Voxandra

Twitch Partner VTuber

Fangirl of SaGa, Mega Man, Touhou,
and beatmania IIDX



Talking about sexuality can feel very difficult sometimes. While talking to a friend the other day I realized that calling myself "gay" could, perhaps, make someone who's enby wonder if it includes them. Plus the fact that there have been times I've been attracted to a guy, rare as they are, yet I don't really like calling myself "bi." Or even "pan" as I don't really think that's true.

All of this is why I don't really like calling myself a lesbian as it feels too loaded and honestly, not completely true. I guess it's just easier to call myself gay which...might sound weird to some people, right? "You don't want to call yourself a lesbian but you call yourself gay? You're a woman, wouldn't that mean the same thing?" It's complicated, I guess. I can easily imagine a scenario where I call myself a lesbian, end up dating someone who's AMAB enby, and ending up with people being violently angry at me for calling myself a lesbian in the first place.

While some of you might be confused at such a scenario, others are nodding along as they read this and totally understand that fear. Anyway, it's a thought that's been on my mind for a long time. Sometimes it's just easier and simpler to say "I'm gay."


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in reply to @Voxandra's post:

as someone who's been through similar ruminations I feel this a lot

tbh "lesbian" has always meant "woman who is attracted to women" without having to only include women, so it doesn't have to be 100% of an identity to be true!

but also like, I totally get you about finding the right words to describe yourself. that kind of stuff is real personal!

Alright, so this will sound like a shitpost at first but bear with me.

One night when I was stoned off of gummie edibles, I had an errant thought about how gender (and sexuality even) is a spectrum. Simple enough, a lot of people know that or has at the very least heard that phrase spoken before.

Then my brain doing things as it does had a flicker thought and my mind's eye shifted it from a two dimensional image to a full three dimensional plane. It felt so obvious and I wondered how I hadn't thought of it before (stupid brain, making me feel dumb.)

So my take away from this is that while we have designations for orientation, they're more like markers to judge roughly where you land on it. You could be pretty gay, but be just a liiittle bit down the X and Z axis, where certain kinds of people that don't fall under your primary orientation will still be attractive to you. Just a tiny het as a treat.

Ultimately it comes down to what you feel comfortable with, like others have said already. You can say you're gay and maybe have a tiny dash of bi, or as you're a woman, a lesbian.

Or even just saying you like girls! I think that is just as valid to be honest! For me, I'm not even sure what I might fall under beyond leaning more towards feminine looks and being fine with whatever is in someone's pants.

(Also I don't want to discount the very real concern of people being shitty and/or violent over 'mislabeling' yourself, I just don't have anything meaningful to add to that part of it)

Same hat! "Queer" or "gay" suffices 95% of the time, and I like having all my little microlabels lined up in my brain, but most people don't care or know enough to get that spiel. I've found "omnisexual" a particularly resonant label for what sounds like a pretty similar range of attraction, but it's not a really well-known term anyway.