Classification

Every few months, I take some time to take a step back and wonder how to fit my gender and sexuality into categories, because though I keep learning more about myself, it's become increasingly intuitive as the subject matter has become more complicated. This is the product of my attempted linguistic exploration.

It's clear that I can't really call myself bisexual. I never had internal conflict over the presence of sexual attraction to both male and female people, and I definitely do not relate to men and women the same way romantically/sexually, if they must be put in a binary. There's a lot more to speak of on the girly end of the spectrum. But it has also become clear that I am not gay - there is, and has always been, some kind of an attraction to male people, sometimes, in certain contexts, though perhaps not to masculinity. I've played with the label "pan," but it doesn't work, either - see, I definitely understand women much more sexually than men. This past semester, I've played with the label "lesbian," and although I love the feeling of the label just because of the associations I have with the word and the way lesbian identity is spun into culture, it doesn't technically fit me very well.

What attracted me to the label "pan" is that there is no strict binary in the way I understand gender and sexuality, and neither is there a strict binary in my attraction to different genders and sexualities. So to say that I am gay or bi or pan is much too simple - I'm a huge conglomeration of the bunch. I have read writing and seen videos and heard stories from asexual people, and pansexual people, and bisexual people, and lesbian and gay and queer and trans and non-monogendered people, and pieces from basically every group has suited me in one way or another, perhaps with the exception of the uber-flamboyant crossdressing twink.

Almost exclusively, my romantic attractions are to femininity - to women and the femininity I see in men. Even while dating a man, among the times I was most attracted to him was once when he was sleeping, and brushing the hair up off of his forehead, it occurred to me that he looked like a little girl, with his flushed cheeks and curled lashes. Among the times I felt most resilient, I was able to put chains on the cars' tires for him when he was struggling to, and when I found that my hands were no smaller than his. My romantic instincts are to protect, to defend, to flatter, to become very close, and my infatuations are with pretty things, with beauty, with softness, with smiles, with cuteness. Though those aren't necessarily the primary characteristics of the people I'm attracted to, they are the pieces that I latch onto romantically. I'm very aware that this ties into a maternal instinct, and that my desire to protect and provide have feminine elements. I'm not entirely sure why those are generally perceived as primarily masculine roles - it's definitely a blend of both for me.

My romantic instincts are both active and passive - though noticeably more active than passive. I swell with pride when I'm able to do something that makes me seem... well, not tough, but strong and capable and badass. I love the idea of being able to fix something for someone, to show off by climbing or carrying stuff, to make something better that was broken - broken hearts as much as broken chairs, and broken clothing as much as broken furniture or appliances. There are just certain skills I have been given more of an opportunity to learn than others. I desire to be swept off my feet as much as to sweep someone else off their feet, to be prince charming as much as to be princess. I want to nurture as much as to be the "head" of a household - they're flip sides of the same coin to me. Imagining a world where these things are all possible, where I'm forced into neither mold - that makes me smile, and it gives me butterflies. I could never be the straight woman in a relationship with a straight man, nor do I imagine I would ever be quite comfortable being the queer woman in a relationship with a queer man. I hope for a day when I'm in a relationship with a woman that allows me to blend gender rolls without limiting me to a stereotype or gender. I hope that this can come true.

Sexually, I'm difficult for me to figure out. I'm know I find many, many women attractive, because there are many, many women around me that I find attractive on a daily basis. I know almost none of these people, and they're probably all straight, given the demographics, but discovering that it's possible to understand people this way has been enlightening to me. Finding lesbians bloggers on Tumblr was - well, a whole new world, and I have had more experiences than one where sleeping or changing in the same room as other women was either terribly awkward or guilty pleasure. I have never in my life looked at a naked or scantily-clothed male body (that I was completely sure was male) and been turned on. The more masculine it gets, the less attractive I find it. Big muscles? Nope. Broad shoulders? Nope. Big and tall? Nope. Super strong? Nope. Roughly equal to me? Perfect. Growing up, I never at all understood how people were always so attracted to men in bands or magazines or movies. I always just figured it was a girly thing, and that no one I considered sane felt things like that. Apparently, that's not a thing.

