Coming out!...Sort of!

            That’s right, I’m starting out my 2016 posting with a bang!

            The acceptance of LGBTQA+ (or whatever the acronym has morphed into these days) has skyrocketed in recent years. A decade ago, the legalization gay marriage, gay fathers in Campbell’s soup commercials, and trans women in leading TV roles would have blown minds. Now, most of the outrage comes from backward-thinking idiots like One Million Moms and half-crazed Evangelical preachers. The public in general has begun to open its arms to the LGBT community, and it’s about damn time.

            However, we do have quite a ways to go. Bisexual erasure is still a thing, even in groundbreaking shows like Orange is the New Black. We still largely think of sexuality and romantic attraction as a fixed, unchanging, black and white preference. You’re either gay or straight. Bisexual people just haven’t decided yet, or they’re going through a phase. Pansexual is hardly even a known term. One must choose their camp or suffer societal reprimand.

            I’d love to relay a personal story of lifelong sexual realization, but the truth is, I’ve always been pretty damned dense about my own sexuality. I’ve always been romantically attracted to men, and that was far more important to Adolescent Dee than paying any attention to exclusively physical attraction. I didn’t really notice the little crush I had on a girl in my karate class at age 11 that was so obvious in hindsight, or how mesmerized I was by actresses like Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron. Because my desire for men was stronger, I just figured I was straight. My tendency to be ridiculously physically affectionate with everyone further blurred lines for me. Any funny feelings I felt were too close to the love I feel for everyone in my life for me to discern. I wrote them off as “girl crushes,” like the ones my straight girlfriends always said they had on me.

I also blame the androgyny of the goth/alternative subculture for helping keep me in the dark, but it’s also what gave me my first hint that I wasn’t entirely straight. During a Halloween performance of my belly dance troupe in Columbus in 2013, we had invited Cleveland’s Infusion Crew to perform with us. While waiting backstage, I caught sight of a simply gorgeous industrial rivet head, a style that is pure Dee Catnip—emaciated, undercut mohawk, tattooed, looking like a member of Psyclon 9. My little black heart fluttered. Then I got a better look at my eye candy—she was as androgynous as the look normally is, but she was undeniably female. Oh, I thought, Dammit. But then I realized that I still blushed when she caught me looking at her. My heart was still aquiver. Her black-slathered lips still looked just as good as they had when I thought she was a guy. That was when the thought that I wasn’t entirely heterosexual first drilled its way through my thick skull.

I’ve spent the years since then slowly belly crawling into full realization of my amorous preferences. I started voicing my attraction to actresses/trans actors/nonbinary models alongside the celebrity males I’ve always loudly drooled over. Then I started referring to myself—out loud—as “mostly straight.” But the term bothered me. I’ve always been one who is anti-label.  I don’t like being shoved into boxes, because I don’t believe people truly fit in them. I’ve always thought that labels are merely ways humans try to simplify the world around them, and when we do that to people, we oversimplify what are complex individuals, and that leads to conflict. However, bisexual (and pansexual) erasure is a huge problem about which I’ve always felt passionate. In refusing to label my sexuality, in not making a big announcement of some sort, was I not contributing to said erasure myself, further sweeping the “B” in LGBT under the rug and allowing people to deny its existence as a legitimate state of being?

My conflict culminated in a tiny little test balloon. I wrote a Facebook status explaining that I was confused about how to label my sexuality: that I’m physically attracted to men, women, and gender-nonbinary people, though I’ve never been physically attracted to vaginas, and my romantic preference has mostly been men, with a few half-conscious crushes on others. What do you, my lovely Facebook friends of all colours and creeds and preferences, think I should do?

I was pretty surprised by the responses I received. I got a few of the “who cares about labels? Just be you!” comments, but I also received avid denial of my sexuality from both straight and LGBT friends. One bisexual friend even said, “You’re not bi if you don’t want to fuck the person.”—referencing my lack of attraction to vaginas, despite my attraction to all other female parts.* I also received some ‘think on it’-type of support, but all in all, I was shocked by the rigid lines of what is and isn’t sexual preference coming from my typically progressive friends. I shrank away from further discussion and decided that this was a conclusion I’d have to come to on my own.

Ladies and gentlemen, the aesthetic paragraph break.

