Sexual Orientation/Identity/Preference

Coming out of the Debate on Asexuality and in trying not to derail that anymore than it already is, this is actually something I find much more interesting.

What is the nature of sexual orientation? I often feel like a lot of people consider it a kind of hierarchy, where sexual orientation is at the top and then you go down to less important issues of sexuality. I have spent quite a lot of years trying to understand myself and my sexuality and just to me personally that is just so not in any way near to what I feel about sexuality. It's insulting.

This is what sexuality is to me: A number of sliding spectrums, each one of the same importance and on the same level. It is up to each person where they feel their main identity rests but whether you are gay or straight is by nature more important to who you are than whether you are poly or mono or vanilla or not.

This is now it looks to me:

Straight (1) ................ unbiased bi/pan (5) .................. Gay (10)
Asexual (1) ..................................................................... Highly Sexual (1o)
Identifying as your natural born gender (1) .... Genderqueer (5) ... Transitioned Trans (10)
Monogamous (1) ........................................................... 100% Poly (10)
"Vanilla" (1).................................................................... Hardcore bdsm (10)

And I am sure there are more sliding spectrums one could add and stages in the middle to fill out but I don't know all that much about all of them and I really don't want to insult anyone by getting it wrong. Also on the bdsm spectrum as that is basically made up of three different things I personally would split that up even more but for the basis of this discussion it's enough. It is also really hard to define what 100% bdsm or 100% poly is -- but each person can define that for themselves.

Now everybody can put the slider on each spectrum where it fits them and the number combination that comes out would be their sexual identity. (for me at the moment something like 4/2/1/2/6). Of course I don't actually advocate expression sexual identity in numbers but I simply fail to understand how people can actually say one is more important or more deeply ingrained or one is just a preference and the other is something you were born with that will never change.

I think most people end up identifying most with the aspect of their sexuality/personality that meets the most opposition -- that's just what happens. Because for me being bi meets basically no opposition, I just shrug and think yeah sure that's part of me, so? My feelings about sex -- that I generally don't seem to enjoy it as much as society tells us to? Doesn't really bother me. My place on the bdsm spectrum meets constant misunderstandings and horrible things said about it, so it is more important to me. It contributes much more to my personal identity than what would be my "sexual orientation" after what most people seem to define it as.
I also believe that none of these are actually FIXED and unchanging.

Each person is a mixture, somewhere on that scale - everybody is unique and has their own discoveries to make. Why do we have to make people feel bad by denominating one as orientation and others as "just preference" and "doesn't count"? `

People assume that sexuality is a strict progression of one interest to another, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... sexy wexy... stuff.

Actually, I honestly never analysed all of sexuality together. I sort of view each "thing" as being like a little island. And some of the islands are closer together or they've got the same terrain on them but they're pretty much distinct. From a historical point of view that would be spectacularly unlikely (I'd have to be right where a lot of other peoples' models are wrong) but it works for me, so.

I normally don't answer these sorts of things here, but I will this ONCE

I don't call myself a German-American, I call myself an American of German descent.

I don't label myself by my sexuality either, I just say I'm a sensual person.

As Jareth said, this topic is highly interesting.

I think, also as Jareth somewhat said, People by nature (or not) like to be able to organise everything they're aware of so that they can contain it and not have to 'think' too much.

However that can lead to people being put into uncomfortable, and awkward situations if what they're labelled as being differs greatly from what, I suppose 'the norm' is for the group, or person, who's collecting the information.

For example, in a nunnery, you could talk about being into hardcore bdsm and it would be seen as 'far-out'.. yet you can go to a bdsm club and approach it in the same manner then explain you're 'vanilla' and its almost guaranteed to be seen as again, 'far-out'.

Yeah, i've really just repeated a little bit, but I keep flipping between both representations. Both the slidey sort of representation, and the idea of them as islands.. interesting topic and I'll definitely drop back to have another look at it.

The point wasn't actually that we have to find a need to label ourselves to others but maybe change the way we talk about certain things and absolutely devalue a different thing just by choice of words. And that isn't just about yourself and to communicate who you are but also how to do some self-searching and especially how we communicate this to people who are still searching.
It's easy to say "I never label myself" I kind of don't either in most of these things because it doesn't matter but I find it important for myself to think about and especially when I talk to people who are younger than me I find it important not to impart offensive and muddled up ideas in the way we label people/ourselves.

So I'm sure anyone who's gotten into this hullabaloo with me before knows I hate labels, and this is sort of precisely why -- sexuality to me is very shifty, and I hate feeling boxed in and trapped in a place where I thought I was hanging out previously. For the sake of other people understanding me, I put labels on myself, but I do so hate to do so because I'm always like, 1) if I don't want to have sex with you and you don't want to have sex with me, in what universe is this your business, dude?! and 2) my opinion of myself is always changing.

Basically, I find labels more helpful in describing my sexual history as opposed to my sexual present -- I will use pansexual to describe myself because I have dated boys, girls, and gender-in betweens very happily, for instance. I have no idea what bearing my history has on my present, to be honest. I feel like I could wake up tomorrow and just be totally gay without any previous indication that it was going to happen.

I don't know if any of this made sense, but I'm starving and so food is taking precedence over re-reading this post for readability.

