(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

The Buy-Me-Lunch Answer About My Sexuality

Let me tell you a sto­ry.

And before we get going, it’s a sto­ry of who I might bang in the right kind of cir­cum­stances and even some of the (VERY EXPLICIT) logis­tics of said bang­ing, so if either you’re my moth­er or that’s not the sort of thing you want to read, now’s your chance to hit one of the clear­ly marked exits before the ride starts. After this, you just have to tuck and roll and hope that action movie physics will keep your injuries to a min­i­mum.

No?

We’re good?

Okay, here we go.

Last year I wrote The Buy-Me-Lunch Answer About My Gen­der, and even though I thought I was pret­ty well shoe­horn­ing a per­son­al post into a com­men­tary on labels and words, it turned out to res­onate pret­ty hard. I had always sort of thought I would be doing this arti­cle SOME day, but the tim­ing was decid­ed for me when not too long ago, you will be shocked to find out that I ran across peo­ple being ter­ri­ble on the Inter­net.

This is a sim­i­lar sto­ry. It is a sto­ry about why I kind of grudg­ing­ly call myself a half a dozen vague­ly descrip­tive terms, but would much rather have lunch with you (your treat because I’m pret­ty poor) and explain myself.

I don’t like labels. Unless I do. But usu­al­ly not.

That might be weird to hear from a writer who deals in words, but I find it is actu­al­ly iron­i­cal­ly com­mon. Maybe it’s because writ­ers [“and edi­tors!” ‑Chris’s edi­tor] are the exact sort of peo­ple to under­stand the lim­i­ta­tions of lan­guage. I’m not telling you that words don’t have pow­er. (I know far too well just how much pow­er they have.) I’m telling you that when a sig­ni­fied con­cept has dif­fer­ent sig­ni­fiers for dif­fer­ent people.…well, a cer­tain num­ber of them start to act like wankel rotary engines.

If you’ve been online and dis­cussed sex­u­al­i­ty in the last ten years or so, you prob­a­bly know there’s a semantic.…let’s say dis­pute between hard­line “pan­sex­u­al” and hard­line “bisex­u­al” label enforcers. Most peo­ple are con­tent to lis­ten to the con­cerns the oth­er has about a giv­en label, under­stand the lin­guis­tic his­to­ry of the LGBTQIA+ move­ment, respect the labels peo­ple choose for them­selves (so long as they’re not explic­it­ly bipho­bic or transan­tag­o­nis­tic), and hon­or oth­ers’ iden­ti­ty. But some load up their No True Scots­man and False Equiv­a­lence fal­lac­i­es and declare them­selves the arbiters of What Words Mean™. Either by say­ing that “pan­sex­u­al” is bipho­bic or that “bisex­u­al” is trans­pho­bic.

It’s just a whole lot of fin­gers in ears and lalalalala-ing.

I could spend a whole arti­cle spank­ing this kind of bull­shit pre­scrip­tive dog­ma, its absolute lack of intel­lec­tu­al rig­or, and the era­sure dam­age caused by dis­miss­ing some­one’s iden­ti­ty. Folks out there stamp­ing around, punch­ing down, and not just let­ting every­one iden­ti­fy how they iden­ti­fy are behav­ing in what is a shock­ing echo to telling some­one what eth­nic­i­ty they REALLY are or what gen­der they REALLY are….since obvi­ous­ly they know bet­ter than the actu­al per­son.

And while I’m sure such an arti­cle would def­i­nite­ly do the trick, solve this issue, crack the case, prob­a­bly end mean­ness online in gen­er­al, and maybe even stop cli­mate change, instead I just want­ed to exam­ine why, despite hat­ing labels, I kind of grudg­ing­ly say “pan­sex­u­al” as I hold out my flat hand and tilt its angle back and forth.

But what I real­ly want is for you to buy me lunch.

Avoided label #1

I think I am prob­a­bly on the “asex­u­al” spec­trum. Not very far, but I’m there. I would­n’t have thought I was in a mil­lion years if I weren’t reg­u­lar­ly exposed to so much thought about sex and sex­u­al­i­ty. I gen­er­al­ly like sex, often like it A LOT, and I’ve had my share of mul­ti­ple-times-a-day dur­ing a hon­ey­moon peri­od. But as I read peo­ple’s expe­ri­ences, the phrase that kept com­ing up for peo­ple on the mild end of the spec­trum was­n’t that they were repelled by sex or expe­ri­enced no sex­u­al inter­est or could­n’t ever get aroused, but “I can take it or leave it.“

Yes. That.

