April 30, 2024

However, he still refers to himself as straight, which I find frustrating and invalidating

Saturday, 13 April 2024 by
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“I’m frustrated that my partner calls himself “straight”

Q: “My partner and I have been together for three years, and for the most part things are good. When we met, I was going by she/her pronouns, but about two years ago I came out as https://getbride.org/pt/mulheres-austriacas/ non-binary and started to use they/them. My partner – who is a cis man – has been supportive. He had a little trouble with my pronouns at first, but he’s adjusted and makes sure to gently correct others if they misgender me. He’s learned to never refer to me as a woman, and to call me his partner instead of girlfriend, so I feel like I should just be grateful. It’s like he doesn’t really understand who I am or is ignoring significant parts of my identity. Should I just be glad that he’s generally supportive and try to get over it? Or is this erasure and something he needs to change?”

When we ask someone, “what is your sexual orientation?” we often hear back “gay,” “straight,” “bisexual,” or something that describes only one facet of attraction: how my gender compares to the gender of the people I fuck. It says nothing about what that attraction entails, what the sex looks like or how it fits into my romantic life. If your cis male partner says he’s straight, that tells me little about what he finds attractive in a person or the relevance of his sexuality to the rest of him as a person.

Labels are shortcuts – they help me find my people and suggest a little about what my life is like to someone new. Categorization and schemas reduce how hard we have to think about every interaction, so we often use these quick, simple signals. The downside is they don’t leave room for nuance and encourage thinking in stereotypes.

Further, for those of us who realize we’re queer, polyamorous, trans, or otherwise “different” from the cis straight vanilla relationship escalator to y, we have had time to think about our desires, fears, and hopes around gender and sexuality.

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