Making a statement

[tinyjo]

Since it seems to be going round my friends list at the moment, I might as well join in and belated celebrate National (American) Coming Out Day by saying a few words about my sexuality.

I vaguely worried about my sexuality when I was in secondary school. I didn't meet any boys I fancied at all. Although there were several girls I found very physically attractive, none of them were people I actually liked so I wasn't tempted to do any exploring and get any more definite ideas. Then when I moved to Oxford I met Alex, who I fancied a lot and fell in love with pretty damn quickly (I should point out, since Alex is a gender ambiguous name, that Alex is a boy). I also met Tanaqui and Jeremy, who were not the type of women I normally went for, but I found very sexy in a sensuous way. I've gone all the way with men and a long way with women. There are still many many more women who I find sexually attractive than men so despite my relative lack of girl on girl experience I tend to identify as bi. So there you are.

Comments

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

I think I'd describe my sexuality as being rather similar to yours. Like you, my actual experiences have been most often and most recently with men, but I'm far more likely to find women attractive. However, I don't like to identify as bi because that gives people the impression that I'm equally likely to fancy men and women, which just isn't true. On the other hand, I don't like to identify as gay/lesbian, because that gives the impression that I only ever fancy/have sex with women, which isn't true either.

When I'm talking about myself I usually try to avoid both terms, but other people often use one or the other of them to refer to me. Sometimes I think of myself as both gay and bisexual, and sometimes as neither. In general I hover in some kind of grey zone, and tend to think of myself as approximately 80% gay 20% bi. If that makes sense.

That just gets into silly classifications...

[applez.livejournal.com]

My view: you like what you like, who you like, when you like it - for that moment: be it a second's attraction, or a decade's dalliance.

No hard and fast rules for human sexuality, I think.

Having said that, I haven't felt anything that would have me question a heterosexual label for yours truly.

Re: That just gets into silly classifications...

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

My view: you like what you like, who you like, when you like it - for that moment: be it a second's attraction, or a decade's dalliance.

I completely agree with you, and would dearly love to be able to leave it at that. Unfortunately it's an idea that is sometimes hard to explain to other people, and that's where the classification thing comes in, whether you want it to or not.

Re: That just gets into silly classifications...

[applez.livejournal.com]

Yeah ... especially when you need to communicate to people who need to stretch their minds.

I just figure: sexuality is complicated, and breaking off from pre-existing convenient social structures makes one's reality still more complicated - but if one can make it work, it has to be worth it. Ultimately, you'll be true to yourself.

You know, thinking more broadly, I wonder if we're well into the age of process - that the very goal, the old way of speaking of a rule and deriving process from it has been completely turned around, or indeed jettisoned...or should be? I don't know if I'm being terribly clear - I can try to clarify that if you don't quite follow.

I guess I just figure that life is a dance, a process, a conversation - and sexuality is part of that, and is as much a conversation with yourself as the people around you and with you (and non-people, to be fully honest about the range that conversation can take). Moreover, it's a conversation that may never conclude, and perhaps shouldn't - finality is a kind of death, the antithesis of life, so embodied by sex.

Now I'm well down the philosophical-path, probably well trodden. :-)

[sparkymark.livejournal.com]

I like the ladies.