#orientation stuff

"sapphic" is such a good identity for me.

when I identified as a lesbian, I clung to it as a way to be in denial about my gender. and nonbinary lesbians exist, but I didn't know that then. I don't think the identity could ever feel right to me again.

besides that, I might not be able to count. or I might be. I honestly have no idea if I'm occasionally attracted to very specific men or if I just want to be able to look like them—but I can't feel right identifying as bi either, because it might or might not be true.

but loving women and other enby sapphics is a part of my identity, and I do it with the context of my own relationship with gender, and it influences that relationship.

In honor of Pride, here’s a short list of some of my favorite LGBT characters and their orientations; Cannon or personal HCs:

Deran Cody - Gay (Dominate & Top)

Ian Gallagher - Gay (Verse)

Mickey Milkovich - Gay (Bottom & proud of it!)

Daryl Dixon - Asexual (Sex repulsed) & Heteromantic

Sherlock Holmes - Asexual (Sex neutral) & Biromantic

Robbie the Zombie - Asexual (Sex Positive) & Aromantic

Captain Jack Harkness - Pansexual & Demiromantic

Venus - Transgender (M-F)

Jackieboy Man - Transgender (F-M) & Pansexual

Michonne - Bisexual

Kinda hard to narrow it down. But these are just some of the characters I find most impactful & that stick out to me.

You can’t say “only X people can be Y” and then complain that people who are not X don’t want to identify as Y anymore and create something only for themselves instead.

You are either in favor of people being able to have specific groupings, or in favor of including everyone into broader groupings. And when I mean everyone, I also mean people you won’t be able to force into what you wished the group was restricted to.

what’s the point in being a woman if i’m not allowed to be an autistic woman, a disabled woman, an unashamed woman, a woman who says yes and no and means each one? where’s the joy in womanhood if it constrains me so tightly i can hardly breathe?

i want to find out what it means to exist as a woman fully and without constraint, to be a woman without men, to be a woman who is loved and valued and accepted without having to struggle to be small and weak and delicate and decorative enough to make men comfortable.

I struggle with related feelings. Despite being a card carrying lesbian, every few years I have tried to convince myself ‘to try a man again’. Sometimes I have felt attraction to men; it is very brief and burns out and never turns into the kind of committed loving and sexual attraction I have had with women and do have with women extremely consistently. In the end, I identify as lesbian because I could never see myself having a relationship with a man the way I do with a woman; and even if in my orientation there is some wiggle, my partners are women; when I have children, I will raise them with another woman; and even if I could bond with a man in the same way I have with a woman, it doesn’t really matter that much because I have no need of men.

This being said, identify the way you feel most comfortable. If you can have attraction or relationships with men and you feel most comfortable describing yourself as bi, then do so. If you end up realising it is so lopsided that you feel it represents who you are more to identify as a lesbian-do that! Don’t feel pressured to let a label decide who you are; try to use them to express who you really are and feel comfortable with yourself. 

That’s my opinion, at any rate.