Hello, my Chime! Welcome back to Diary of a Bipolar Pixie! I, the ever undisciplined and incredibly busy Pixie, will now grovel and beg for forgiveness for how little I’ve written over the summer. I know its no excuse, but you should know I’m working forty hour weeks and taking a creative writing class that is far more demanding than I ever thought possible. But I should’ve made time to write this blog. I guess I just needed the right inspiration to get back to it, at least for a day or two.
And what might be my inspiration? Pride Month! I’m an ally, always have been, always will be, but I can’t say for certain what my sexuality is because I’ve only ever dated guys, and I grew up in a house that was extremely homophobic, transphobic, essential phobic of the whole alphabet mafia. It makes for some pretty horrible dinner conversation, especially during June.
In the hopes of counteracting the negative vibes in my house, I want to do my own research on the LGBTQ+ community, find out what the letters stand for, and maybe learn something about myself in the process. We’ll go by alphabetical order in honor of my favorite mafia, and to begin, we’ll only be discussing sexual orientations. I’ll probably turn this into a series so that I can also discuss gender identity.
Sexual orientation refers to how we feel romantic and sexual attraction, if we feel those at all. It has a lot of aspects to it, which include who we are (how we identify), and the identity of those we are attracted to.
Allosexual is first on our list and it simply refers to anyone who experiences any form of sexual attraction. Unfortunately, when discussing allosexual, I found a term that I didn’t like: allosexism. This term is used to describe the norms, stereotypes, and assumptions that everyone experiences sexual attraction, and this leads to individuals who are asexual being ostracized from society and experiencing prejudice from the world declaring they have to be sexually attracted to something.
Next up on the list is androsexual. This means the individual experiences an attraction to masculinity and men, regardless of sexual assignment at birth. I’m not entirely sure if that means a person could be attracted to a masculine female and this term still apply, but I’m still digging. From my understanding, though, this means transgender men, cisgender men, and even genderfluid men (during their masculine periods of existence) fall into this category of sexual attractions.
And now we encounter the term asexual for the second time in my research. This is someone who feels no sexual attraction whatsoever. However, that doesn’t mean an someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction can’t experience romantic attraction. My research thus far indicates that someone who is asexual tends to be demiromantic (we’ll talk about the demi prefix later on).
I would like to share that many sites say a lot of these prefixes can be used to describe sexual attraction and romantic attraction. Such as asexual means no sexual attraction, and aromantic means no romantic attraction. I don’t really want to get into romantic attraction and sexual attraction in one post, partially because it would make for one really long post, partially because it’s easy enough to move one prefix from the sexual orientation meaning to the romantic orientation meaning.
Onward, to the term autosexual. Autosexual refers to individuals who finds themselves sexually attractive. For those that don’t understand what that means, including me at first, I have found that it means that an individual may see themselves in the mirror and become aroused, and they tend to find more pleasure in masturbating than with a partner. Though that doesn’t mean they’ll never have sex with another person, they just prefer themselves more.
On the alphabetical list, next we find the bisexuals. Bisexual is a weird one to research, because it is defined as an attraction to more than one gender. However, society dictates that it is an attraction to both men and women. Many sites I’ve read have also said that there may be one gender of attraction between a pansexual and a bisexual. It’s interesting, and confusing, but mostly because I’ve lived my life believing the societal definition of bisexual. Along with bisexual, there is bicurious, which refers to those who are experimenting with their sexuality.
The list I read included terms that don’t refer to identifying someone’s sexuality, but their journey to discovering and accepting their sexuality. Some of these terms include closeted, which refers to those individuals who are not open about their sexuality, and coming out, which refers to individuals who are starting to open up to people about their sexuality.
And now we come to a term that I have never heard before, cupiosexual. This refers to those who identify as asexual, remember, that means no sexual attraction, desiring sex or a sexual relationship. It sounds like a contradiction, but on some level I get it, at least in some way, and perhaps I’m understanding this completely wrong, and it’s not as contradictory as it sounds.
