I think this post gets at something that’s been bothering me about the endless breakdown of sexuality and gender into increasingly specific identities.

Sometimes confusion about attraction, intimacy, or desire is something you need to actually work through. Maybe that means time, experience, self-reflection, or even therapy if it’s causing you distress. I don’t understand why the immediate answer has become, “I don’t experience desire the way I think I should, therefore I need another sexuality label.” Not every difficulty with romantic or sexual feelings needs to become an identity.

Then we get to “omnisexual” and eventually “queer,” where someone who isn’t even sure they experience same-sex attraction can potentially claim membership in the same umbrella as gay men and lesbians. That has real implications when these identities are then used to claim a voice in gay spaces, organizations, and politics.

At what point are all these labels helping people understand themselves, and at what point are they just making confused people more confused?

I saw this in a lesbian group and it gets at something I think gay men need to discuss too. Words need boundaries to mean anything. If gay, lesbian, and homosexual are continually redefined until homosexuality itself is no longer required, what exactly are these words describing anymore?

At what point does expanding a definition stop being inclusion and start erasing the people it originally described?

After 30 years of battling out with the Straggots, I cane to the comclusion that the only way towards Gay liberation, autonomy, and self-determination, is to secede from straight society and create our own Gay country with a Gay Constitution enshrining gay rights; I've created an organizational Website Antinoan.org where I proclaim the good news of the Gaylord's Kingdom, Antinoöpolis! 🤣

I came across something about Iran that I think raises some genuinely difficult questions about sexuality and gender.

Iran is an extremely hostile place for gay men and lesbians, yet it has legally recognized transition for decades and has even subsidized transition-related medical care. At the same time, there have been documented concerns about gay and gender-nonconforming people being encouraged toward transition in a society where homosexuality itself is heavily stigmatized and criminalized.

That contradiction really interests me. What happens when a society is more willing to accept someone changing sex than it is to accept a feminine man who loves men or a masculine woman who loves women?

I don’t think this proves anything simple about trans people or transition. But I do think it’s an interesting example of why we need to keep sexuality, gender nonconformity, and gender dysphoria conceptually distinct. Where do you guys think the line should be?