So what the hell am I?

Where I'm called "gay"

Its, oddly enough, something that has bothered me as well, though naturally on Topix I'd never reveal such a thing.

Its yet another one of the strange little curiosities about being me -- I don't even fit nicely into my own personal stereotypes -- its almost as if I have some urge to *not* be categorized readily.

But this particular category annoys the crap outta me, and I gotta fess up to it. It does. Its a knee jerk reaction that sneaks in under my shields.

For pretty much most of my life, and especially growing up, I had to deal with being called various slurs that equate to Gay. Since I wasn't attracted to boys (my dreams notwithstanding -- that in a moment), it was pretty apparent that I wasn't gay, or even bi. And I had plenty of opportunity to test that -- for some reason, the people that surrounded me were attracted to that "odd" quirk about me, that carefully built shell of masculinity around the rest of me that I kept holed up so deeply.

I mean, after all, how do you prove you aren't gay? Seriously, no joking -- how?  Sleep around a lot?  No thanks, it was hard enough sleeping with women as it was (mechanical and unfulfilling), but it doesn't fly since we all know the Public People who are Secretly Gay behind their Sham Marriage.  Have kids? Again, the same thing.  Marry -- yep.

Basically there is no way for one to "prove" that one isn't gay.

Now, I realize that this something that LGBT activists have noted about their opponents for many years and used effectively, but, well, it is a cheap shot. Its in the same level of cheap shot as saying that they've got the same right: they can marry someone of the opposite sex.

Both are weak, and both are patently unfair, and neither actually advances anything.

And I've already noted before that I am somewhat homophobic (on the older blog before this that I'll eventually get around to recreating here in some form or other). Flat out, the thought of sex with a man as a man is abhorrent to me on a really, really visceral and deep personal level. The same applies with me as a woman with another woman.

Presenting as a male, within the shell, the mechanism is there.  Its not particularly compelling (I did, after all, decide to become celibate just before I met my wife, without a qualm), as it still feels wrong to me, but, as was noted by the person that called me gay, the equipment was there, and by then I'd already established that it worked.

And yet, there was the late night dreams and the longings and the wishes made in fervent hope for a dawn that wasn't going to come.  How to explain to someone that you've had wet dreams about having sex with a man -- but not as a man?  I've never visualized myself internally as male, consciously or subconsciously. I'm just me -- and I've always seen myself as a female.

Somewhat disassociating, no?

So, I was rather twigged by the being called gay, which started to gnaw at me, since, well, aside from the fact that it meant I lost a point (and we'll all see how much I hate that in entries to come) it wasn't true.

I know its not true.

So, to place a bit of balm on my little wound and grant myself a bit of peace over the issue, I turned to the standard tools your typical internet junkie uses.

And discovered a couple of interesting things.

 

The first is that Dynes' Encyclopedia of Homosexuality still isn't updated and isn't likely to be.  That's flat out *really* annoying since its known to be outdated even by Dynes Himself, and yet is used in way too many schools today. Its 20 freaking years old -- and completely misses every major study that has shaped so much of the LGBT world -- all of them happening since then. (pub date was 1990, but the info isn't much newer than 87). Bailey's work, for example, is almost entirely 90's based (before he went and got all psycho on the TS crowd when they backed him, Blanchard, and Anne up against a wall).

That said, lol, I also found out that what a lot of the folks out there like to call TS people's direction is about like this (courtesy of wikipedia since I don't have my copy of EoH on hand):

Gynephilia (or gynophilia) (From Greek gunē, "women," + -philia, "love") is the romantic and/or sexual attraction to adult females, and its counterpart androphilia (from Greek andro-, "male," + -philia, "love") is attraction to adult males.

There are two main reasons why these terms have been used: to describe either the age or the sex/gender of the object of an individual's sexual orientation.

And the reason for that convoluted mess of doom is the thing that cost me the point: there's not enough flexibility in our language to describe the right term, lol.

Its sorta like saying what a single cow or bull or steer is without referring to gender (cattle is plural).

There just isn't a term for it -- although now I have found one. But it still doesn't work for me, and I'll still claim I'm straight. IT just makes me feel better, lol.

It also helps, a great deal, that for the most part the scientific community does indeed consider me heterosexual -- although its primarily because I consider myself such, lol.

now, as for why that matters, well, hell, I don't want to go there right now -- it makes my head hurt. Mostly because I have to back into the past, and prior to about 1995, the past is something I have spent a considerable amount of effort and time discarding.

The less I have to go there, the better.

 

Vyxie