Identity

One of the first things I asked myself when Arlo came out is ‘Am I still a lesbian?’

For a long time I identified as a lesbian, after all I had an attraction to women and a lack of attraction to men, so this label suited my very nicely. In fact there was a point when – after being ridiculed for being non-straight your entire school life – being a lesbian became part of my identity. There was something wonderful about knowing I was never going to have to fit into the heteronormative gender roles that come with society. Being gay felt like I had freedom to choose not to settle down, not to marry, and not to have children. There was something so liberating about thinking I would always date women, and never men.

After developing my identity largely around my sexuality for 5 years I found it incredibly difficult to have that questioned. At first I thought I was still a lesbian and Arlo was just my exception, that I wouldn’t have dated them if I’d met them as a non-binary person, but that I loved them so much now that I was willing to stay.

We got into an argument about this and I said – and I am really not proud of this – “Your gender identity invalidates my sexuality!” Of course I was completely wrong, in fact it was my sexuailty that invalidated Arlo’s gender identity.

As time went on and I began to become more involved in the online non-binary community I realised that actually I found other non-binary people attractive too, and in exactly the way that I found women attractive. This meant I had to really sit down and examine my sexuality. I had to try and understand what qualities did people posses that made me attracted to them, and if I was attracted to masculine presenting non-binary people why wasn’t I attracted to men?

I think – and I emphasise think – that I’ve worked it out. I am attracted to people who’s bodies run off oestrogen. Turns I’m not fussed about the presence or absence of boobs, I don’t care about genitals, I care about hormones (I honestly don’t know why). So I’m attracted to all women (cis or trans), AFAB non-binary people not on testosterone, and AMAB non-binary people on oestrogen. Why? Literally the only thing I can boil it down to is, in terms of seeking a partner, I personally don’t like masculine voices.

When I finally realised that I understood why I find most women attractive, some non-binary people attractive, and no men attractive. I knew I could no longer identify as a lesbian/gay but there’s not a widely used label for my incredibly specific sexuality. I tried bisexual (the two genders I’m attracted to being women, and non-binary people) but after a few conversations most people just assumed that I was attracted to men and women. Then I tried pansexual which is a more accurate label but assumes I’m attracted to everyone – which I’m not.

So I settled on the label ‘queer’, the thing I love about using queer as an idenity is it’s so vague and ecompasses so many sexuailities. When I say I identify as queer people understand that I’m not straight, but not willing to be specific about my identity. Also queer is tied to a movement that rejects the binaries of gender and sexuality, a movement that is much needed but feels kind of radical.

So am I still a lesbian? Well the answer to that is no. I was worried that changing the label on my sexuality would destroy my identity, but actually identifying as queer is much more freeing and liberating than identifying as a lesbian ever was.