LGBT

Public Service Reminder: Sexual Orientation is Internal

Kate Sloan

I’ve been engaging in a lot of conversations lately about various aspects of queer sexuality – what else is new? – and it occurred to me that a lot of people hold a huge misconception about sexual orientation.

Many people think you can tell a person’s sexual orientation from how they look, move, or speak. This could not be further from the truth.

In fact, you can never actually know someone’s sexual orientation unless they tell it to you in no uncertain terms. It’s just not something that can be definitively read. Doesn’t matter how good you think your “gaydar” is, or how much you think you know the “signs” – there’s literally no way to know for sure how someone identifies, unless they tell you themselves.

This extends to gender identity and trans* status, too. I’ve heard all too many people claim they’ve “never met a trans person,” but the thing is, they don’t know that. There aren’t any foolproof, telltale signs. Thinking you know whether someone is trans is as ignorant as thinking you know someone’s STI status just by looking at them – you don’t. There’s no way you could.

As a queer femme in a relationship with a dude, I get misread all the time. I understand perfectly well why it happens – I “look straight” (i.e. girly and not particularly “alternative” in any way), and I’m often holding hands with a member of the opposite sex. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. I recall the time I got booed at a Pride event for kissing my boyfriend, and how hurtful that was. That person assumed I was straight. They don’t know me and they don’t know what’s in my heart, but they thought they did, and that hurts.

But the thing is, practically everyone does it. I did it myself, the other day. A guy I volunteer with, who I’d always assumed was gay because he’d been telling me about the man he was seeing, suddenly mentioned that he doesn’t identify as gay. I still don’t know how he does identify, but it was a great reminder that we all need to stop making so many assumptions and just have the courage to ask if we’re curious. It’s been my experience, in queer and trans* communities, that asking someone “What do you identify as?” or “What pronouns do you use?” or “What kind of person are you usually attracted to?” is not frowned upon, but instead, almost always welcomed. People love to talk about themselves, especially if asked in a respectful, genuinely interested way.

How do you identify? Where do you lie on the Kinsey scale? Do you ever get misread for an identity that doesn’t fit you? How do you deal with that?

Happy Pride!

Kate Sloan

For those of you who celebrate Pride, I hope it is/was/will be a fantastically fun time for you this year.

I wish that you get covered in rainbow glitter, that somehow rinses off easily when you want it to. (Easily rinsable glitter is a myth, but a girl can dream.)

I wish you lots of hot strangers of the gender(s) you find attractive, looking you up and down as you sashay past.

I wish you plenty of roadside booths stocked with T-shirts with silly slogans, sparkly cowboy hats, and hand-blown glass dildos in Pride colors.

I wish you epic dance parties in dark sweaty clubs, and exactly as much physical contact from strangers as you desire, whether that’s none at all or a whole lot.

I wish you a reverential experience that reminds you of why it’s so crucial to feel outrageously proud of who you are.

I wish you total self-acceptance and, in fact, self-adoration.

Happy Pride, darlings! I’ll see you tomorrow for more sex toy talk.
-G.J.

The “Cis” Issue

Kate Sloan

I created this blog as a place to discuss sex toys and sexuality. However, I knew there would be other tangential topics covered here, because, for anyone who cares strongly about sex, it is inevitably bound up with politics. Fighting for what you want in bed is connected to fighting for how you want the world to view sex: it’s all about bringing down walls and destroying shame in any way you can.

For the past nine months, I’ve been volunteering at an LGBTQ organization, and for the two years before that, I volunteered in a trans-and-genderqueer-specific space (I’m not trans, myself, but have dated a trans person, been friends with trans people, and consider myself an ally). In all that time, my knowledge and understanding of trans issues has steadily grown, and I wanted to talk a bit about that today.

