sex-assigned-at-birth, pronouns, or honorifics. These two axes complete the seven-axis orthogonality matrix (with gender's three and names' two), whose pairwise disjointness is a reasoner theorem asserted in the gender module (relator-mediation doctrine) and whose bridge-absence is a closed-world lint (tests/test_identity_orthogonality.py).

The governing tenets are exactly gender's, because the base is shared (Principle 9): self-assertion is the top authority (gmeow:selfAsserted); facets are co-equal with deliberately no preferred/primary orientation term; value spaces are open vocabularies of individuals, never per-value subclasses, never a forced enum — inclusive without overtyping. A superseded label is kept with gmeow:displayable false, suppressed, never erased (Principle 10). And like all identity slices, this one is core by commitment (Principle 16): orientation modelling is not an opt-in extension.

The two axes

gmeow:SexualOrientation

A person's self-asserted pattern of sexual attraction, as a reified facet (a gufo:Relator and gmeow:Observation, inheriting facetSubject/facetVantage, the validity clocks, and displayable from IdentityFacet). A separate axis from romantic orientation and from every gender axis; nothing infers one from another.

gmeow:hasSexualOrientation

The bearer property, Person → facet. Non-functional and contextual: identities shift, and multiple co-equal facets coexist — a superseded one is suppressed, never deleted. MUST NOT be inferred from hasRomanticOrientation, hasGenderIdentity, sexAssignedAtBirth, pronouns, or honorifics.

gmeow:sexualOrientationValue

Functional per facet — one value each; multiplicity is expressed by more facets. The single path to the value (no flat-literal shortcut exists, deliberately): a seeded individual, or a fresh SexualOrientationValue individual with rdfs:label when none fits.

gmeow:RomanticOrientation

A person's self-asserted pattern of romantic attraction — the other half of the split-attraction model, structurally a twin of SexualOrientation but a fully independent axis: asexual yet biromantic is two facets on two axes, no tension, no inference.

gmeow:hasRomanticOrientation

The romantic bearer property; same contract as its sexual sibling — non-functional, contextual, suppression-not-deletion, and no inferential bridge to any other axis.

gmeow:romanticOrientationValue

Functional per facet; the single path to an open RomanticOrientationValue.

The value vocabularies

gmeow:SexualOrientationValue · gmeow:RomanticOrientationValue

Two separate open vocabularies under gufo:QualityValue, kept apart so the split-attraction distinction is explicit in the data (asexual ≠ aromantic — they are different individuals in different value spaces, and the spaces are disjoint by the matrix axioms). Seeds: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / pansexual / asexual / demisexual / queer / questioning, and their romantic counterparts plus queerplatonic. The seeds are anchors, not a fence: mint a fresh individual with rdfs:label for anything unseeded — never a flat string, never a new subclass.

ex:sam a gmeow:Person ;
    gmeow:hasSexualOrientation ex:samSexual ;
    gmeow:hasRomanticOrientation ex:samRomantic .

ex:samSexual a gmeow:SexualOrientation ;        # asexual …
    gmeow:sexualOrientationValue gmeow:orientAsexual ;
    gmeow:selfAsserted true .

ex:samRomantic a gmeow:RomanticOrientation ;    # … and biromantic, independently
    gmeow:romanticOrientationValue gmeow:romanticBiromantic ;
    gmeow:selfAsserted true .

The relator-mediation existentials (someValuesFrom the value classes) live here in EL form for the reasoner; the closed-world "exactly one value per facet" is deliberately SHACL's job (SHACL closure gate), keeping the logic small and decidable (Principle 12's boundary discipline).

Alignment — and an honest lossy drop

GSSO, Homosaurus, and Wikidata alignments live in mappings/gmeow-sexuality.sssom.tsv. schema.org and FOAF have no orientation term at all, so at the projection layer orientation is a documented lossy drop (Principle 4): the projection records what it cannot carry rather than flattening it into a string somewhere it doesn't belong. The reified, self-asserted, co-equal, split-attraction machinery is canonical and exists only here (Principle 5: superset by reference, never dumbed down at the source).

Dependencies

Depends on entities and gender (the IdentityFacet base, selfAsserted, and the matrix axioms). Consumed wherever persons are: identity facets are core by commitment (Principle 16), and the gender slice's matrix axioms reference these classes by name.