I now introduce you to the definition of the term I already introduced you to. Demisexual means that the individual only experiences sexual attraction once certain requirements are fulfilled. Commonly, those requirements revolve around emotions and relationships. Some individuals may find they have no sexual attraction to their partner until months into the relationship, once they are trusting and loving of their partner. It’s not as simple as not wanting to have sex until you’re ready, it’s not feeling aroused until the emotional connection is right.
Fluid is a term that means sexuality can change, just as identity, personality and moods can change. Maybe I wake up tomorrow and find that I am much more attracted to females than males. It is all a process of who we are and how we grow.
I’m skipping a term on the list because as of right now, I would prefer to stick to the technical terminology, but I’ll bring it once we get to the right place.
Gynesexual is the attraction to females and femininity. As with androsexuality, gynesexuality includes transgender women, cisgender women, and genderfluid women. However, I, again, do not know if it could be an attraction to a male who displays as feminine, but not as a woman.
Heterosexual refers to the sexual attraction to the opposite gender, though, that term is used very loosely because cisgender and transgender individuals can use the term, despite their biological identity. I’ve found a couple articles that also indicate that opposite could also mean someone who doesn’t identify as any gender possibly being attracted to someone who is gender fluid. Society is the one that dictated it is someone of a specific gender identity attracted to someone of the opposite specific gender identity.
Homosexual refers to an individual who is sexually attracted to a member of the same, or in some accounts similar, gender identity. This is where that skipped word comes in. It was gay. Gay means the same as homosexual, and is most commonly use by males attracted to males (identifying or biological, up to them). Women also use the term, as well as lesbian to describe their sexuality.
The next term falls with the asexual range, called libidoist asexual. It means that an individual that holds no sexual attraction towards another person may find they do have sexual urges that can be satiated through masturbation. It doesn’t make them any less asexual, it makes them human (or lizard if that’s how they feel today).
Someone who experiences monosexuality is someone who is only attracted to a specific gender. It’s a tiny umbrella term that encompasses heterosexual and homosexual.
If we have a libidoist asexual, than you can bet your ass that we have a non-libidoist asexual. These individuals have no sex drive at all. The don’t feel sexual urges and therefore don’t need to act on them.
Omnisexual is described as being somewhere between bisexual and pansexual. They also have a range of sexual attraction which is not limited to a persons sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Pansexual refers to individuals who can be attracted to anyone, no matter their sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Physically speaking, they have no limitations in regards to their attraction.
Polysexual is another umbrella term that means a person is attracted to multiple genders, which encompasses bisexual and pansexual. It does not mean that a person is sexually attracted to multiple people at the same time (which is what I honestly thought it meant).
Pomosexual refers to those who prefer to not label their sexual orientation, which is a little ironic because it is a label.
Sapiosexuals find sexual attraction based strictly on their intelligence, regardless of gender.
Skoliosexual refers to people who are attracted to non-cisgender people, such as transgender and gender fluid.
Spectrasexual is another umbrella term that means being attracted to multiple and varied gender identities, but not necessarily all of them.
It’s a lot to take in, especially when I was raised with gay, straight, and bi as the only sexual orientations, and two of them were sins against god (who I absolutely don’t believe in). I’m tired of dealing with the negativity and bullshit, why can’t everybody just live their lives how the wish so long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s rights. If those two want to be gay, let them be gay. If they want to adopt a child, and they are financially stable, mentally stable, and emotionally stable enough to do so, then why the hell not. There are more children in foster care than there ever should be and it’s disgusting to me that certain people would rather force those babies to live in situations that are chaotic and unstable just so homosexual, pansexual, transgender, etc. individuals can’t raise a child.
I’ve researched, I’ve ranted, and now I’m releasing this issue. I definitely plan to continue to exploring what I want out of a relationship and life in general, but you because I’m still in the early processes of that discovery, I won’t make you go through that with me.
Please like, subscribe, or comment your opinions and concerns. Hell, if you have advice for me, let me know. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with everything I’ve learned.
Until next time, and who knows when that’s going to be, fly high Chimers!
Diary of a Bipolar Pixie 