Sexual freedom for all*!

* Some restrictions apply

Years ago, I wrote a piece with a somewhat controversial premise that I still stand by: if a man has sex with both men and women, but only dates women and identifies as straight then… he’s straight. More specifically, I argued that men like this are heteroromantic bisexuals, and that while I, personally, would see them as falling under the bi umbrella (hence calling them heteroromantic bisexuals), identifying as “straight” in this instance could be a way of flagging where your romantic attractions lie. And if that’s what feels right for these men — and if they’re not outwardly homophobic or otherwise making life shittier for folks who openly identify as queer — then that’s their prerogative and I won’t argue with them anymore than I’ll argue about whether or not a woman who occasionally enjoys sex with men but doesn’t want to date them can “truly” be a lesbian.

I say that premise is controversial because to a lot of people, these men are obvious closet cases shirking away from owning their gayness because of internalized homophobia and stigma (it is interesting, by the way, that a lot of people immediately jump to “these men are gay,” utterly eschewing the possibility that they could be bi, because apparently their interest in dating women… doesn’t count). And that conviction — that men who dabble in gay sex while dating women only and identifying as straight are deffo gays in denial — is all the more interesting to me when you consider that women in the same boat — sexually attracted to women but only interested in dating men — are more likely to spark people’s rage when they don’t identify as straight, when they openly own that their exclusively sexual attraction to women makes them a kind of queer.

How can queer sex utterly negate a man’s heterosexuality while not even creating the tiniest crack in a woman’s straight cred? There are some obvious reasons here, of course: men doing gay shit is perceived as so socially unacceptable that no man would do it unless he for really real desperately wanted it because he was a total gaybones, while women doing gay shit is assumed to up their desirability in the eyes of men. Lesbian sex “doesn’t count,” while touching a penis basically transforms your entire identity.

But the commonality here is that once people step outside of the boundaries of strict monosexuality, they’re suddenly denied the right to self-determination. Men are not “allowed” to claim heterosexuality if they’re even tangential to anything remotely queer; women are not “allowed” to claim queerness unless they full bore reject men*. It’s so predictable and so boring and I honestly don’t understand why people are so invested in defending these arbitrary and often meaningless boundaries.

I mean ostensibly it’s about protecting poor vulnerable queers, right? That’s the argument that gets floated all the time: women who claim bisexuality when they have no intention of getting romantically involved with other women are “preying” on lesbians (which then gets extrapolated to “all bi women are preying on lesbians”); men who claim heterosexuality while also fucking men are closet cases getting their rocks off at the expense of gay men. Because as everyone knows, no homoromantic queer has ever had sex with someone without fully intending to date them. Gay men and lesbians never ever have casual sex, they never have anonymous hookups, there has never ever been a queer sex party; queers are only fucking with the intent to lock it down and be in committed romantic relationships. Right.

This is what always gets to me as someone who came of age and came out as queer in the 1990s: so much of what appealed about queerness was this sense of freedom, of self-determination, the ability to map your own course through life. And to see that truncated the second it goes somewhere people don’t like — for sexual freedom to be wonderful unless your queer attractions are purely sexual and not romantic — it just feels so… hetero, you know? So bizarrely close minded, so pedestrian.

(Okay I feel like I should note here that this issue also comes up with bi/gay men who want casual sex with women — one of the reasons I couldn’t fully sign off on I May Destroy You was my disgust with the show’s insistence that a gay man pursuing casual sex with women was committing a form of sexual assault, because apparently every casual sex partner has a right to know your full sexual history from the jump and if you’re a man who’s fucked men not telling your female partners that is akin to rape? IDK, I hated it.)

I can certainly see the point that people who are only interested in queer sex, not love — whether those folks consider themselves some kind of “spicy straight”/heteroflexible or have embraced the bisexual label — should be upfront with their potential partners about their intentions and the limits of their attractions. But I also think that about anyone who has reason to believe that they may not be on the same page as a partner when it comes to the end goal of an encounter. Straight people on a trampage, queers in their ho phase, lesbians who want to sportfuck men and gay men who are pussy-curious — all of these things are totally fine so long as you’re not giving someone reason to believe that you’re making a long term commitment to them as part and parcel of the sex.

And I just think that, like… people should be allowed to be complicated. Sexual and romantic identities should be allowed to be complicated. The labels people adopt should be seen as approximations gesturing towards a general idea, not exclusive clubs that we can get kicked out of for not strictly adhering to the rules of. Like, isn’t that the whole point of all of this?

Because if not… what are we even doing, you know? What are we even doing.

* Another example: cis men who date trans women are seen as gay, cis women who date trans men aren’t allowed to ID as lesbian

The B+ Squad is for everyone. Love this project? Back my Patreon.