I have a great sex life…with myself. And part of the rea­son I would­n’t have pegged myself as “Ace” (hur hur “pegged myself”) if I had­n’t done a lot of read­ing about Ace expe­ri­ences is because of just how fre­quent­ly I have a great sex life with myself. 

I mean real­ly, REALLY good. I rock my world.

With oth­er peo­ple, though? Eh. It varies? I’m not apa­thet­ic. I’m not going to lay there and let some­one else do all the work. But my desire is based on enthu­si­asm. I’ll be the first to admit that when my part­ners kind of just want to phone it in and let me do the work, I’m usu­al­ly per­fect­ly hap­py to help them with that, but I’m prob­a­bly going to be more “leave it” than “take it” with myself if they’re not putting some enthu­si­asm in my direc­tion. I’m like a moon instead of a sun. I can be quite bright, but I’m not gen­er­at­ing the light so much as reflect­ing what is sent my way. If my part­ners are not enthu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pants (which can mean dis­tract­ed, unin­ter­est­ed, or pre­oc­cu­pied), approach sex like it is a banal work­ing of body mechan­ics, or are just pas­sive, my inter­est shriv­els up.

Sor­ry about that visu­al.

I DO NOT EXPERIENCE SEXUAL ATTRACTION TO PEOPLE WHO DO NOT DESIRE ME. 

None. I can admire some­one’s body. I can be attract­ed to a per­son. I can be inter­est­ed in what sex might be like with some­one. And in a rela­tion­ship with enough con­sis­tent, demon­strat­ed desire I can learn to make the first move and sig­nal my inter­est in being up for some­thing if the oth­er per­son is. (I’ve only recent­ly come into con­tact with a word that describes this—reciprosexual—and it’s on the ace spec­trum.) But there’s quite lit­er­al­ly no inter­est if it’s not a “hell yeah.” 

Which tends to mean some­one being into me is much more a fac­tor in whether I’m into them than any phys­i­cal attribute, atti­tude, or par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­is­tic.

But my Ace­ness (if that’s what you want to call it) does­n’t end there. (More about my ace-ness here: The Buy-Me-Lunch Answer About Asex­u­al­i­ty)

I (often) will take care of my part­ner with­out want­i­ng any­thing in return. I enjoy that act of ser­vice, but I could take it or leave it for me. Some­times, though, this caus­es some “gen­der reverse” sit­u­a­tions.  I’ve had part­ners who I need­ed to slow the heck down (and some who did­n’t after I said so). I have had part­ners who did­n’t engage me in enough fore­play (both in ways that were abrupt and off-putting too ear­ly in an encounter but also in ways that did­n’t turn me on enough to get off). I have had part­ners get off but leave me want­i­ng (some­times lit­er­al­ly rolling over to go to sleep while I con­tem­plat­ed sat­is­fy­ing myself). I have had part­ners use me with­out check­ing in. I’ve had part­ners focus on my orgasm like it’s the only thing that mat­tered in what we were doing. I’ve had part­ners ask every few sec­onds if I was going to come. I’ve had part­ners take it per­son­al­ly and even get upset when I was­n’t in the mood to have P.I.V. sex or was­n’t in the head­space to have an orgasm. I’ve had part­ners be coer­cive about sex, whing­ing to the point where I sim­ply did it because the fight we would have would be worse.

There’s a rea­son I usu­al­ly relate to wom­en’s accounts of dis­ap­point­ing sex much more than men’s. All of the above were AFAB women. 

I think a lot of guys have sto­ries of women who just thought they had to show up and be naked, or who were non respon­sive, and when I read them, it always seems like the guy did­n’t enjoy it much, but it also did­n’t exact­ly stop him. For me, there’s a cer­tain phys­i­o­log­i­cal response that makes just.…um.…plowing ahead (this shit writes itself some­times) rather dif­fi­cult. If I’m not into some­thing* my phys­i­o­log­i­cal response tends to come and go. [Yes, I’m talk­ing about an erec­tion. Every­one do a syn­chro­nized clutch of your pearls.] So that lack of enthu­si­asm some­times led to some pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar dis­as­ters in sit­u­a­tions where my part­ner real­ly did think that sex involved them being there and being pret­ty and what the hell is wrong with Chris that he just wants to go down on me again and call it a night?

