What’s Positive about Sexual Identity
A lot of girls identify as bisexual, especially in the BDSM world. In my experience, a bisexual girl is almost the norm instead of the exception in the community. I suppose we’re more accepting of different sexual preferences and many people are more comfortable disclosing their preferences. I definitely know a lot more bisexual men, which is almost unheard of in vanilla company. You’re either gay or straight. If you occasionally have a sexual or romantic relationship with another man, you’re deemed gay. Hard and fast. Even if that’s not really true. “Pansexual” is nonexistent, as are blurred lines like “heteroflexiable” or “homoflexible.” “Asexual” is also completely ignored in vanilla contexts. Identifying as asexual, simply means that you’re just a prude or that you just haven’t found the “right” one. Nonsense. All nonsense. There are more outlets with BDSM, but even here there aren’t enough labels. Take me for example:
At this point, what is my sexuality?
I suppose that technically I started out as a lesbian. I was absolutely madly in love and hated spending even a moment away from her. We were together for two years before one day she brought home a boyfriend. A boyfriend? What? I never said anything to her about it. I guess I just had an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude, so I landed a boyfriend of my own. And that was the start of my poly relationships. Additionally, it was also my introduction to BDSM since my boyfriend was a Dom. A lot for a girl to take on. I suppose I qualified as bisexual at that point. I had fully sexual relationships with both male and female partners.
As I got older, I identified more as pansexual. All welcoming and all inclusive. I’ve had all kinds of lovers with all kinds of traits and genders. Female, male, MtF, FtM (and people who didn’t identify with any of those) and I’ve loved them all equally. Like many others, I enjoyed people on an individual basis, not based on their genitalia.
Now, however, my sexuality has evolved in a different direction. I still want boys, I still want Tbois and Tgirls, but I no longer feel the desire to be with a woman. I suppose on a very primitive and basic level, I mostly want cock now and I find myself attracted to people with penises and distinctly not interested in vagina anymore. I’m not sure when this development happened, but it’s a pretty strong feeling. I don’t dislike women and I still find some women very attractive (and I still mildly obsess over a few), but I don’t want to have sex with them anymore. No penis, no play. Or something like that. I wouldn’t fight against an intense connection with a woman if there was one, but I definitely wouldn’t seek it out at this point in my life. (Although I’m mildly interested in fisting and yet uninterested in trying it with a man, so who knows?)
So what’s my sexuality now? I’m not a lesbian anymore. I’m not bisexual anymore. I’m not even pansexual anymore. I only like men and either side of the trans coin, but not women, so I’m not all inclusive at this point. How do you label that? We like to believe that labels aren’t important, but when there are fill-in-the-blanks on profiles and such, there’s no box for me to check. When someone asks, I don’t have a name for my “thing.” It’s like asking a biracial child (i.e. also me) to choose one box on her standardized test. That’s unfair and narrow minded. There needs to be more options. Even BDSM doesn’t cover all the sexual orientations there are. We just throw a “fluctuating/evolving” blanket over anything we can’t properly identify. Weak. I know what my sexuality is right now. It is not currently in the process of evolving and hasn’t for a long time. I’m not “confused.” I just don’t have a label for it.
No one wants to be labeled or have to label themselves, but labels are important. We don’t have the availability to learn details from every person we come across. We use labels as tools to help guide our knowledge. When we learn that a woman is a lesbian, we assume that she finds women sexual attractive. That’s what we’ve gleamed from that description. We are able to make snap judgments that would be impossible to do if we systematically interviewed everyone she has dated. We have the slightest start into who she may be and how she wants to be viewed. Labels get a bad rap, but they’re not inherently bad. It’s how we use them that is sometimes negative. When we apply them to stop gathering more information because we think that’s all we can learn, we’re abusing the usefulness of labels.
Sexual identity is important. It helps us understand and relate to others and it helps us understand ourselves. No, we don’t always need to label ourselves (to others or even to ourselves) and we never have to be absolute or definitive with our tastes, but as sexual creatures, part of our evaluation of ourselves and others is through sexuality. Finding that sexual identity sometimes causes strife and confusion, from its discovery throughout life. But it can also be a very fun joyride. I have experienced a great deal of satisfaction and self discovery through every stage of my sexual awakening. I know that it gives me something added that I can use to relate to other people and have them relate to me, too. Whether we’re “outlandish” with our sexual appetites and desires or more “conservative,” we’re still sexual beings. Even if we’re asexual. (No matter how kinky we are in the bedroom, there is always someone else who thinks they’re “kinkier” and no matter how kinky that person is, there’s probably someone even “kinkier” than that. It’s all relative and it’s all a matter of what works for the particular people involved.) Sexual identity is profound; we just have to be careful not to use labels negatively or harmfully in regards to others, and just as importantly, in regards to ourselves.
With a great deal of things, a lot of people don’t fit into the boxes we put them in. Most people in fact. There are countless ways that people describe themselves. However, no matter how many labels we have to give people, they will never fully describe everyone. Not yet, anyway.