Sexual identity is a way which a person describes himself or herself as being male or female, socially and biologically. To understand what sexual identity is, one must know the definitions of sex and gender. Sex refers to a person based on their anatomy (external genitalia, chromosomes, and internal reproductive system). Sexual identity can also be defined as sexual self-schemas. Sexual self schema derive from past experience, affect current experiences, and facilitate the processing of sexual information. They proposed that sexual self-schema result from inferences about one’s sexuality based on observations of one’s own (a) sexual behavior, (b) sexual emotions and arousal, and (c) sexual attitudes and beliefs. The gender schema, or gender identity, has been defined as a cognitive generalization about one’s own sexual aspects.

An example of sexual identity would be, a woman who is sexualy interested in women but sees herself as a woman. Her sexual identity would be female because she identifies as a female but her sexual orientation would be same sex because she is a woman who is sexual attracted to women, that is to say, gynephilic.