I can take a lot of fore­play to warm up and even require some half­time coax­ing to stay there.

(*I fuck­ing swear I did­n’t even mean to do that one. It REALLY writes itself.)

It did­n’t take long to learn how emp­ty, unful­fill­ing, and frus­trat­ing casu­al sex could be as a crap­shoot with some­one’s will­ing­ness to work with my non-tra­di­tion­al sex­u­al response. There are absolute­ly folks whose expec­ta­tions of sex are utter­ly heteronormative––they expect to be drilled like an oil der­rick for five to ten min­utes by a rock-hard penis just for show­ing up and strip­ping down. I’ve nev­er been the guy who could make that hap­pen. I get ner­vous, I get over­heat­ed, I get desen­si­tized. I get too far into my own head. I want or need a break.

And the more het­ero­nor­ma­tive the expec­ta­tions of “what sex is,” the more of a let­down I tend to be. If I were the type to get a rag­ing erec­tion ear­ly and often, I might have been able to fake it through a few more of the encoun­ters I had in my twen­ties, but I’ve nev­er been that guy either. Sad­ly mine tends to come and go like the quirky neigh­bor in a sit­com. So once I’m clear­ly a let­down and focus­ing on that in my head, things tend to spi­ral down­ward pret­ty quick­ly.

Part­ners work­ing with me often made for spec­tac­u­lar events wor­thy of the songs of scops, but part­ners who expect­ed me to be Pornoguy McDrill­mas­ter made for events just as epic in their bad­ness. I’d have rather been spend­ing qual­i­ty time with myself (if you know what I mean) or, hell, even read­ing a good book. Being pret­ty take it or leave it about part­ners I did­n’t know were going to be sup­port­ive, accept­ing, pos­si­bly patient, and with a will­ing­ness to explore ways to get me off that weren’t the ol’ in and out––or even just accept that it was­n’t hap­pen­ing this time––has led me to most­ly con­sid­er trust and inti­ma­cy high premiums…things it’s awful­ly hard to find in some­one you don’t know.

Iron­i­cal­ly, I’ve had some love­ly Friends With Ben­e­fits rela­tion­ships, where the sex was even bet­ter than some of my romances.

If I’m not feel­ing safe and secure in a rela­tion­ship (whether it’s a friend­ship or a roman­tic one), my interest––and even my body mechanics––will betray me. I’m absolute­ly one of those peo­ple with whom the strength of the rela­tion­ship and the cal­iber of the sex are mir­rors. So while I am attract­ed to attrac­tive strangers, and I still sort of imag­ine an increas­ing­ly implau­si­ble sce­nario in which hours of deep con­ver­sa­tion leads to same-day con­nec­tion, sex has been dis­ap­point­ing enough that I real­ly want to know some­one is going to bring some­thing that will tip the scales from the fact that I could real­ly take it or leave it.

Let me tell ya, it makes play par­ties are a lit­tle weird for me when I don’t know any­one there, which is sort of hard to avoid unless you’ve been going to a lot of them in the same area for a while.

I’ve learned recent­ly this is true even when it’s not. For about a year, I’ve been on a pre­scrip­tion for Tadalafil, and while it cer­tain­ly makes for a much more respon­sive erec­tion and a few dou­ble, triple, and even quadru­ple head­ers that make me feel like I’m in my 20s again, as well as basi­cal­ly zero frus­trat­ing “Okay-maybe-we-can-try-on-me-again-lat­er-let’s-do-some-more-with-you” moments, I still find that I’m not hav­ing sex because I’m horny and want an orgasm. (I can get a great one of those by myself in a tenth of the time.) I’m still chas­ing that con­nec­tion and try­ing to make some­one I care about feel good (both of which can be achieved with­out sex and/or orgasm). I prob­a­bly COULD per­form with­out all the over­flow­ing trust, but I have no inter­est in it. It would just be body mechan­ics. Even with a rag­ing erection—I can STILL take it or leave it. 

Some peo­ple think this might put me on the “demi­sex­u­al” spec­trum. Maybe? It seems like the iron­ic fact that the more sex is treat­ed as PLAY rather than a solemn rit­u­al laden with expec­ta­tions, then the more I’m into it. Some peo­ple think that’s the oppo­site of demi. Cer­tain­ly I’ve nev­er found sex and love to need to go hand in hand. I’ve had great sex with­out love. I’ve had great love with­out sex.

But trust? And enthu­si­asm.  Those are all too vital.