I’ve recently gotten into two different debates with two different people online about the term “cis.” Incase you don’t know, cis (shortened from cissexual or cisgender) simply means “not trans” – i.e. born with a body that matches one’s gender identity. I’m a cis female, for example, because my body indicated that I was female when I was born, and I have grown up to feel that I am, indeed, female.

The people I got into debates with had two different points to make, but they were essentially the same thing, because they came from a similar place of ignorant cis privilege:
1. “Though my body has always matched my gender identity, I hate being called cis because it has a negative connotation. If someone called me cis, I would correct them.”
2. “The term cis is unnecessary. Why not just differentiate people as ‘trans’ or ‘not trans’?”

These arguments made me so angry because the people who made them were totally unwilling to listen to reason. Having never experienced trans-ness or apparently been around trans people, they couldn’t understand the hurtfulness, political incorrectness, and ignorance of what they were saying. So I’d like to respond to these two points here, maybe so I can clear up these issues for cis people who may be wondering about the same things, but want to be more conscientious about their stance.

In response to the first argument: First off, if your body has always matched your gender identity, you are cis. It is a factual descriptor of your identity, every bit as much as “Canadian” describes my identity because I was born in Canada and remain a Canadian citizen. While you, yourself, don’t necessarily have to use the term “cis” in reference to yourself if you don’t want to, people are going to refer to you by it when it becomes relevant, just as someone with solely opposite-sex attractions might be referred to as straight if they were hanging out in queer spaces. It’s just a way to differentiate.

Next, the idea that “cis” has a negative connotation… Well, yes, in some spaces, it might. For trans or genderqueer people who feel that they’ve been wronged by cissexism and use extremist phrases like “die, cis scum,” the word cis may exist in a negative light. But for the vast majority of us, it doesn’t – as I said before, it’s simply an objective descriptor.

Frankly, you can’t choose to reject a descriptor just because you don’t like the connotation it occasionally comes with. I can’t tell people I’m not white, just because I feel like my whiteness makes me come off as “privileged.” My whiteness does privilege me – this is a fact I cannot ignore or pretend away – but it’s what I do with myself that decides whether or not I’m a privileged asshat. No sane and intelligent person is ever going to call me rude things just for being white, but they might if I do shit that only an ignorant privileged person would do.

Bottom line: If you don’t like the term cis, don’t use it to describe yourself, fine, but other people are going to use it when it becomes important to make that distinction. And if you don’t like the so-called “negative connotation” that comes with being cis, you better get out there and do shit that proves that cis people can be helpful trans allies, rather than just perpetuating that negative image of cis people by being ignorant and needlessly irate.

In response to the second argument: People who argue that the term “cis” is unnecessary are overwhelmingly almost always ignorant cis people, so of course they don’t understand why the term is necessary – they’ve gone through life assuming everyone is cis unless told otherwise, and so they don’t see a reason why it would ever be important to have a word to describe “normal,” non-trans folks.

When trying to explain why the term is needed, I always refer back to a story I was told by a wonderful trans woman who came to teach my volunteer group about trans issues. She was at a psychiatric consultation in a queer-friendly health centre. The psychiatrist was asking her various questions about her mental health situation and her life. The woman said she was attracted primarily to other women, and the psychiatrist said, “So are you mostly attracted to trans women, or real women?”

Obviously, as a trans woman, the term “real women” used to describe cis women can be not only deeply offensive, but also horrifically triggering in some cases. Trans people have spent their entire lives being told they “aren’t really” their gender, even though they’ve usually known their true gender since they were old enough to understand such things. There is no reason whatsoever for anyone to dredge up those horrible memories and feelings by using offensive terms like “real man” or “real woman,” which is why the word “cis” is proposed as a respectful alternative to those kinds of phrases.

Bottom line: “Real” is a point of debate – the world may never agree on whether it’s a penis or a mental perception that makes a man a “real man” – but “cis” and “trans” are not. They are inoffensive, objective terms, designed to differentiate between two groups of people without hurting anyone in either group, and for the most part, they do this very well, so we should use them.

