On Hyperpersonalized Sexual Identity
By: Kravitz M.
Tags: Sexuality, Identity, Queer, LGBTQ, LGBT

CONTINUED FROM THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE OF THIS ARTICLE: They see “bisexual” and go, “well, this clearly isn’t for me,” as if the words we use override the experience of multi-gender attraction that we all share.

While I often discuss biphobia, I sometimes wish, if people insist on treating sexual orientations as optional to give oneself, that we could think in different terms than “phobias” attached to specific identities. While some forms of stigma are tied to the labels themselves, the general oppression we refer to doesn’t exclusively harm people who specifically identify one way or another. This method of discussing stigmatization — combined with the idea that personal identity trumps all else — leads people to not only think this way but create more “phobia” terms for every new identity, as though oppression comes solely from self-identification.

Labels are made for describing experiences, though it brings trouble when the gluing of these two entities makes it so that the label itself becomes the experience. Take, for instance, people feeling as though critiques of terms are inherently critiques of the experiences they describe, or those who feel like changing labels would (allegedly) require fundamentally changing who they are as a person. (I once witnessed an exchange where a self-identified pansexual, in response to someone commenting on the label, replied, “I was born pansexual,” as if newborns even have attraction patterns, let alone identities.)

While the dismissal of some identities can stem from oppressive structures, this isn’t always the case. Someone misgendering a neutrois person doesn’t make “neutrois” a standalone oppressed class where people of all other gender identities benefit from not being neutrois in particular. Of course, neutrois people are oppressed, but what happened to them was transphobia. Someone telling a self-identified omnisexual that their sexuality label is “made up” is not an oppressive act on its own; it’s rude at most. What omnisexuals are actually materially oppressed for (attraction to men and women) is shared with bisexuals.

Alyson Escalante sums up my thoughts well in “Beyond Negativity: What Comes After Gender Nihilism?” when they note the influx of theories meant to provide exact definitions of people’s sexualities and genders.

This approach does not, however, stop merely at the recognition of experience. Rather it shapes that experience into a comprehensive identity which is understood as being ontologically distinct from the countless other infinitely precise sexualities and genders.

This is likely why it’s so controversial to point out that some identities mean the same thing; it gets taken as an attempt to lump two allegedly distinct experiences together. People wish to understand all identities in a certain category to be mutually exclusive. When people began using pansexuality as an orientation for “attraction to all genders,” for example, they essentially altered the definition of bisexuality so that these two terms keep their distance from each other. This wasn’t necessary for these labels to coexist, though.

That said, for someone to say they’re “pansexual, not bisexual,” one must explain why via turning to the definitions of these words — many of which are shared. Them saying that simply don’t identify as bisexual is a different, easier story, but to say that the word “bisexual” outright does not apply to them requires defining bisexuality in a way that would make it incompatible with pansexuality. No singular definition of bisexuality, however, is used by all bisexuals, and almost none are mutually exclusive with definitions of pansexuality.

Those who adopt new sexual identity terms because they view “standard” orientation terms as “boxes” actually just sit inside boxes that more closely resemble their body. Arguably, applying more specific descriptions to oneself decreases their mobility within their identity. If someone (mis)understands bisexuality as “attraction with gender preferences,” a pansexual who bases their sexuality on the lack thereof may face internal conflict if they ever develop preferences down the line, as they may now feel like they must re-evaluate their entire identity even though who they’re attracted to has not changed.

It’s often unhealthy to hyper-analyze your sexuality to the point where how you experience it changes where you belong. This is why the idea that broader terms are somehow more restrictive is baffling. Continuously breaking labels down and creating terminology for each facet of one’s identity shrinks communities until it’s just one person convinced that they’re the only one who relates to their experiences. It isolates people and ignores the importance of individuality within a collective identity.

A strong community cannot truly exist if everyone’s label is so hyper-personalized that it can only describe them, thus divorcing the internalized bigotry and discomfort in their mind from the systems that are suddenly part of that person’s being. If we only have individual snapshots of individual experiences, the bigger picture is nonexistent. Psychiatry is a good example of this: it only takes in the individual without considering the conditions that worsened their mental state in the first place. Many contemporarily recent labels only take in the conditions of the individual without asking what feelings — and where those feelings came from — led them to adopt those labels.

Having a plethora of specific atomized sexualities discourages broad alliances and forming solidarity over shared experiences. Instead, it forces people to over-analyze themselves and focus on how they’re different from others rather than what they have in common with them. We should embrace the many ways we experience our attraction, not dissect them into different “types” that we mustn’t ever conflate — sectioning everyone off over the most minor contrasts does us no favors. We should approach sexual liberation with collectivism, not individualism.