Hey I have a very silly question/ thing that I am experiencing: so I broke up with my not at all good to me-straight man partner of 14 years about 9 months ago. And I've been so lucky to be dating a lot of queer women since then!! Yay!! I had been id-ing as nonbinary and I think I might have really pushed myself back into the closet during that relationship and I'm actually more solidly transmasc seeing as the first thing I did post breakup is buy a binder that fits, I've worn nothing but since, have admitted to myself that if money weren't an issue I'd actually really be down for top surgery, I'm fine with he/him tho they/them still feels comfier and if I wasn't already fighting acne/dealing with high emotions I'd be interested in T. All that to say, I look like a dyke, and I think dykes are really hot don't get me wrong, but I think maybe I shouldn't date lesbians? Cuz I'm not really a woman at all? Is that stupid, do lesbians actually care, am I overthinking everything 😂 also I changed my name to Thomas legally in hs (and I love the hell out of it) if that matters 😂
The thing is, everybody has their own unique relationship to sexual orientation and gender labels. And as a rule, each person feels that relationship really really strongly and might not really understand or even accept others who take a different point of view.
When I was newer into my transition, I found it very dysphoric to date anybody who was lesbian identified. I felt that I was being gendered as a woman by virtue of the person's identity leaning that way. I sought out a lot of sex from gay cis men because I thought I needed them to validate my identity as a gay man.
Now, looking back, a majority of my serious partners in the last several years are in some way lesbian identified, but are also all nonbinary people. And my gender has changed. so a lot of the shit i used to spend a lot of energy worrying about was really just keeping me from being in the moment with the people i was with and just letting us both be ourselves.
Now that I feel a lot more comfortable with myself, I don't really care how somebody identifies. I care about whether or not I like them and I want to fuck them. In the past year I have had sex with gay men, lesbians, enbies, straight men, heteroflexible men UGH, and a whole whole whole lot of bi people. nobody could guess who the fuck was who in that category if you took each one of those people and lined them up. or even if you looked at them in the wild at the events or apps where i met them. you literally could not tell who was what gender or what orientation, not even if you looked at the people they fuck.
it's chaos. none of this shit means anything. and yet it also means a lot to people.
it just is that way. i find the labels mean a lot more and feel more in need of harsh defending when a person is feeling insecure and not seen. once you have an accepting community, a body you can make a home of, a good life, some good sex, how anybody theorizes about it doesn't really matter. but that's me.
You do not need anybody to tell you that you are allowed to identify one way or the other, and you do not need the entire community's sign off to participate in a queer space. and thank fucking god because none of us would belong anywhere if we did. there are no passports required to enter queer fuck ville. no borders no papers no birth certificates no labels that we are trapped under babey. your sexual orientation or gender identity can change in the middle of coitus if you want it to. who da fuck cares.
Instead of thinking of this stuff in terms of pure identity, i like to think of it in terms of behavior. Who are you into? What do you want to do with them? Who is into you? What do they want to do with you? instead of making it all so theoretical let's keep it concrete.
Lots of lesbian identified people have sex with people who are not women. That's just the facts. Lots of lesbians are not women. That's also the facts. some people hate it because they feel like their identities are somehow invalidated by the identities of other people, but that's actually an incredibly fragile and insecure worldview. it is really not anybody's business how another person identifies.
Let people decide for themselves whether or not they want to be with you. You don't have to reject yourself in advance. That would be denying both you and your potential partners a lot of agency, and being queer is about freedom from constraint.
