Am I Gay? Am I Straight? Or Am I Just Plain Sexual?

It seems there is so much emphasis on having to ‘identify’ our sexuality and placing it into the LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex & Queer) alphabet. When exploring my own sexuality in my early 20’s people always liked to ask ‘So, does this mean you’re bisexual?’. I never had an answer… I was simply exploring and doing what felt right at the time.

Why is it that people are hung up on the LGBTIQ labels? My belief is that labels box us into categories… which in turn gives the people around us some sort of understanding about who we are and where we ‘fit’ in. I don’t like the concept of labels, my wish is that we respect each other as humans and our sexuality doesn’t have to come into the equation if we are anything other than ‘straight’. But hey, labels are a huge part of our world, so what does that mean if we don’t seem to fit into any specific LGBTIQ category?

The reality is, sexuality is in fact a very grey area. Every human is on a sliding scale between 100% heterosexual, and 100% homosexual. Studies have shown that not many people are 100% one way or the other. So when thinking about our own sexuality, we may realise that we are more ‘straight’ than we are ‘gay’, but that there’s a tiny piece of us right now that sits in the middle. This is completely normal, natural and okay. Don’t get stuck on where you are on the scale because I guarantee you it will change over your lifetime to some extent.

Sexuality is fluid, meaning that is changes and flows organically throughout our lifetime. When we are younger we may feel like ‘Nope, I’m definitely straight and I’m definitely marrying a man’, then we hit our 30’s and we feel ‘Oh, that woman at work is hot, I really want to date her’ and all-of-a-sudden we are in a same-sex relationship. What matters most is that as individuals we learn to embrace who we are in the moment, and know that our sexuality doesn’t always need a label, that we can just be plain sexual, and that’s perfectly okay.