Readers: Do you hear the word “cis” being used in your circles? What are your thoughts on its validity, connotations, and usage? Do you identify as cis? Why or why not?

Story Time: My First Girlfriend

Kate Sloan

There’s nothing quite like being freshly out of the closet.

Once the smoke has cleared and you’re no longer dealing with a daily onslaught of reactions to your announcement, you can see the enormous horizons in front of you. You can see all the people who you now have permission to date and to fuck. And it’s a freeing, though incredibly terrifying, feeling.

I came out as bi when I was fifteen, after I realized that a raver chick who’d been flirting with me was actually pretty attractive. Not just in an “Oh hey, I like her outfit” kind of way, but in an “I wouldn’t mind if she pinned me against a wall and kissed me til my lips bruise” kind of way.

The raver girl got a boyfriend just before school let out for the summer. I remember being crushed when, on the last day of ninth grade, I stood by the front doors and watched her walk out, hand in hand with her new man (or should I say, boy). I had this sense that she was the only girl in possession of the key to my bisexuality, and I’d have to give up on girls forever now. It was silly, but it was how I felt.

But when we got back to school after the summer of my first Pride, I noticed a new girl. A charming, awkward, witty, intelligent girl who loved Edward Albee and potato latkes. Her gender presentation veered toward androgyny, and she proudly self-identified with the word “dyke,” but she was nowhere near butch. To this day, I still have a thing for girls who are boyish as hell but still very much girls (which I realize is hard to conceptualize and visualize – it’s more of a “vibe” thing, I suppose).

She wrote to me online to tell me she liked something I’d written, some story I’d read aloud in the English class we’d shared in the previous school year. We sent messages back and forth after that, rarely encountering each other at school but encountering each other multiple times a day in our online haunts. We talked about books and films and strange societal phenomena.

I remember standing at the sinks in the girls’ bathroom with my best friend at the time, and telling her, “I think I have a crush on that girl I’ve been talking to.” My friend said, “You should ask her out!” Like it was so simple. Like I was that brave. Like I was ready to take on my first relationship, period, let alone my first queer relationship.

It took me an entire month to build up a sense that The Girl actually liked me, in some way beyond just admiring my writing and my taste in horror flicks. But she did. I was almost certain of it. The way she looked up at me demurely when I walked by her group of friends at lunch, the way she snuck out of detention just to talk to me for a few short minutes, the way she kept mentioning her gayness and my biness as if to confirm the compatibility of the two. It seemed almost like an invitation.

Once, on the subway, I leaned forward to hug her just as the train was pulling into my stop, and it suddenly jerked, causing me to fall right into her. Body contact. Words caught somewhere in my esophagus. I gasped and giggled and rushed off the train, euphoric.

So it was finally time to do something about it.

I wrote her a letter, though “assembled” would probably be a better word, since it was actually just an annotated collection of excerpts from my journal. The excerpts explained that I really, really liked her, that I wanted to be with her and thought she was wonderful and thought about kissing her. Mushy crap that I figured she would like.

After shoving the letter nervously into her hands at the very end of a party, I said goodbye and rushed home. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her when she read that thing. I wanted to be far enough away that she could completely ignore me if she wanted to.

But she didn’t want to. My phone rang shortly after I arrived home.

“Hello?”
“Hi.” It was her.
“Hi.” I felt like I’d been dunked in ice.
“Hi. So… we should date.”

And so began the most gutwrenching and romantically titillating few weeks of my life thus far.

To be continued…?

Readers: Have any romantic stories from your youth to share? Did your first boyfriend/girlfriend live up to your expectations of relationships? How have you grown since then?

I’m Dating a Demisexual!

Kate Sloan

Have you ever heard of demisexuality?

It’s okay if you haven’t. I hadn’t either, until I read a post on a friend’s blog, a response to a woman who had recently come out to her mother as being demisexual (i.e. she doesn’t experience sexual attractions to people unless she already has a strong emotional bond with them).