That’s why you’re buy­ing me lunch instead of just get­ting a list of labels. This com­ment sec­tion is already going to be a trash fire of peo­ple insist­ing I am actu­al­ly X or am not real­ly Y.

Avoided label #2

If you’re on my Face­book page or watch my per­son­al updates close­ly, you prob­a­bly have real­ized that I’m “non-monog­a­mous.” (Eth­i­cal­ly so.) That means I have more than one rela­tion­ship at a time and that I am open and hon­est about all of them with every­one else. Some of those rela­tion­ships are deep and lov­ing. Some are friends I trust and bang. Some are local. Most are frus­trat­ing­ly far away. 

Twas not always so.

When I was a teenag­er, I was actu­al­ly kind of the jeal­ous type. I tried not to be, but I had a lot of cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming from a tox­ic cul­ture about how peo­ple who love each oth­er should act. (And, with­out going too far down the rab­bit hole, usu­al­ly my spidey sens­es were spot on, so I was­n’t like.… indis­crim­i­nate­ly jeal­ous.) There’s a lot to unpack about how I end­ed up mar­ried to the first per­son who expressed the slight­est attrac­tion to me (I was pret­ty messed up after a stint of being Mus­lim and feel­ing unlov­able), but suf­fice to say that in my mid-twen­ties, I was mar­ried to a Mor­mon (and was tech­ni­cal­ly Mor­mon myself for a hot minute), and anoth­er cou­ple invit­ed us to swing. While that did­n’t real­ly ever work out like gang­busters (and there are whole sto­ries here that I’m skim­ming over), the cou­ple’s check-out-all-this-dys­func­tion, bad-boy room­mate con­vinced my spouse of this “polyamory” thing I’d nev­er heard of, and I came home one day to find A) that I had been cheat­ed on and B) an ulti­ma­tum about being polyamorous if I want­ed to remain mar­ried.

Good times. Good times.

Today I would take just the fact OF the ulti­ma­tum (regard­less of any inter­est in the polyamory) and tell the per­son to get bent, but at the time I was a lit­tle ball of inse­cu­ri­ties and.….well, what­ev­er the oppo­site of bound­aries is.

And the rest is his­to­ry. I’ve been non-monog­a­mous ever since. That rela­tion­ship end­ed in the non-monog­a­mous ver­sion of cheat­ing (involv­ing break­ing of trust and agree­ments) a decade and a half ago [2022 edit—almost two decades ago], but the non-monogamy stuck. Most­ly because I’ve always BEEN with some­one who is polyamorous or engaged in some lev­el of non-monogamy from years and years of poly­fi Vs to “I’m just dat­ing a few peo­ple right now.” But I’m not like one of these peo­ple who says “If I weren’t eth­i­cal­ly non-monog­a­mous, I would just cheat.” or “I feel hard-wired to be non-monog­a­mous.” If some­how, tomor­row, all my polyamorous rela­tion­ships end­ed spec­tac­u­lar­ly and exact­ly at the same time some­one monog­a­mous came along who was worth giv­ing up three­some jokes total­ly real three­somes for, that would be great too.

I’m def­i­nite­ly not resent­ful (any­more) that I got coerced into being polyamorous. I’m pret­ty good at it these days, to be hon­est! In the last fif­teen years, I real­ly haven’t felt jeal­ousy. [2022 edit—okay, I’ve had to work on this again—my inse­cu­ri­ties in particular—when it comes to Rhap­sody.] I have felt some envy about peo­ple who have no end of suc­cess seduc­ing every­thing that moves and hook­ing up their wild group sex birth­day par­ties just by mak­ing a cou­ple of phone calls, but I real­ly don’t feel that sort of con­trol­ling jeal­ousy. I even spent a hot moment in ther­a­py wor­ried about whether that was a sign that I was keep­ing peo­ple out. (Turns out that’s pret­ty unlike­ly, giv­en that my oth­er feel­ings towards my loved ones can be quite loud.) My main thing is that agree­ments with partners––whether those agree­ments are monogamy or those agree­ments are that we send each oth­er a text mes­sage if we’re spend­ing the night with some­one else that night––are not one-sided.

