#lesbian nonbinary

Shoes ready for pride

Left:

Asexual

Polysexual

Gay

Pansexual

Transgender

Queer/LGBT

Right:

Aromantic

Genderfluid

Genderqueer

Bisexual

Lesbian

Nonbinary

no matter the pronouns

no matter the sexuality

no matter the weight

no matter the neurodivergence

no matter the body

no matter the disability

no matter the age

no matter the amount of dysphoria

no matter the skin tone

no matter the religion

Original character! I adopted them from my friend @/yitsuji on Twitter and i love him to bits :)

I know this topic isn’t the main focus of gender/sexuality related tumblr discourse at the moment but this is something I wanted to talk about for quite some time now and I finally found the time to do so.

Before I actually share my opinion, I think it’s important to get some definitions straight:

+ A nonbinary transperson is someone who experiences atypical dysphoria and therefore identifies neither as man nor as woman

I know discussions about gay cispeople and their attraction towards transpeople of their own gender are a pretty hot take at the moment and also I’m aware that not everyone believes nonbinary transpeople exist, but please let’s push that aside for a minute and just focuss on the problem that occurs with calling nonbinary transpeople gay or lesbian.

For nonbinary transpeople - as well as for binary transpeople and everyone else - it’s pretty important to know that their gender identity gets respected. “Gay” and “Lesbian” are binary terms. So I ask you: how can binary terms validate the identity of nonbinary people? My biggest issue is the term “nonbinary lesbian”. While I don’t want to dig too deep into this topic, I have to mention that I consider this term especially harmful, to lesbians as well as to nonbinary transgender people. I see “nonbinary lesbian” becoming an equivalent to “butch” and therefore pretending (gay) gender-nonconforming women shoudn’t even be considered women anymore. While “lesbian” strictly refers to women who are exclusively attracted to other women, “gay” - even if mostly used for homosexual men - can be used for both binary genders.

So could you say gay nonbinary transpeople - using it only for those individuals who are nonbinary and are attracted to other nonbinary transpeople exclusively - are a real thing? In my opinion: No. No matter how hard you try, erasing the fact that nonbinary transpeople are either assigned male or female at birth won’t work. There is no such thing as a generally nonbinary body. If you’re gay you might have a certain preference for this or that type of men, but you will be attracted to a male body, including male genitals. Same goes for lesbians with being attracted to female bodies and female genitals. Yes some people are able to deal with genitals of the opposite sex if dating a transperson of their own gender, but that’s not the norm. But again, I ask you: what does exclusive attraction to nonbinary transpeople look like, if there is nothing to break a nonbinary body down to in the first place. You can rage about the fact that it’s “not all about the body/genitalia” and you’re right with that. But it’s still a huge thing when it comes to our sexuality. We can’t just ignore our bodies and our preferences when it comes to other peoples genitalia just because someone decides it’s “transphobic” or whatever.

Let’s try to get back on track. The atypical dysporia of nonbinary transpeople leads to them wishing for a physical appereance that doesn’t fit the binary. They might want to have no sexual characteristics at all, they might want all of them at once, they might wish to have an unusual combination in between both extremes - depending on their certain kind of dysphoria. Because there are so many different possibilities, you can’t pin it down to being exclusively attracted to nonbinary transpeople.

But what if you’re nonbinary and exclusively attracted to men/women? Does it make you straight no matter what? No, I don’t think so either. Straight is also a binary term, and to use it for nonbinary individuals is about as wrong as calling them gay.

So, which terms did tumblr/people in general come up with describing the sexual orientations of nonbinary transpeople?

Trixic instead of Lesbian: While some people mention that trixic doesn’t has to be used to describe nonbinary transpeople who are exclusively attracted to women it’s generally used as a term for those who are nblw only. Toric instead of Gay: As well as trixic, some state it’s not an exclusive term, but it’s mostly used as such and describes those who are nblm only. Orbisian: Another term for trixic Quadrisian: Another term for toric Feminamoric: Another term for trixic, especially those who are romantically attracted to women exclusively Viramoric: Another term for toric, especially those who are attracted to men exclusively

I also found the terms “gai” and “strayt”, defined as “experiencing their attraction as gay/straight but in a nonbinary way”. Both terms to me don’t really make sense, since as mentioned above, nonbinary transpeople can’t really be gay in a first place. As for straight/strayt I could somewhat get myself to accept this term but it wouldn’t be really telling because a straight nonbinary person could either be:

nblw (trixic)

nblm (toric)

and maybe also nblm + nblw (I personally would prefer not to use “strayt” to describe this kind of people since they’re bisexual in my opinion but then again I doubt that I’d use “straight” in the first place, so i won’t dig into this one too deep either)

Therefore I’d ignore both terms all together because it’d lead to too much confusion.