The argument against this woman (which I do not necessarily agree with – I’m still not entirely sure) was twofold:

1. You should not use LGBT terminology like “coming out” to apply to an identity that is not nearly as oppressed or disadvantaged as LGBT identities are.

2. You should not regard demisexuality as a legitimate identity, because it’s just a way to slut-shame women who don’t need to be emotionally connected to someone to have sex with them.

Initially, as a queer and sex-loving woman, I thought, “Yeah! Stop appropriating our terms and making other folks feel shitty for enjoying loveless sex!”

And then my boyfriend told me he believed himself to be demisexual.

Obviously, this required me to re-examine my beliefs about this orientation. And I realized what I always end up realizing when I initially reject someone’s self-professed labels: We each get to choose how we identify, and it’s no one else’s place to dispute that.

The thing is, there are people who genuinely aren’t sexually interested in folks until they know them a lot better (or, to quote Ewan McGregor’s character in the movie Down With Love, “all the way better”). It’s not intended to slut-shame on any level; it’s not a case of sexual elitism or puritanical ethics; it’s just the way their brains work. And if they feel like they want to use terminology like “coming out” to describe their experiences, we should allow them to do so… provided they are willing to accept the fact that they are (assuming they’re also straight) inherently privileged and not oppressed to nearly the same degree that LGBT people are.

Look, no one’s going to call you a freak for wanting to wait until you know someone better to have sex with them – no one, at least, who isn’t either totally stupid or totally joking. No one’s going to try to strip you of your basic human rights for being sexually choosy. So yeah, it’s probably going to piss some people off if you try to group yourself in with other non-standard sexual identities like gay or asexual or even kinky. That’s something you basically have to be willing to deal with if you want to proudly identify as demisexual.

As for the practicalities of dating someone who’s demisexual, here’s what I can tell you:

1. When we’re out and about together – walking down the street, getting drinks at a bar, whatever – I will occasionally see people that I find attractive. People who, if I were single, I might flirt with. People who seem cute and fuckable to me. By contrast, this never happens to my boyfriend. Literally never. If I point out some girl and say, “Wow, look at that foxy lady,” my man might acknowledge that said woman is pretty or is wearing a nice outfit, but he will express ambivalence on the topic of whether or not she is sexy or whether he would “do” her. I find this a bit vexing.

2. Recently I told my boyfriend that I sometimes wished our relationship was closer to “monogamish” than monogamous – that I would feel happier within our relationship if I were able to kiss and flirt with other people on occasion. While he was okay with this, and readily agreed to this “rule change” in our relationship, he could not fathom feeling how I felt. He could not identify with my need for the excitement of pursuing, and being pursued by, other people. I tried to explain it to him, but he couldn’t really get his head around it.

3. He is much more interested in emotionally-based sex than I am. I’m not sure if this is because he’s demisexual, or just because he’s a gentle, sensitive kind of guy (or maybe they’re related?), but it’s very noticeable. Sometimes I joke that, in some ways, he’s “the girl” in parts of our sexual union, because if he had it his way, I think we would always have slow sex in missionary position. I, on the other hand, would be happy to have hard, fast, doggie-style sex almost every time. We both enjoy having sex both ways (and other ways too), but it’s clear that we each have our favorite way, and they differ.

I believe strongly that the universe delivered me exactly the kind of lover that I was yearning for in the months before I met him. My previous boyfriend had exhibited signs of possibly being very bad at monogamy, and so I felt an acute desire to be with someone who had eyes only for me. So of course, I ended up with a demisexual – someone who can be hit on by a random hot person and have no interest in them whatsoever. I find it amazing how this worked out.

This is a huge topic, one I have a lot of interest in and haven’t yet formulated strong opinions on. So I have to ask you, readers: What’s your take on demisexuality? Do you think it’s a legitimate identity? Are you at all offended by it? Do you know any demisexuals? Tell me all about it!