My sexual orientation: "I like the wine not the label"
Hey, everyone, welcome to my Swellcast. Today. I want to talk about a subject that I think Generation Z is really generally comfortable talking about, especially on social media. If you look at things like TikTok and Instagram reels, I've seen a lot of almost popularization. I guess normalization might be a better word of varying sexual orientations that are not straight. And I kind of want to take the time to talk about my personal sexual orientation
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:16
When I was 15, I knew something was odd and different about my sexuality, but I was not embracing of it until I was 19, and throughout my life I'm 55 now. I've definitely been with women and happily so. But I've never been somebody who identifies in one group. It's not my personality
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 3:31
I predominantly associate with heterosexuality, but I'm fuzzy around the edges. I said this. I had a party once on New Year's Eve, which was, of course, LGBTQIA friendly because all my friends are in the spectrum somewhere, and a bunch of lesbians gate crashed in inverted commerce. My huge party, my New Zealand party. They asked for permission and I said, yeah, sure. Come on in
phil spade
@Phil · 1:30
Izzy, thank you so much for posting this. I just have to say that I feel like I've learned a ton just by listening to you and then by listening to this conversation and you talk about generations and how we've evolved into to discussing things like sexual orientation. I can just view my grandmother not even admitting that there was anything about sexual orientation and running away from it
Kevin Williams
@Kevin · 2:23
And that can be 90, ten, 505-040-7525. Whatever. I met somebody once who told me that he was bisexual. Gay identified. And I said, what does that mean? He goes, Well, I am mostly attracted to men, but sometimes I'm attracted to women. I'm like, oh, well, that absolutely makes sense. And of course, there are people that are asexual. But I'm confused by the idea that I've never understood what a pansexual was supposed to be
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 1:24
They wanted to know exactly what I had been involved in or would be like, they wanted it down to fine details to nail my sexuality down. And I found that really interesting. I found it quite reductive, to be honest. Okay, great chats. Thanks, Kevin
Georgie, I think you bring up a really good point, and it makes me wonder, like, why are we labeling ourselves in the first place? Like, are we choosing to kind of put a word to our sexuality for for others or for ourselves? And if it's for ourselves, then I am applauding people who do it and want to support and uplift them. And I'm sorry if you hear my cats chasing each other in the background
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:44
And so did that mean I was by and I remember thinking, like, I guess if that's what people need to call it, but it didn't resonate. And then when I first learned of the term pansexual, I think kind of similar to what is he saying? It felt so much more encapsulating of the possibilities of where my attraction, whether sexual romantic, emotional could go
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:50
And I think the complication of that is so interesting and important to talk about, too, that attraction, it's not just about sexual attraction. There's sexual attraction, there's emotional attraction, there's romantic attraction. And so all of these things overlap. And for me, pansexuality is probably just like the easiest term to describe the complexity of that for me
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:23
But the writer essentially was talking about just remembering that the terms we use to identify ourselves and also each other in the LGBTQIA community, they are useful terms to help us understand ourselves in a largely oppressive system, and to keep in mind that these terms in the way in which we use language as a taxonomy to identify is also born of that same system and reading that was like this huge relief to me because it gave me an instant understanding of why, as much as I think these words are useful for us in our own understandings of ourselves within the world, and also as a way to navigate the world and find community, it still felt like oppressive to me in some way
Kevin Williams
@Kevin · 4:40
But I still feel like it's the same thing as people limiting what bisexuality is via 50 50. Then, with pansexuals reaction to the idea that you're limiting when you're saying bisexual, that what a man is and what a female is or a woman is very limited. There's only one kind of man. There's only one kind of woman. And so by saying bisexual means that there's only like two options
Mark Ward
@AskMarkWard · 2:17
Well, needless to say, this was a very interesting, provocative conversation. Now I am not pansexual. I am not bisexual. I'm gay. So the way that I have always differentiated between pansexual and bisexual was I always thought that the difference was that those who label themselves as pansexuals consider their attraction to be more emotionally based than physically based
Brooke C.
@Brooke415 · 2:39
If you were to establish a long term love and relationship with someone there looks to go to the wayside and in terms of if you really do get along with someone, basically, it's based on who they are and not on my list, which doesn't discount because I think sometimes that affects how your personality is formed. As your appearance, your physical appearance affects your personality and vice versa
Pansexuality, for me, is not based in the gender whatsoever. It's about the individual and the personality of that individual and the emotion of that individual, the emotional connection that I feel with that individual. And I very much so connect with what you were saying, Bowie, and that the way in which these definitions were created. I feel like are for the comfort of others and are made out of the oppressive system themselves. I really resonate with that
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:32
As I was listening, I just kept thinking, but Where's room for people like me that I don't really identify as female or male at this point in my life. So you could call me non binary. You could call me a gender, maybe like gender fluid. There are all sorts of different terms, and the way in which I identify is a different thing versus how I express myself. Sometimes I express myself in a more feminine way