Currents

I've been openly bi for nearly a decade, but for my first few years of adulthood, I was living in a state of denial. Despite having sexual encounters with both men and women, I insisted that I was still straight. Part of the reason was due to my religious upbringing, but part of it also stemmed from confusion over the terminology surrounding sexuality and queer identities. I ran in a lot of queer circles as a young person, and I couldn’t help but notice how many labels there were, and how often they were the subject of infighting and gatekeeping. It wasn’t until I got involved in the real-life community of amBi that I realized there are (at least) two very different queer worlds. One is the domain of gay separatists, queer radicals, and terminally online critical activists. That world functions a lot like the church where I grew up, with members fighting imaginary evils lurking around every corner in the name of all that is good and decent. The other is the refreshingly down-to-Earth domain of regular humans who, without strict allegiance to any ideology, simply happen to be queer. This latter group had been invisible to me, and joining them enabled me to truly embrace my bisexuality and feel comfortable in my own skin.

I soon also learned there are two competing definitions, not only of bisexuality but of sexual orientation in general. The definitions I always understood — the ones used by both sex researchers and normies alike ever since they were coined by LGBT pioneers Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Karl-Maria Kertbeny in the 19th century — were based on sex. Homosexual is same-sex attracted, heterosexual is opposite-sex attracted, and bisexual is both same-sex and opposite-sex attracted. These terms were defined in terms of sex in order to advocate for the rights of same-sex attracted people. The newer, activist-led conception, however, redefines sexuality to be about gender identity, not sex, supposedly in an attempt to be more inclusive of trans people. Well-intentioned though it may be, this redefinition has opened up a can of worms that has created unfortunate distance between the LGBT community and straights while also generating general confusion about the concept of sexual orientation.

Sexual reproduction is an evolutionary adaptation to increase genetic diversity. The chromosomes that determine our sex evolved in our first mammalian ancestors during the early years of the age of the dinosaurs. There are two reproductive roles: male and female. It's boring, clinical, and, compared to most of biology, is easy to categorize in all but the rarest cases, which is why psychologists, sex researchers, and LGBT activists have used sex-based definitions for ages. Gender, on the other hand, is a matter of culture. It is nebulous, subjective, and whatever anyone wants it to be. It is a set of cultural practices and expectations placed on individuals and groups alike based on their sex.

Not everyone believes in the distinction between sex and gender. Many radical queer activists want us to erase sex and focus solely on gender, while gender-critical feminists want to erase gender and focus solely on sex. In short, both want to remove the sex/gender distinction. However, as a mainstream liberal feminist, I have no problem maintaining this separation — indeed, that separation is key to the old-school feminist goal of freeing everyone (regardless of sex) from constraining gender roles and norms. Whether one is male or female, they can identify as a (trans or cis) man or woman, or as non-binary, gender fluid, or whatever else their heart desires. How you define yourself is for you to decide. As is how you dress, act, and present yourself publically. The number of genders is potentially infinite since there are countless ways humans could choose to interpret their experiences and express themselves. With that understanding, it’s easy to see that when we conflate sex and gender or swap gender in place of sex, it plunges the entire notion of sexual orientation into chaos.

Over the past decade, gender identity-based redefinitions have gone mainstream, from the Human Rights Campaign, Web MD, the New York Times, to Men’s Health and Wikipedia. When LGBT activist groups redefine sexual orientation in terms of gender instead of sex, it muddies the waters of what people’s attractions actually are. Using this gender-based framing, if a straight cis man dates a cis woman who later decides that she is non-binary, this straight guy suddenly becomes bisexual since he’s now attracted to more than one gender identity. Similarly, a gender-based understanding dictates that a lesbian must be attracted to people who identify as a woman, even if they have penises, beards, or otherwise present in traditionally “male” ways.

These redefinitions have been used by activists to shame gay or straight people whose preference for one sex is non-negotiable, as having a “genital fetish” or even being bigoted against trans people. Ironically, for people who constantly preach “sex positivity”, it’s also profoundly sex-negative: it’s an insistence that sex shouldn’t be carnal and lustful but should, instead, be political and further societal good. This weird flex also erases the ability to be gay or straight, when the truth is that it’s perfectly okay to want a hole or a pole. For me, it hits home because it also renders the concept of bisexuality meaningless.