But I'm not completely opposed to beard shadows. I'm not completely opposed to penises - especially on women, or when I think of them as really, really big clitorises. (You may laugh now.) I'm not completely opposed to bigger feet, or being taller than me, again, especially when it's a woman. Neither am I put off by fairly masculine presentation in terms of short hair and T-shirts and flannel and such - in fact, completely feminine presentation makes me uncomfortable, too. I like a dash of queer here and there. But when it comes to physicality, I'm pretty stinkin' gay. Boobs? Yes, please. Nether regions? Yes. Ass? Yes. Hips? Yes. More of all of the above? Yes. I am certainly not asexual. And almost all of this applies to men, to some extent, just not as much, because they have less of it than women.

As a side note, a couple months after I had come out to myself, before I had read nearly enough of anything to know how naïve I sounded when I said this, I was in a class with my History teacher - I believe it was on Augustine's Confessions, though that class prompted all kinds of discussions. At one point, I theorized philosophically that the reason women were so much more objectified by the media was that they had curves and men didn't, and that one can't be attracted to something that's not there. I remember the baffled, amused, disbelieving look on Mr. Sorenen's face, now, and I know now that I outed myself to him in that moment, completely without intention. Nice going, Marié.

Anyways, so every now and then I'll see someone, or a picture of someone, and think, Huh, hot. And then - Wait, what?! What just happened? That's a man! And then I'll sit there staring at the picture, or awkwardly trying to remember the person's face, for a prolonged period of time, trying to figure out what was attractive to me. And with the exception of beard shadows, which I still can't figure out, it's the eyelashes and bright eyes and cute smiles and alive expressions that do it for me. The moment a google search finds them shirtless, the curiosity ends. Because there's just no desire, and it's as simple as that.

When I was trying to think of myself as completely gay, I was a bit conflicted by the extent to which I had been physically attracted to my boyfriend. Honestly, I was obnoxiously flirtatious and touchy and all that. It was a source of great comfort for me, and most all physical interactions I had with him were moments of incredible beauty to me. But as I wrote at the height of my twitterpated infatuation, "the feeling is a compulsion to seek closeness. Not sex - not that. I've actually never straight-up lusted after him, which is 1) surprising to me, given that I've had sexual desires in the past; 2) in a very small way I don't really want to talk about, it's worrying, almost, as if...let's put it this way - I know I would've been lusting like crazy after just about any girl at this point. I don't know whether to be afraid something's wrong or grateful that God's given me freedom from all that while there's no chance I can do anything with it. But what I feel now is not sexual in any way. Just a desire for closeness, albeit physical closeness."

I remember those moments of physical attraction, which I couldn't at all describe, at the time. It's completely different from sexual attraction, but it is certainly physical. The desire to be with that person and to communicate with touch to someone that they are as beautiful as they seem to you is not the desire to feel, to have, to experience, to seek sexual gratification from that beauty. The latter can be separated from love; the former cannot. The latter comes, for me, both on its own and accompanying the former when it's coupled to the feminine spectrum; it never exists at all on the masculine spectrum.

Where that brings me is the conclusion that toward cisgendered, straight, un-queer male people, I am sex-positive asexual hetero-romantic. (Click here if the idea of a sexual asexual person is confusing to you, as it was to me.) In regard to lesbians of almost every type but the super butch, I am sexual and romantic and physical and everything else to a pretty average degree, and they all mix together in such a way that I feel most comfortable moving in that frame of mind. I'm okay with the label "lesbian," and I like using it, but I'm not limited to it - I like that freedom. Especially in the realm of trans* people, things are pretty open to interpretation and change.

So, for now, I guess I will just settle for "queer."