Hetero term definition debate, is it too vague?

[Yep, me]

I noticed that hetero terms refer to attraction to the ‘opposite’ gender, and that non binary genders make this very hard to define.

so instead, how about the hetero term be to a different gender, and the homo term refer to the same gender?

[TheAP]

Yes, that's a possibility. But I've also heard some people say that hetero means attraction to the opposite binary gender, which would mean that those attracted to both their opposite binary gender and non-binary genders would be considered bisexual.

[Philip027]

The reason why it's usually used as "opposite" is because sexuality terms are usually used to refer to sex, not gender, and as far as most people know or recognize there's only two sexes.

[Guest]

I just say that hetero means you're attracted to a different gender, to be politically correct. But in saying that, anyone who says they're heterosexual means they're either a man who wants to screw women or a woman who wants to screw men. Someone who wants to screw other genders or desires to screw people regardless of their gender will generally go with 'pansexual' or something along those lines.

[borkfork]

I agree with the above. Also, most people don't really think about sexuality in terms of gender so much as biological sex. When a woman says she's heterosexual, usually having a penis is a bare minimum partner requirement. 

[everywhere and nowhere]

It's not really true that there are two sexes. There are also intersex people.

Really, there is no such thing as "sex as such" or "gender as such". There are manydifferent biological and sociocultural sex/gender characteristics and incongruence is possible at any level.

I strongly dislike the term "opposite sex". I always use "different sex" instead. Anyway, "a woman is more similar to a man than to anything else". A woman is not a man, but it doesn't mean that she is an anti-man, and a man is not a woman, but it doesn't mean that he is an anti-woman. Women and men are just different, not opposite.

I have also seen someone use the term "similar sex", not "same sex".

[Philip027]

Quote

It's not really true that there are two sexes. There are also intersex people.

They don't get socially recognized (or at least as far as anyone knows, they appear/present as either one or the other).  Again, as far as most people are concerned, there are two sexes.  There are oddities and incongruences (or "defects" if you're looking at it from the eyes of someone who's probably a jerk) at multiple different levels, but they are largely swept under the rug.

 

Bottom line is, when you're talking about a guy who's heterosexual, he's almost certainly into people with vaginas, not necessarily intersex people, or female-gendered people, or what have you.    Much like how, in an above example, I'd personally call it misleading to say you're bisexual if you are into female and "other" genders (but NOT the male gender) because that is simply not what most people interpret "bisexual" to mean.  It doesn't even have anything to do with gender to most people.

[Star Bit]

While the prefixes hetero and homo mean what they do, the terms were created both not too long ago as well as without intersex individuals in mind. So I agree with @borkfork.