I had a tweet a few years ago that was along the lines of “Gender identity is like dreams: I’m happy you when you feel fulfilled by yours and I don’t want to hear a detailed explanation of them.” As far as I’m concerned, the main thing I need to know about anyone’s gender identity is what pronouns they use and what spaces they feel most comfortable in, anything beyond that purely pragmatic information gets into navel gazes territory that starts to make my eyes glaze over. I just don’t care that much about the intricacies of other people’s identities, you know?
I feel roughly the same about other people’s sexuality, too.
To wit: this morning I stumbled upon a piece about a woman who has just come out as “abrosexual,” which she defines as “when someone’s sexual identity fluctuates and changes.” Abrosexuality has given this woman clarity as to why she sometimes feels like a lesbian and sometimes feels bi; learning the term helped her feel seen, helped her feel like her desires suddenly made sense.
And I’m genuinely happy that she has that clarity, but also… abrosexuality kinda sounds like… bisexuality. Perhaps a subset of a bisexuality. Certainly something that falls under the “bi+ umbrella.” And while I would never question anyone’s choice of label — if it feels good, do it, etc — there’s a part of me that just wonders what the end goal of endless labels is. If it’s personal fulfillment — the way, for instance, I like the colors of the bi flag but think the pan flag is ugly as sin — then sure, great, fantastic. But if it’s to create more silos to put people in — to create a barrier between the bisexuals and the pansexuals and the abrosexuals and so on and so forth — well that, I mean, that just feels less helpful.
My line on this has always been pretty straightforward. There are personal distinctions between these labels, different shades of crayon that we are coloring with when we call ourselves bi or pan or abro or omni or whatever (although — and here’s the real rub — the color that I see when I say bi might be what you see when you say omni, your pan might be my abro and so on and so forth). But on a macro scale, all those colors, they’re all just, you know, pink. There’s no political difference between being bi and being pan, not really. Not the way that the political experience of being bi is significantly different from that of being gay or straight.
And it’s the politics of it all that I actually care about here, because while the warm, fuzzy feeling that you might get when you find that perfect shade of pink might be incredibly meaningful to you, it doesn’t really accomplish anything for society broadly, you know? And if we’re going to accomplish anything for society, we need to start by realizing that bi and pan and abro and omni and even many flavors of queer are really just different sides of the same coin, different names for the exact same experience of not fitting into a box.
Your post encourages me to be frank about this. The public hair splitting feels really self focused and fueled by the age of social media where the need to be seen, deeply seen by billions of people makes the practice of sharing one’s nuances with a trusted few seem quite meaningless. I don’t expect everyone to be interested about how I frame myself on every level.
Great post - so true - the endless labels are unhelpful, are they an understandable but misguided way to get society to include us? - but is it a good strategy that confuses the hell out of everybody?
- like all social change presumably it will take generations and likely to be more successful if we find ways to integrate our differences into society rather than attempt to overthrow it.
Bi’s have by far the best chance of creating the greatest social change as they are the majority and the bridge, having a foot in both camps.
Maybe these internecine wars are an inevitable part of moving forward?