When my husband transitioned I was asked a few times if that meant I was straight. I knew this would be a question people would have but it took me a while to understand why that question was coming up and why I felt so annoyed by it. I tried to explain to a few people why I still identified as gay with varying success. I realized that the underlying issue is that although sexual orientation and gender are two completely separate aspects of a person, they are connected in society because of the labels we use to communicate them. This is my attempt to tease out these two aspects of identity and look at ways that they are entangled and misunderstood by society as a whole.
The basics
Sexual orientation is who you go to bed with.
Gender is who you go to bed as.
Though of course both are much more than that.
If sexual orientation was simply who you are attracted to or who you want to be in a relationship with the labels would mean something like ‘male-attracted’ or ‘female-attracted’ or ‘male and female attracted’ or ‘attracted to anyone regardless of gender’. Some labels do mean these things. Bisexual and pansexual for example. Or the more recently adopted terms of androsexual and gynesexual. But what about gender-neutral-attracted? Would that be neutrosexual? That’s the term I would use. Think it’ll catch on?
Where it gets complicated
The other sexual orientation labels require you to specify your gender as well as those that you are attracted to – homosexual and heterosexual (as well as lesbian and gay). Technically these labels mean ‘same-attracted’ and ‘different-attracted’ which requires you to first define your own gender so that society can identify who would fit into the ‘same’ category or the ‘different’ category. What if you’re questioning your gender identity and you don’t know what category you fit in but you are still attracted to the same people? Or what if your gender identity doesn’t match your gender presentation and people constantly assign the wrong gender to you (because who is going to ask your gender in order to clarify your sexual orientation)? This is where these labels intersect gender and become problematic for some people.
Take me as an example. I identify my sexual orientation as ‘attracted to people who are the same as me’. In order for society to understand who I would be referring to they first have to understand what category I am in. Because I am AFAB (assigned female at birth), they put me in the female box. Before my husband transitioned it was all good in society’s view – I was a lesbian. Though not entirely true or accurate it didn’t cause daily confusion. When my husband transitioned, society switched him to the male box and my sexual orientation label no longer made sense to most people. But rather than questioning their previous understanding of my sexual orientation or gender they would ask me if this meant I was straight. This is where their brain went even though nothing about me had changed.
what’s wrong with this question
The first problem is the feeling that society was policing my use of labels. Regardless of my own gender identity and that of my husband, I should be ‘allowed’ to continue to identify as gay if I felt like that label still represented my sexual orientation. I can understand people wanting to ask in order to make sense of how that works for me but that is not where their question usually came from. It was always phrased as ‘Doesn’t that make you straight?’ not ‘Does that impact your sexual identity at all?’
The second problem is seeing sexual orientation categories as absolutes instead of a spectrum. Gay does not need to mean 100% of the time attracted to same sex as myself, never ever anyone else. It is up to the individual where this line is for them. If 90% of the time I’m attracted to people like myself do I ‘qualify’ as gay? Am I ‘gay enough’? Or am I ‘required’ to use the label bisexual or pansexual if I’ve ever, even for an instant, been attracted to someone different from myself? What about if you identify as straight but you had a crush on someone who is the same sex as you once? Would you be ‘required’ to use the label bisexual or pansexual as well? Or would you have to be equally attracted to men and women in order to ‘qualify’ as bisexual? We need labels to communicate our experiences to each other but when labels become boxes they restrict people’s understanding and this becomes a problem. If my use of the label ‘gay’ was seen as a spectrum it would be possible for me to stay in the ‘female’ box society puts me in and be predominantly female-attracted but have fallen for this one guy, my husband.
The third problem was that society went from seeing us as in the same gender category to opposite gender categories. Gender should not be seen as two categories but also as a spectrum. If gender is a spectrum, it would be possible for me and my husband to still be closer to each other than either end and the label ‘gay’ (or same-attracted) would still make sense. Their question about my sexual orientation changing revealed their rigid understanding of gender and their assumptions about my gender identity.
The fourth problem with this experience is that it made it clear that people thought of my husband’s transition as a switch from being female to being male. Nothing about my husband’s gender was changing. He was still the same person, he had always represented himself in an honest way to me but just didn’t have the right words to express it to himself, to me, or to society. When he finally did, he had to transition in order for society to identify who he had been all along correctly but in my experience he barely changed at all.
This all sounds very rant-y and I suppose it is in some ways. But I’m not mad at people who ask me ‘doesn’t that make you straight?’ It just reveals their limited view of gender and sexual orientation. If they are the type of person that would be open to expanding their worldview and if I have some time (and energy) I’ll question why they think that would be the case.
How I answer the question
My personal crisis about my sexual orientation when my husband first identified that he was trans had very little to do with whether I would still be attracted to him. There was some doubt, sure, but the majority of my stress came from how I was going to explain my identity to other people who had only known me as gay.
When they ask ‘Doesn’t that make you straight?’ the options I came up with for answers were:
- I am still gay because I am primarily attracted to women but happened to fall in love with this man.
- I am still gay because I am attracted to people who are the same as me and we are much more similar than we are different.
- I am gay because even though I identify as female I am actually closer to the middle of the spectrum and so is Jake.
When Jake was first coming out as trans and I was getting the biggest number of these questions I was not yet comfortable discussing my own gender identity so I usually stayed away from #3. I felt like #2 was too vague and might be confusing or frustrating for people because it doesn’t specify anything about gender (which is actually what they’re asking about). A close friend of mine had a female friend who was gay and had been dating a guy for four years. She explained her identity as something like #1. So that’s what I went with most of the time. It still felt somewhat inauthentic but usually safety trumps authenticity (as most queer people can attest).
So that’s it. Pretty straightforward eh? Maybe next time I get asked that question, instead of answering I’ll ask them why they asked it in the first place and see if they can question their own assumptions instead of me doing it for them.
What is your sexual orientation and how does it relate to your gender? I am especially curious what you think of these ideas if you have never thought about your gender or sexual orientation before. Leave a comment below!