So my boyfriend asked me what I thought was an odd question last night:
“How come you are so cool with being gay?”
My response wasn’t that helpful, it was along the lines of “With so much else to worry about, how can I worry about that too!”

I’ve been thinking about it a bit since then.

I spent most of my life thinking that I was a lesbian, and that explained me. Of course that fell flat the moment I investigated the lesbian scene, but that was an important learning experience for me. (Lesbians are women! Shock! Who knew. Even Butch Dykes are still women!)

When I heard the term Pansexual last year I adopted that sexual identity. Really pansexuality is a kind of bisexuality, but ignores the gender binary. I don’t identify as third gender, or outside the gender binary, but there are people that do, and I do find that attractive, as well as finding both men and women attractive.

I went back to identifying as lesbian for a while because I found out about physical transition, and somehow felt like I needed to make absolutely certain that I wasn’t a lesbian instead of a man. I also realised that all the relationships I had with men up until that point had been deeply unhealthy, and for very broken reasons, and assumed that any attraction I felt to men would be for similarly faulty reasons in the future.

Now I identify as ‘pansexual’, ‘queer’, ‘male’, ‘trans’, and ‘gay’. I am cool with being gay, just because it fits me. I like applying the term ‘fag’ to myself.
I’ve realised that yeah, my relationships with men in the past have been kinda fucked up, and I’ve entered them for fucked up reasons, but that doesn’t mean I am completely not attracted to men. I also acknowledge that part of my attraction to men is a fascination with the male body. I love watching men shower, and shave, and do other manly things that I just never saw in my house. (By the time my brother hit puberty I’d disconnected from my family).
I also know that there have been men that I have loved deeply, and passionately, and that they have made me feel hot around the ears when they’ve kissed me. (My ears get hot when I am turned on, is that normal?)

I’m currently in a relationship with another guy, and frankly, the only thing that matters to me is that he digs me as much as I dig him. What people think doesn’t factor much… except for one thing!
There’s only one thing I hate more than being perceived as a lesbian, and that is being perceived as a straight woman. I am misgendered less often when I am physically with him though.

I think that I can be rather blase about being gay, because my life contains two categories of people. People who’s opinion doesn’t matter to me, and people who don’t care that I am queer.
Others aren’t always that lucky.