There’s cer­tain­ly more to say about the agree­ments that I’m will­ing and not will­ing to get into with part­ners (I don’t like hier­ar­chi­cal polyamorous rela­tion­ship struc­tures that can “veto” peo­ple or expe­ri­ences, for exam­ple, and I focus on autonomy––or in a monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship, the per­son bet­ter under­stand that I require a LOT of per­son­al time and I am prob­a­bly going to fall short if they expect me to be a source of direct engaged stim­u­la­tion any time they’re not at work or asleep), but this approach­es the lev­el of detail that only some­one who were a part­ner would real­ly require.

I found the term “ambi­amorous” in an arti­cle a few months back and was delight­ed. (“Oh look. It me!”) It means could be monogamous…or I could be polyamorous. It real­ly depends on who I’m with and what they want. Per­fect. There’s a label I did like and dis­cov­ered a thing about myself that res­onates and oth­er peo­ple share and helps me not to feel so alone. (Some­times labels rule.)

Okay….well…..except for the fact that there is still a met­ric but­t­load of expla­na­tion required around what “non-monogamy” means, and every­one does it dif­fer­ent­ly.

Hence the lunch.

Avoided Label #3

This is more of a quick rest stop before we get to the main event, but it’s worth men­tion­ing because it gets tan­gled up with attrac­tions and affec­tions.

It would­n’t have occurred to me until recent­ly as I got fur­ther into the world of flu­id labels and bina­ry rejec­tion, but many of my rela­tion­ships with men, I would char­ac­ter­ize as “romances.” Often non-sex­u­al (though these days, not always). But romances nonethe­less. I want­ed to spend time with them, made ges­tures, paid for things if they could­n’t. In many cas­es they were as impor­tant or more so than my roman­tic or sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. Some­times there were dif­fi­cult fights and even, in some cas­es, breakups after a fash­ion. And I would be sick dur­ing our peri­ods of estrange­ment. There weren’t sex­u­al dynam­ics, but “pla­ton­ic” does­n’t quite cut it and “bro­mance” is too chic and overused.

Of course more and more as time went on and I reject­ed the het­ero­nor­ma­tive assump­tions I’d been raised with, I would con­sid­er what affec­tion (beyond the hi/bye hugs) would look like with these men (usu­al­ly quite pleas­ant). Even­tu­al­ly I’d even think about sex. Not that I was attract­ed to them nec­es­sar­i­ly, but with that trust and inti­ma­cy of friend­ship, if they want­ed to “play” as sort of an exten­sion of that deep friend­ship (or cer­tain­ly if they want­ed to have me join them play­ing with some­one I both trust­ed and was more con­ven­tion­al­ly attract­ed to), I have and would again.

It is most­ly a case of want­i­ng to make them hap­py and feel good and less of my own raw desire, but it hap­pens.

Avoided label #4

I’m not sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to mas­culin­i­ty.

The more mas­cu­line some­one is, the less I’m sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to them. This tends to go ten­fold for those car­ry­ing around expres­sions of TOXIC mas­culin­i­ty. I have friend­ships with mas­cu­line peo­ple, and some­times I form pla­ton­ic romances with those peo­ple (see above), and those could be pos­si­bly be sex­u­al if the guy want­ed it, but I’m not that into dudes. So MOST men don’t do it for me.

As the slid­er moves (towards androg­y­ny and then femme), my attrac­tion tends to grow. If I get whiplash look­ing across the room, it was prob­a­bly at some sort of femme aes­thet­ic. I should say here that there are a lot of things that can attract me to some­one oth­er than their out­ward appear­ance (as I men­tioned above), and I’ve fall­en hard and QUITE phys­i­cal­ly for peo­ple who are androg­y­nous and even a lit­tle masc, but that pure ini­tial phys­i­o­log­i­cal response tracks.

Because of this, for many years, I sim­ply called myself straight. My pla­ton­ic romances could be writ­ten off as real­ly good friend­ships (and they were), and none of those men had ever made a pass at me any­way, so that was moot. I just thought I had an active imag­i­na­tion and was­n’t a homo­phobe. I was most­ly attract­ed to women. Most­ly NOT attract­ed to men.

Then one day––a few years ago––it sort of just OCCURRED to me that I was hav­ing an on-again-off-again sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with some­one who is non-bina­ry. They had a lot of femme pre­sen­ta­tion, but they were gen­der neu­tral. And that led me to con­sid­er that one of my AFAB part­ners iden­ti­fies as a man. And I’m def­i­nite­ly attract­ed to oth­er men (even if that attrac­tion almost always exists because of some thread of femme). 

“I guess I’m not exact­ly straight,” I thought.

