Hi -- I am new here! Happy to meet you all! I've been questioning my orientation for a long time, and although it was never a big issue, I am starting to feel I need some clarity about myself. I don't know if there's a label for my flavour of queerness, I don't know if I need one at all -- but I certainly need to understand. I was born female. I spent all my childhood wanting to be a boy, dressing like a boy, playing with the boys, trying to pee standing up (my only theoretically liberal family wasn't happy-happy with that and even sent me to a psychologist for a while, but I honestly don't remember the issue being a huge concern, overall). As far as attraction goes, I'd say that I was very naive and equally curious of boys and girls. Puberty changed it all: I became somewhat feminine in appearance and started to have crushes on boys, although I was never a girly girl. I was sexually very precocious with guys, but I didn't have experiences with girls until I was twenty or twenty-two. I didn't think much of it at the time. In fact, I never really questioned my sexuality for most of my life. My sexuality, for most of my life, just "was". In retrospective, I wonder if I would have better started to question it much earlier. Anyway... Despite being very independent, both materially and psychologically, from my early twenties, I had and I still have a strong need for close companionship. The prevalent cultural models (nuclear family), I realise, didn't appeal me in the least, but I didn't see any alternative that could bear the same close degree of intimacy I was yearning for. As a result, I flirted with the idea for longer than necessary, and I had a few relatively long relationships with guys, all eventually dissolved for one reason or another. Eventually I fell for a dashing bisexual and tightly closeted fellow engineer: we had a stormy relationship for a few years, which was the pivotal period of my love life. When we broke off, I left the country :smilewave :icon_bigg So, here I am, now settled into The Foreign Big City. I never had any full-fledged relationship since. I've, in time, dreamt about or hang out with quite a few very feminine men (who unavoidably turn out to be gay or bi) and some very masculine women, with whom I have little clue on how to proceed to the further stages of the courtship. I am clearly attracted by androgynous types, but I wouldn't define myself as bisexual (after all, masculine men and feminine women have no appeal to me), nor straight (if not for a very lenient definition of straight), nor lesbian (I am not especially partial to women). To further complicate things, I am rarely attracted by anyone. My (platonic) best friend thinks I border on asexual (after all, I spend most weekends with him, instead of looking for trouble..). As for gender identity, I see myself as an "it", broadly speaking. I sometimes dress as a man (unlike men, I can very easily get away with it), sometimes as a woman. I don't care much, tbh. I feel I am not taking my sexual and sentimental life seriously enough. I think of myself as queer but I have no more accurate definition for myself, which also prevent me to go out and meet the community (which one, after all?), which distresses me: I don't know where to look for companionship or sense of belonging. My platonic friends are almost all gay or bi but again, I feel like I am something else. Or nothing. It's all a very confusing issue and I wonder if I am tackling the problem from the wrong end. Maybe instead of being here and question what I am I should go out and just be whatever I am. I don't know.
Depends from the days, or from which side of my character is under the metaphorical spotlight at any given moment; but whatever identification I have at any given moment is never strong neither completely comfortable. Overall, I am an "it".
ok, you sound non-binary to me, couldnt think of the term, http://nonbinary.org/wiki/Nonbinary_gender here is some info about it
Very interesting! Thank you for that!! ---------- Post added 28th Jun 2014 at 02:10 PM ---------- Gosh, indeed, it seems very much like me. ---------- Post added 28th Jun 2014 at 02:10 PM ---------- Gosh, indeed, it seems very much like me.
I feel that I have to clarify what being bisexual actually is. It's not wierd that you don't have the right view, it's common, but there's more to it than just liking cis-genders. As a bisexual, you don't care about gender. What you like, is based on personal preferences. It's got nothing to do with the sexuality. My preference is typically bisexual, manly men and womanly women. Even though that might be the case, if I click with someone on a personal level, I don't care if they aren't super masculine or a pure lady. It's about the person (the word person is the key). I'd say that you are bisexual with a special preference, like we all have. Other than that, what's said above (I've got no clue when it comes to which gender, since I'm a man in a manly body) seems to be something you can relate to, and that's awesome. Just take a second to think about what bisexuality actually is, because I think (think) you're playing for the same teams as I am. Good luck!
Thank you very much Rumpletubb, and good luck to you too What you describe as your orientation, I would call it pansexual, possibly...? I might be totally wrong (at the end of the day, these are my very first steps in the world of orientation definition) but I used to think that bisexual has no connotation of relative "gender blindness" like the one you describe. I always thought of bisexuality, simplifying much, like being "[somewhat] gay and [somewhat] straight at the same time", but not gender-indifferent. But again, what do I know really? I'd say that, as far as I am concerned, I am attracted virtually only to feminine men and androgynous women, in principle; I'd love to be able to say that I don't react especially to gender cues, but it seems I do, or at least I react positively to their absence and/or ambiguity. Naturally, I am talking about a skin-deep kind of attraction: like you point out, then, the development of "real" attraction, depends on the person, and many ineffable other factors. In truth, I am willing to accept any definition of my sexuality as long as it feels comfortable: I mean, acceptance, per se, won't be a problem when I'll have grasped the current state of things. Understanding will hopefully allow me to take a sure stance. Currently I am very much in a state of unease, feeling almost like an intruder when in an lgbt environment and totally out of place when in a straight scene. On a lighter note, some of my gay friends use to make fun of the "ridiculous elongation" to which the lgbt acronym (lgbta++) is subject in recent times, by being added more letters to accommodate more orientations, but I am quite happy of such elongation; if I wait a bit more, there will be a letter added that describes me too (at the moment, possibly c for clueless, although the article about nonbinary genders has already raised my spirits a great deal.).
