Way back in the beginning of this blog, I discussed my thoughts on the term 'lesbian' and how I was uncomfortable with summing myself up that way in my blog tagline. I'm certainly more accustomed to it now, though it still doesn't reflect me 100% - though I doubt anything that could fit in a tagline could ever fully portray an individual.
That said, I'm content with it. It's a nice, brief summary of the ideas about which I write. Where it makes me laugh, though, is the fact that I'm not really a lesbian. Not in the "only and ever girls" sense. I rely heavily on the Kinsey scale and the idea of a continuum of sexuality (and yes, I know there are much better links than wikipedia, but that's all I have energy for).
How does this tie into childcare? A Monday afternoon playgroup has formed, somewhat by accident, consisting of Laura and Danielle, their friend and her younger brother, Rainbow Dash, and Patrick and Lilly. The three moms and I were chatting while the kids played, and we ended up on the topic of what's attractive in guys. I could honestly take part in that conversation, thinking back to high school, thinking of even now what I think is cute.
Yes, I take pride in my wife. I love who I've become because of her. But sometimes, it's nice to have a "normal" conversation, and I'm glad for my continuum, and knowing that it's okay to think about guys, about girls, about whomever, without having to have a crisis on whether that actually means I'm bi, or if I'm being true to my sudden lesbian heritage, or anything like that.
Besides, then I get in on great conversations with lines like this from Laura and Danielle's mom- "I told him [now-husband] that I almost didn't date him because he's short. He said that's fine, because he almost didn't date me because I was a bitch."
I tend to go with the vague, broad term "queer" to describe myself at least partly because of its political/ideological implications, and also because "lesbian" is just way too narrow and binary for me. The Kinsey scale used to be really important to me when I was first picking labels and coming out, although it's since lost most of its usefulness for me because while a spectrum is better than a binary, it's still got poles and it's still pretty limiting. (For one, it doesn't account for different aspects of sexuality beyond biological sex -- for another, it doesn't parse aesthetic attraction, or romantic attraction...)
ReplyDeleteGosh, what do straight people think about if they don't have to deal with all this sexuality label theory stuff?