Starting Off in a Big Gay Way

 Hello all who have washed up here on my bloggy shore, whether you be an existing friend who felt obligated to come read yet another of my blogs, or someone new. I intend for this to be a delightful home for opinion, snark, and reasonable debate. That means I’m not going to let people air opinions if I deem them stupid or hateful, but I suspect I’ll let most anything that doesn’t fall into that remit fly. We’ll see. All I know is that this isn’t going to be a polite blog by default like my other two public blogs.

So then, yesterday my home nation finally got with the fucking picture on the subject of marriage. Even if my bisexual/pansexual self ended up marrying a guy, you can be sure as hell that I was whooping it up and celebrating that had I not, I would have had the option to marry whomever I loved had I ended up staying in the States (the marrying of the bloke also ended up with me coming to the United Kingdom, so sort of a double whammy of neat and happenstance). Of course, that leads to a massive dose of bi erasure in my life, especially since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell meant that I had six years in the Air Force where I was scared of losing my job by pursuing love. Patricia, if you’re out there, I totally wanted to ask you out because you were gorgeous and wonderful — I’m sorry I was so scared, even knowing you were bi/gay as well.

[[Insert thanks here that the husband is awesome and understanding and knows that I am 500% delighted by how my life turned out, and to have him as a partner]]

Erasure?

Yeah so, apparently it’s toooooooo haaaaard for some people to imagine anything that exists outside of a binary. Dude, sexuality isn’t a light switch with only two settings; like so many things, it’s a freaking spectrum. I don’t know how bad it is for bi guys, but for bi girls, it’s pretty fucking rancid. You can’t get girlfriends because a lot of the full-blown lesbians think you’re going to cheat on them with anything that has a dick. People of all gender presentations presume you’re just a Cheaty McSluterson, or that you’re making it up to be ‘edgy’.

Whatever.

I’ve been dealing with erasure since the fucking day I came out. I was on the phone with my bat, and he (then she) came out as bi to me. And I realised as I held the phone that it wasn’t just him (her). The very next day I got my first taste of erasure when I was resoundingly snubbed by several of the gay people because I didn’t come out with a girlfriend/dating bat (ew, he’s my sister). My parents pretended they believed me, but trashed talked me about it behind my back (which hrm, got back to me because people talk). Yeah, sooooo fucking sorry I can’t force someone to date me. I had girls I liked, I had girls I got to have some fun with, but none ever worked out as a girlfriend. Does that make me any less bi/pan? Fuck no. I still like girls as much as ever, and even if I married a guy, he knew from the get-go that I’m gayer than not. But then, that’s a big part of why I love him — he accepts me as me, full stop.

Wait, Bisexual? Pansexual?

I’m really fucking annoyed right now because one of my friends wrote something great on this, and I can’t find it now. Does Raeyn ever remember to bookmark things? The answer is a resounding no. *headdesk* BUT ANYWAYS! Bisexual means, most literally, two — you like boys  and you like girls. Some would argue that excludes anything that falls between, and that’s where pansexuality comes into play. But here’s the thing — a lot of us identified as not-gay and not-straight before we ever heard of pansexual as a concept. So while I’m totally pan by ‘straight’ (insert rimshot here) definition, I have always and will continue to use bisexual because it’s what I am comfortable with. It’s the label that I’ve used and that I am happy to continue to use. But because people like to argue and be pedantic (myself included) it’s a morass of a clusterfuck of nitpicking that doesn’t matter in the wider scheme of things. Love is love is love, yo.

And that’s probably ramble enough for now, so welcome again.