“When dating boys in high school, some relationships felt wrong, while others felt inexplicably right,” my hunky honey explains. “Now when I think about being attracted to men, I think about running my hands over a man’s beard and scratching his chin. If that isn’t attraction, I don’t know what is!”
I can’t happily see a romantic or sexual life with men, but my lesbianism is foremost about me and who I am attracted to, not my lack of heterosexual attraction.
My lesbianism is much more than an absence of men, or something I’m perceived to be ‘missing’. It’s also – clearly – more than an exclusive attraction to women.
W hen I eventually acknowledged my lesbianism, I worried that I’d betrayed my bonds with the bisexual community. But it also felt right .
I was initially reluctant to let go of the “bisexual” label, which had become a trusty old friend, a comfort object like one of my many Squishmallows
Bisexuality is not an anxious bid to keep the heteronormative options open, even if they make you miserable. It is not begrudgingly trying to tolerate men’s advances, wondering why this doesn’t feel good. Bisexuality is not forced; it is freeing.
I called myself bisexual based on having slept with multiple genders – despite the fact that past sexual behaviours don’t necessarily equate to your sexuality. Anyone can have bi-curious dalliances to explore their sexuality; from mine, I just learnt that I was plain ol’ gay.
For a time datingsider for langdistanseforhold, I felt that bisexuality and pansexuality were the ‘best’ or ‘most inclusive’ sexualities to have, which was certainly based in internalised homophobia and a desire to seem open and nonjudgemental.
A ‘hearts not parts’ mentality – which is what I adopted in my youth – is far more judgemental in the implication that gay and lesbian orientations are based on ‘parts’, or that others don’t care equally about hearts too.
I rarely experience physical attraction, and when I do, it’s not about genitals, because, of course, someone’s genitals don’t inform their gender! Gender and self-expression are factors in my attraction, and it took me a long time to accept that this doesn’t make me closed-minded.
I n Work in Progress, the protagonist Abby calls herself a “queer dyke”. This resonates with me – depicting a lesbian with space for different types of queer relationships beyond solely women loving women, beyond cis-normativity.
It just makes me gay
I enjoy the word “dyke”, but I’m also trying to actively say “lesbian” – a label that doesn’t get enough love or pride. Instead, it gets bogged down by discourse, or used as a tool of gatekeeping and transmisogyny. This makes it even more important to use “lesbian” in positive, inclusive contexts.
L oving Amelia doesn’t make me less of a lesbian, nor does it make them less non-binary. Maybe it just means we’re both renegades! Love itself transcends binaries – unless it’s a love between robots sexting in binary code.
“My gender identity is robust and isn’t invalidated by your sexuality,” says my huggy bear. “My gender is a personal, internal space of self-understanding that doesn’t fit into our culture and goes misunderstood by most people.”
It’s unfortunate that it needs to be said, but stories like mine don’t mean that bisexuality is a phase, a stepping stone to being gay, or whatever the naysayers are naysayin’.
I’ll always fight for the legitimacy and excellence of my bisexual kin. We’re all in this together , as we have been since the beginning of the queer rights movement.
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