On flexibility.

The hetero kind.

The other day, I was attending a meeting, and at one point, the attendees began disclosing the various labels that make up our identities (there was a reason for this exercise but it’s not worth going into what it was). From what I recall, the majority of folks mentioned that they were queer (I threw a “bisexual” into the mix as I continue to try to lean into the cringe). And then the woman next to me, and another woman shortly after, identified as “heteroflexible.” I was going to let it go, but then someone sent me this John Scalzi tweet that attempts to define heteroflexible (I gotta say I find his definition questionable), and I was forced to confront that this word is apparently back. (People keep telling me it’s all over the dating apps!)

And honestly? I’m shocked by that. As someone who came of age in the 1990s, “heteroflexible” feels archaic, anachronistic, like someone showing up in a baby tee and wide leg jeans (a look, I guess, that is also back). Seeing it used by twentysomethings — people who might not have been alive at the time that “heteroflexible” was originally in vogue! — just makes it even more confusing to me.*

Because, well, there’s a reason why heteroflexible fell out of favor as a label in the first place. What exactly is the “flexibility” in heteroflexible? Is it about sex? Is it about love? Are heteroflexibles a form of heteroromantic bisexual; people who only feel pulled towards the straight kind of romance, but are sexually aroused and eager to hook up with a range of different genders? Or does the flexibility allow for occasional queer relationships as well — and if so, what makes one heteroflexible rather than simply queer or bi? The way hetero is asserted as the dominant identity, one merely modified by not significantly altered by a “flexibility,” has always struck me as a way of saying that you’re basically straight but do gay make outs at parties, or enjoy the occasional threesome but would never be interested in same gender experiences one-on-one. Is that what these people are trying to say?

There’s another thing that comes to mind too, of course: the feeling that heteroflexibility is a way of saying that you enjoy the erotic benefits of queerness without feeling committed to or personally invested in the political struggle of queerness. And here I have to stop myself, because it is not lost on me that so much of what I have said above about heteroflexibility is exactly what people are always saying about the bisexuals: that we’re only in it for the sex, that we’re not politically committed, that we’re just claiming our identities to seem cool. And while one voice in my head says, “Right but this is different because these people are choosing to identify as heteroflexible,” another voice immediately responds, “Right, and that’s exactly what people say about the bis.”

The truth is, I have no idea why anyone chooses to identify as heteroflexible. Maybe it’s a way of dipping a toe into the waters of queerness before fully claiming a queer identity. Maybe it’s a way of trying to flag queer attraction while maintaining a respectful distance from a queer label out of a knowledge that you don’t experience queer oppression in a concrete way. Maybe it is just some straight people trying to get some cool queer cred.

But what I do know, deep down, is that if I want people to respect me and my sexual identity, if I want people to mind their own business when it comes to who and how I love, then I have to offer the same courtesy to others. I may not understand heteroflexibility, but honestly? I don’t have to. Let the heteroflexibles live their lives, and we can all live ours.

* 53-year-old John Scalzi deploying the term is… less surprising to me.