Toric culture is going through the nblm tag because you’re pretty sure your ideal relationship is with a man. And almost all of it also being tagged as gay or mlm. And you’re not gay. You don’t think you’re gay.
And you know you have no right to tell other torics/nblms that they can’t also be mlm or call themselves gay. But it feels like that’s all there is? There’s nothing else. It’s a bit dysphoria-inducing? I don’t know. I don’t know how connected to manhood (or womanhood) I really am at all.
I’m honestly debating calling myself toric and enbyhet? Just to hammer home the “not gay” part. But then I feel I’m endorsing “the only two options are gay or straight”. And endorsing the “nonbinaries are straights trying to feel special and oppressed”.
It really does not help that my first and last kind-of-sort-of “relationship” with a guy ended with him threatening to beat me some time after I came out as nonbinary. Yeah. That. It was fucked. So every so often I remember that and think “your exact label doesn’t matter, you’ll probably never seek out a relationship after that”.
It’s the night before Pride month, I should not be stressing over labels or anything like that. I should be enjoying it. As a nonbinary person.
I’m sorry, anon, I think most enben understand that feeling and it really isn’t fair that our own community makes us feel so nonexistent. People are so eager to shout stuff like ‘abolish gender’ but then turn around and grip unto the sexuality binary like it doesn’t do just as much harm as the gender binary. Even in queer spaces everyone who’s in a relationship is expected to take on a masculine or feminine role and most of the time people don’t even notice. Sometimes you force that upon yourself and it’s a constant struggle. Labels like diamoric, enbian or toric are supposed to uplift nonbinary people and be a safe way to describe relationships/attraction without falling into roles that don’t fit you but it can be so hard to stick to that when everyone seems to either ignore them on purpose or conflate them with binary terms that completely defeat their purpose.
People can be so cruel to enben and our language and in turn we can be so harsh on ourselves. Ultimately you should build your identity around the labels (or lack thereof) that make you safe and comfortable. It doesn’t matter what stereotype you’re ‘perpetrating’ we don’t exist to be the perfect representation of nonbinary as a concept. You are most nonbinary the way you are even if it can be hard to remember sometimes. Your identity and comfort matter.
I wish you a great Pride month, anon, and I hope this helped even a little. Please take care of yourself, my thoughts are with you.