The “bi” in bisexuality means “two,” so if the “two” refers to gender instead of sex, it throws open the gates to all manner of nonsense, including people who are only attracted to a single sex. And in the political environment that has dominated the discourse over the past decade, anyone who insists on the material, sex-based definition opens themselves up to accusations of transphobia by way of supposedly excluding trans people or reinforcing an oppressive gender binary. The solution, we’re told, is to identify as “pansexual” or “Bisexual — with an open mind!” as the recently-out Wayne Brady so succinctly misdefines it. In reality, bisexuality — you know, the attraction to both males and females — covers all human beings. Since trans people are human, that includes them too! It couldn’t possibly be more inclusive.

In reaction, the far-right contributed to the mayhem and trolled the far-left by creating a new sexuality label of their own: “super straight,” which did the precise thing that animated radical LGBT activists to begin with by defining heterosexuality in a way that explicitly excludes trans people. It also highlighted the big question mark on bisexuality. Wouldn’t anyone who isn’t “super straight” or “super gay” be bisexual? Or are there now five categories of sexual orientation: super straight, straight, bi, gay, and super gay? It opened a Pandora's box of new terms corresponding to every conceivable combination of attractions to a limitless universe of genders just waiting to be thought into existence. This is how we got Tumblr-esque labels like “pansexual lesbian,” “demi-romantic pansexual,” “hetero-romantic bisexual,” “pan-romantic heterosexual,” and on and on down the tortured political-linguistic rabbit hole. What do any of these mean? Your guess is as good as mine. And by the time we figure it out, 60 more labels will have been invented, all of which are painfully unnecessary for humans to understand their sexual attractions or seek a partner. Whose love life is improved by having to read a pseudo-academic dissertation to figure out other people’s sexual orientation?

In the end, redefining sexual orientation around gender instead of sex makes life harder for queer people while profoundly alienating folks who are straight (as well as gay). And it helps to remember that it’s online activists doing it all in the name of trans people — who make up about 1% of the population, rounding up. This crusade shoves trans people uncomfortably under the microscope and makes cis people more defensive and less receptive. Remember “love is love”? Whatever happened to that? Either someone is comfortable being with a trans person or not. If the latter, we shouldn’t be chasing after them with pitchforks, nor glorifying those who are “open-minded” enough to be with someone who is trans. Trans people are found in cultures around the world and don’t require reconceptualizing everything in order to include them and respect their human rights. Trans people are a diverse and dynamic group; they aren’t a charity case. Can we please knock off the virtue-signaling and stop pretending genitals, the equipment with which we have sex, are irrelevant to our sexuality?

The push to conflate or replace sex with gender is imagined by activists to broaden the boundaries of how we are able to express ourselves, but it’s actually just trying — and failing — to reinvent the wheel. We live in a society where the original goals of feminism have mostly been achieved. Not only do we now dominate education and are actively recruited into traditionally male professions, but women can look and be however and whoever we want. I can dress like a trucker, never shave, and spend five hours a day ruminating on the Roman Empire and still call myself a woman. I can be a trucker, get elected to the highest political offices, marry a woman, have a stay-at-home husband, and still call myself a woman. That’s the beauty of gender identity. It can look however we want. We don’t need new, ideological redefinitions to understand humanity’s messy, innate, physical attraction to each other’s bodies.

If that’s your thing, do your church-like activism. Just remember your fondness for the separation of church and state (AKA freedom of religion) when it comes to almost any other issue, and understand that your take on this issue is highly ideological. Many reasonable, caring, and informed people can and will disagree with you, and that’s okay. Just as it’s okay to only want pussy, or to specifically not want pussy — or to only want dick, or to specifically not want dick. Let bi people enjoy both the sarcastic dark-haired guy and the beautiful sword-wielding girl without jumping through jargon hoops or having to be hyper-political in order to get laid. Let’s put the sex back into sexuality.

Published Feb 12, 2024