I'd been subjected to what is now called reparative or conversion therapy as a child. Around seven years ago I had a giant crash and rather violently (inside) unleashed decades of repression. Since then, I've made it a minor obsession to stay up on new studies and accepted findings. Here's a generalization:
Every aspect of a person that can be measured on a male-null/neutral-female scale, whether physiological, emotional or behavioral, has it's own point on said scale. Together they make up the sex and gender of that person and therefore influence the labeling of another set, the person's sexuality.
An example:
Let's say you have a gender identity that falls into the "male" category when all the appropriate attributes are looked at in aggregate. But the sex or gender you are inherently/biologically attracted to is fairly neutral. You might appreciate more masculine attributes one day and more feminine ones on another day. And if your inherent or biological attraction isn't neutral but rather, "spikey" when charted out (ie, the attributes might average to neutral but in reality half are strongly male, half are strongly female), it would add another exceedingly complex layer. Take all such layers & unless a person charts out at one extreme for everything, it should be no surprise when attractions vary.
Problem is, most of us have been raised to strongly always assumes exactly two distinct categories ("male" and "female") to cover sex, gender, and sexuality in all cases. Even though that is changing, we still have a culture that is just learning to deal with the very real fact that nature is far more creative than a simple binary.
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“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
―Carl Sagan
13 Sep 2015, 2:05 pm