Well, months later, I have come to a conclusion. I’ve always thought that it’s important to normalize the gray areas of sexuality. While sexual and romantic preferences are intensely personal matters, with so much controversy and misunderstanding pervading the subject, I think it’s important for people who deviate from the norm to come out, because only then will they become the norm. So this is me, coming out…sort of…in questionnaire form!

So, what’s your label?

Unfortunately, I’m still not sure. I still hate labels. I’m somewhere on the bisexual-pansexual spectrum. I am physically attracted to both male and female bodies, but also many who are in between, or neither, so I’m not comfortable with the term “bisexual.” However, it’s widely said that pansexual people are attracted to people regardless of gender, that gender is not a factor in their attraction. That’s not true for me, either. I’m attracted to masculine and feminine, to abs and breasts and broad shoulders and curvy hips. I’m attracted to some masculine and feminine gender norms, and I’m attracted to deviations from those norms. So I’m not really sure what to call myself. I may never be comfortable with a single label.

What does this mean for your future marriage?

            Nothing.

Seriously, nothing.

Regardless of whom I’m attracted to, I’m still fiercely monogamous, and I’m with the love of my life. My fiancé is the person I’ve talked to the most about my sexual preference labelling and such, and he had to put up with my drooling over Ruby Rose in season 3 of Orange is the New Black, so none of this is a surprise to him. He’s smart enough to understand that sexual preference has nothing to do with partnership preference (monogamy, polyamory, etc.)

OMG. Did you ever have a crush on ME?!

 Nope. The closest thing I ever had to a romantic-feels crush on a female bodied person was a gorgeous friend of mine in my theatre circle, and I got to kiss the crap out of her in a show, so I am fulfilled! ;) I remain exactly the person you thought I was before you learned about my attraction to all genders. I’m still the most platonically affectionate person you might ever meet. There’s no secret agenda to my loving on all of you. I just love you!

…Vaginas?

            Just because I know I’m going to get some push back on the ‘not attracted to vaginas’ thing, I’ll elaborate: I love the human body in all of its curves, lines, colours, and shapes, but I’m not sexually attracted to all of it. Vaginas (well, technically not the vagina, which is internal; I’ve never looked around the internal genitalia. I’d need a flashlight and a very trusting person!) are pretty to look at, but in practice they’re all squishy and messy. Not hot to me. However, if I had been more aware of my amorous leanings when I was single, and I had fallen for someone with a vagina, I’m sure I would have gotten over my non-attraction.

If coming out changes nothing, why bother coming out?

            This is a two-part answer.

A. Though this will not change my romantic life, being engaged and monogamous, I still think it’s important to come out in order to further normalize the non-straight orientations. There are many of us. We are single, married, polyamorous, monogamous, professionals, moms, everything. We are not bizarre, damaged, or “other.” Or, to put it more simply, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” Though my coming out doesn’t change much in my life, I still think it’s important to be out. It lifts the veil of taboo, and that’s when taboos become normal.

B. It actually has changed a thing or two for me. This may be a combination of fully realizing my bi/pan nature and getting to the age of truly not giving a fuck about who thinks I’m attractive anymore, but around the time I realized I was bi/pan, I stopped internally comparing myself to every pretty woman around me. This was a long-standing problem of mine since childhood, borne from being raised around women who constantly said things like “Oh, God, did you see What’s Her Face? She’s so FAT now,” “You’re lucky you’re so skinny and pretty. Enjoy it while you can!”, “It’s so sad how So And So just let herself go after the baby. Doesn’t she care about herself?”, “You’re so beautiful. You can do anything you want!”, etc. I spent my adolescence and early adulthood mentally crumbling to dust when I saw a beautiful woman, because I could never look like that, and if I’m not pretty, I’m worthless. While I still occasionally have those moments now that I’m in my late 20s (and no longer a teenager, which is the most sexually desired group in our society), I really don’t compare myself to pretty women any more. Nowadays, when I see a girl who looks good, the only thing that goes through my head is “Dayummm!” And to tell you the truth, it’s goddamn refreshing.

So that’s it, my big coming out…ness! It doesn’t really change anything, but consider it my tiny contribution to normalizing people all across the sexuality spectrum. Gay Power! Wait. Bi/pan power? LGBT power? LGBTQIA….fuck it. I hate labels. Power all around!

*This particular comment was laughable, since it was from the same friend whom, years ago, told me that she thought penises were ugly and comical, yet she still considered herself sexually attracted to men.