Also I'm aware this wasn't really like, the actual topic and I'm sorry :c

OK, I'm going to try and word this tactfully. I think there's a bit of...well, privilege going on here?

I think that theoretically, labels would be pointless. We'd do what we do because we do, and we'd do it and it'd be done. And that would be it. But the reason these labels have come into existance is not because we get our rocks off from continually reclassifying ourselves (or at least, not always), but because pressure pushed people out of the "in group" (of normals) and left people alone, scrabbling for some kind of identity. That's the root of all alternative sexuality movements.

I mean, quite frankly, I don't feel like straight people. I don't feel like I'm on a continuum with any straight people, not really. There are things literally every straight person I've ever met has said that I look at and facepalm, or that by definition make it clear that I'm not like them, I'm not in a group with them. Not because they're bad people or I don't like them, but because how on earth could they possibly get it. It's like you being blind and the other person being deaf - occasionally, you'll make reference to the sense the other person doesn't have.

Now, I felt this as someone who is distinctly privileged within the LGBT community - I'm from a liberal country and the abuse I've gotten for being gay was fairly tame - it stopped at verbal abuse. I was lucky. So, how on earth can you expect somebody living in a country which derides or despises LGBT people, possibly even legally, to go "oh yeah we're all one big floating labelless soup of postmodernism". They're not going to! It's possible they'll hate straight people, even ones who haven't directly proven themselves bigoted, and they're going to seek out a group which is theirs and rigorously defend it, because it's the only way they feel safe.

I can't help noticing that those calling for the abolition of labels are (however their orientation might be) pretty much in hetero relationships, or (again, like me) have only pursued non-hetero relationships in relatively liberal/accepting spaces. I think to a certain extent it's a luxury to be able to say that labels are unimportant when choosing one or the other doesn't really have an effect on how people treat you, but when it does, those labels become rallying cries, they become ways of finding people who will give you shelter, they become shields. Labels are not nothing, or silly, or backwards. When it comes to identity politics, they exist because they have to.

I want to thank you for that post, @Antonym (it's weird tagging you when I call you Alex normally, I want to tag you Alex, go change your name )

The thing is, I have heard this "I don't fall in love with plumming" argument so many times and while it is inherently right (nobody does -- um okay except for everybody with Michael Fassbender's... muaha... what topic too serious for that kind of joke? Damn!), it is also... well not fair in a way because like Alex said, it's easy when you are in a good and happy place in your life. You are married and happy and you don't have to do any more searching. For others searching and figuring things about and trying to come up with an answer to what they are looking for unfortunately does require thinking about labels.

I also am very much against listing labels but I am forced to think about them because it's just not that easy for everybody. And I also agree that these days we may think far too much about ourselves and our identity but that is what our culture is now, the individual and living that individuality is who we are, so we might as well do it in a good and positive way rather than decy the use of labels in general.

Which is actually what i tried to say in this topic -- not labels yes or no (different discussion I would say), but how and in which terms.

@Antonym - Yeah, I can see that. I guess it'd be sort've like a white dude reassuring people that he's "colorblind." Or some other metaphor that's more apt, idk, it's almost bedtime.

SEXBLIND.

GENDERBLIND AND ORIENTATIONBLIND

I am fed up with labels.

I don't care if anyone thinks that is a hetoresexual thing to say or not. I don't do labels. I have no gaydar. I don't. If someone pushes who and what they are too much in my face, I am not going to like you more or less (unless it is less because you're so caught up in yourself, you see no one else.) I don't care what other people do in the bedroom (or kitchen, treetrunk in park at night, carpark or swinger's hotel). I don't care and I am not in the mood ever to share what I do with whomever I am doing it with, and how many times, in what positions and what we call each other. Or how many paddles I own. Or don't own. I don't care.

People who insist on setting themselves apart based on their gender, sexual orientation or spanking preferences ... it means nothing to me. I shrug, if that.

I applaud people who stay single in the face of peer pressure. I applaud people who stick together for longer than anyone anticipated. I applaud people who love where they can, without selfishness or need to boast.

That's all.

YES v. derailed and I helped :c I'm the worst.

OKAY

I think... pan would be most important to me as a sexual identifier, because it generally explains why I pick the people I do? I mean it doesn't, but it explains that I am not picking a straight man all the time because of that particular aspect of my sexuality. And usually that's what's most important in explaining to other people, which is generally what I'm doing when I'm talking about my sexuality at all.

I think other aspects -- like gender identification and dom/sub etc... just seem a little more in-depth and very personal, and might be something I share less frequently, so I put less thought into it because it doesn't come up as much.

I think having this conversation is really important especially now that there are more "labels" of sexuality. While I don't think it's correct to have to label things I do like this sliding scale you have created because you know for the longest time I felt like with media it always portrayed these really sexual people and my bf is what I would call "normal" and I find myself to be more on the asexual side, but I think because maybe I fear being ostracized it's hard for me to explain that and at the same time I don't think everyone acknowledges that sort of thing. It's upsetting but I'm glad to know that people don't like to pigeon hole themselves as one thing or another.

Hell I'm attracted to women. Would I say I'm bisexual or lesbian? Probably not as I don't think I could ever have sex with a woman but I'm sure I could fall in love with one. And to me there's that gray area I guess. Because some consider sex = love. And some can compartmentalize sex from love. -Shrugs-