This is the rea­son that if forced to choose a one-word label, I reach for “pan­sex­u­al” instead of “bisex­u­al.” I’m still not that into cis-dudes or mas­culin­i­ty, although I’ve def­i­nite­ly had expe­ri­ences with bod­ies that had penis­es. MOSTLY I’m not into guys. So unless I’m using a very short­hand or shar­ing a meme, I don’t feel like “bi” REALLY applies because I feel like that sug­gests some­thing is there that isn’t (attrac­tion to men). But peo­ple I have been sex­u­al with (at this epiphany moment and since) have not all been women. Some have even been men. And I am sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to folks regard­less of their gen­der. And my attrac­tion ALSO hap­pens regard­less of peo­ple’s plumb­ing (a few logis­ti­cal alter­ations in what to do to make some­one feel good does­n’t real­ly mat­ter). The trust and THEIR enthu­si­asm is more impor­tant to me than the body con­fig­u­ra­tion. So I’m def­i­nite­ly not straight. I shy from that “bisex­u­al” label (per­son­al­ly, your mileage may very, you do you, your way right away at Burg­er King now) because my attrac­tion, while per­haps grow­ing more will­ing to play and exper­i­ment with men I trust and to whom I have con­nec­tion, has­n’t real­ly changed.

What changed was MY UNDERSTANDING OF GENDER. 

I don’t like labels, but some seem to hit clos­er than oth­ers. Some peo­ple insist I’m “queer.” (And I do use that word in some con­texts when I don’t feel the need to be at all pre­cise.) Some say “bisex­u­al.” (But I have my rea­sons for why that seems a slight­ly less good fit FOR ME.) Some say “pan.” (Look, maybe kin­da, but I’m still going to ask you to buy me lunch because one word isn’t going to cov­er it.)

I know I’m going to take heat for this arti­cle. I’ll lose some of my reli­gious fol­low­ers. Maybe even a cou­ple of friends from old jobs or high school. But I think those of us with the priv­i­lege and posi­tion to come out have GOT to be will­ing to talk about this stuff. To explore the com­plex­i­ties and the rain­bow of human expres­sion beyond labels. To under­stand that the full array of human vari­a­tion absolute­ly applies to one of our most com­mon behav­iors. But also just to talk about it AT ALL. 

The het­ero­nor­ma­tive world that seeks to push every­thing into one of two or––if VERY “open minded––three columns. (“Oh, but also please shut up about it if you’re in col­umn 2 or 3” because that’s “shov­ing it in our face.”)  And they com­plain bit­ter­ly that any­thing beyond that is “too com­pli­cat­ed.” (Usu­al­ly after mem­o­riz­ing all the Poke­mon and learn­ing Elvish from Lord of the Rings.) I’d hate to see dou­ble plus ungood lin­guis­tic min­i­mal­ism be allowed to define us when there’s a whole world of lunch­es out there with which to extrap­o­late on as blunt an instru­ment as a label. And absolute­ly they can’t be allowed to silence this dis­cus­sion in a broad­er sense.

It is also pos­si­ble that this arti­cle will not “age well.” This dis­course will final­ly gain “trac­tion” of a sort and one side or the oth­er will achieve a crit­i­cal mass in what are appropriate/inappropriate terms. Please check the date on the arti­cle before you assume I popped it off last night, will ya?

Still, when it comes to self-iden­ti­ties as com­plex as gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty, it is 31 fla­vors of obnox­ious, elit­ist, gate­keep­ery, and shit­ty to dic­tate to entire groups of peo­ple how they ought to iden­ti­fy, to pre­sume their (group) igno­rance of any dis­course, to “No True Scots­man” the label you insist they REALLY have while arbi­trat­ing that lan­guage only ever changes in the way you pro­claim it to have changed (thus the label you deem the One True Label™ can­not pos­si­bly be taint­ed in any mind), and pro­claim­ing that any­one who fails to imme­di­ate­ly fall in line with their sug­ges­tion is some fla­vor or anoth­er of big­ot.

.…rather than sim­ply take the two god­damned min­utes to ask some­one why they picked that label and lis­ten with a lit­tle good faith under­stand­ing.

Also, in my case, buy me lunch.

[If you would like to actu­al­ly buy me lunch, feel wel­come (per­haps even encour­aged?) to drop a cou­ple of bucks into the tip jar.]

Next: The Buy-Me-Lunch Answer About Being Asex­u­al but Lov­ing Sex

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