So... I'm going to be a bit heretical here. I think van Anders' SCT is actually quite interesting, and at the very least, you have to respect the herculean effort that went into rounding up everything topically relevant, even if you don't buy its premises. It's heavily informed by feminisms and Queer Theory, (she does cite Califia, a delightfully perverted HSTS FTM and Serano, AGP MTF, right out the gate,) yes, but at the end of the day, it's a scientific taxonomy, to which people may or may not actually fit into. "...provides a scientific theory and phenomenology of sexualities that can be falsified and/or revised with empirical data" All models are wrong, some are useful, and this is directly addressed in the paper.

While SCT is probably not useful for the overwhelming majority of people, "theory should explain the entirety of a delimited known phenomenon and not just part of it (i.e., theory should not just focus on the majority of a phenomenon or its most/least obvious cases)" I completely agree. This is why physicists are searching for their Grand Unified Theory / Theory of Everything. SCT is aiming in part to do that, to sexuality.

Sexual orientation is a phrase that realllly gets people bent out of shape, sometimes, because it can imply so many things. I can say that heterosexuality is a sexual orientation. See? Nobody cares. Nobody assumes I'm saying that it should be added to the LGBTQ+ initialism. Or, I can say that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, which it is, and everyone loses their minds. (Sexual, early age-of-onset, life-long, innate, unchosen, and immutable.) No, I'm not advocating for child molestation.

van Anders does retain sexual orientation in SCT, but it is subservient to her larger concept of Sexual Configuration. For instance, a lesbian who only desires butch women. Still a lesbian, of course. But it's the butch thing that van Anders is trying to capture, because not just any women will do for our hypothetical agent.

Anyhow, the point of that diatribe is to not get your underwear in a bunch when somebody says "sexual orientation." It's an interesting paper, have an open mind and read it, if you're into that sort of thing. (I wouldn't bother with the tornado-looking diagrams, which I think I'll start calling sink holes now, because that Youtuber gave a better sentiment to how I feel about those.)

I'll also note that it does not bite off the gender identity stuff, but does take a nuanced look at the concept of gender vs sex. "To be clear, I am not saying that sex is not an important or defining feature of many people’s sexuality; I am saying that sex is not the only organizing feature..."