It's bullshit.

If aces can teach us anything, it's that you do not need to be sexually attracted to someone to have sex with them, let along to date them. Sex workers and sluts (complimentary, admiring) also know this and can teach us.

If you are a cis woman dating cis men and complaining about it, that is a choice you are making. And the beauty of this fact is that it means you could choose differently.

You are not a victim of your birth. Your fate is not predetermined. You were not born this way.

Everyday you make decisions to pursue (or not pursue) cishet relationships, and if you so desire, you could choose differently.

It's a travesty that people can say in the same breath that gender is constructed, and that they were born cis or trans or straight or gay or whatever.

Gender is a performance. That means cis-gender as much as trans-gender. And if we follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion, we can see that heterosexuality is just as much of a performance. How can you be inherently, fundamentally heterosexual if gender doesn't exist in a static, external, fundamental way? It doesn't add up.

You can choose differently; we all can.

The game is fake. The stakes - the stakes are real. It's not an accident or a personal moral failing to be straight or cis. There is an entire society, a network of institutional power coercing you to be this way.

Be suspicious of your own desires! Critically examine your internal thoughts and feelings, to find the difference between what you truly desire and what desires were implanted in you through social conditioning. When your desires seem to align with dominant systems of power and supremacy, be extra suspicious of your own mind!

Let yourself explore, daydream, experiment. If you've never even let yourself imagine a different way of organizing your life, how can you know what you truly desire?

It's 2024. You can choose to be queer. You can choose to push back against hegemonic, supremacist culture. You can reject everything you thought you knew about yourself and build a new identity from scratch, if you wish. You can love in new and expansive ways.

Why am I so absent from my own life? Why am I still so afraid to be perceived, to act in a way that might leave a mark, to change anything or influence anyone? A passive observer.

I want to reach out and I don't. I miss my friends and I have nothing to say. I send a couple emoji reactions so they know I'm still here, still thinking of them, still watching and laughing along, but we both know it's inadequate.

When we do talk it's like no time has passed, we laugh and joke and banter, but about the past, the future, anything but right now. Anything about how I'm struggling.

I don't want to post this or even write it, why would anyone care about this disjointed and deeply personal sketch? And if it's just for me, shouldn't it stay in my own private journal? But if the point is to start to will myself back into the public view, then I can't accomplish that by keeping it to myself.

I guess I am still recovering from publicly coming out. If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, it makes sense that I would retreat into myself, go invisible again.

In a lot of ways, I tried my hardest to be seen on my terms, to define myself to a wider audience, and I still came up short. Most saw what they wanted to see, not what I was saying about myself, not me. They saw the narratives that were familiar, that they had heard before, and even while saying that they understood and accepted me, they proved that they truly did not.

So what is the point of trying to be perceived?

I am painting the walls of my apartment, filling nicks and holes in the drywall, obsessing over the surface as if it could fill the holes in me. Erasing all signs of contact, of life living within these walls. Zooming in on every tiny imperfection makes it hard to imagine that there is anything beyond these walls.