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Agender- what's my sexual orientation?


Shamanslove

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Shamanslove

1st, some background. I write BDSM erotic romance that usually includes people all sorts of people across the LGBT+ community; I rarely write cishets. My daughter came out as a trans woman 3 years ago in the summer. In my writing, I'm used to considering gender, sexual orientation, romantic orientation separately for all my characters; when my daughter came out, I watched others stress about if she'd figured out her sexual orientation yet- it took her awhile and has been somewhat fluid. I know :D Totally normal.

Now we get to me and my question. I stopped worrying about "appropriating someone else's struggles" and came out as non-binary; I'm now sitting with agender feeling most right for me because I only really feel gender in relation to others. I came out as bisexual 25 years ago now; I've slide between bisexual, pansexual, and a few other identities over the years. The thing is, now that I identify as agender (edited from assexual to reduce confusion for further readers), I'm finding myself stressing about my sexual orientation like people stressed about my daughter's. For me, coming out has been about naming what I've felt my whole life; other than the change in hairstyle you can see in my profile pic (I shaved part of my hair and dyed the rest orange and red), I don't feel compelled to transition. Does my sexual orientation label need to change to mesh with my gender identity?

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I don't really understand what you are asking. This is what I think you are asking though

 

Being agender, you can't be heterosexual because there is no other, you aren't homosexual because you could be attracted to other people, and right now you think you are asexual, but you aren't sure. So you are wondering what you are.

 

I don't know enough about you to determine what you are. Admittedly, I know little to nothing about gender identity, and there are a lot of people who would be better at answering this question. What I could say is, you are the only one who can find out, because you are the only one who knows you as well as you do. Also, don't be too stressed about finding out who you are. In my opinion, it's not that big of a deal.

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anisotrophic

@squaggly "Androphilic" and "gynephilic" and useful words for NB / trans. (And used in scientific literature! That makes it official, right?) Ambiphilia seems interchangeable with bisexual?

I'm guessing @Shamanslove knows these terms. If not, hope they help? :)

And if you're asexual but romantic I guess one can go with words like "gyneromantic" or "androromantic" or "biromantic".

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Shamanslove

@squaggly Oops, I see part of the problem- I said asexual where I meant agender. My sexual and romantic orientations feel like they are so outside of spectrums that I don't know what to make of them. I now include terms like BDSM-identified, noetisexual (meaning that I'm attracted to people's minds, not necessarily the simplistic notion of intelligence). While I am romantically connected to a cis man and a trans woman, I'm not sure I've felt romantic toward a cis male except for him over a decade. All that to say- I'm unsure what my gender identity has to say for my sexual orientation; I think romantically that panromantic makes the most sense.

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Shamanslove

@anisotropic oo, ambiphilia, not a term I've ever seen. I think part of the problem continues to be a separation between the political and the personal, as well as audience. Like I've taken to using bisexual with people who aren't likely to keep up with the paragraph it takes to define myself that might be better understood in a forum like this one, where pansexual might be one term that fits, but needs to go with demisexual/romantic because my sexuality is way more complex than simple genital-based sexuality ideas give.

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Shamanslove

@roland.o thanks for the link. anisotropic mentioned the terms. I don't know... all the terms don't seem quite right, although amiphilia seems an okay one lol

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