After being confused about my identity and sexuality for a long time, I’ve landed on the label of queer. I’m queer in EVERY sense, in terms of gender, sexuality, overall demeanor, etc. I experience the world in only a way that I can as a neurodivergent poc, and this definitely impacts my choice to label myself as simply queer. It’s a lot easier to boil down all my experiences and feelings into that one word rather than thoroughly explain my relationship to womanhood, manhood, sex, and romance and explain where I fall on the nonbinary and aroace spectrums and why.
Specifically, with sex and romance, it’s easier to identify as queer instead of explaining to people that I almost never experience romantic or sexual attraction or even arousal. It took me an actually embarrassing amount of time to realize that when people describe what they want to do to someone else’s body or how they want to prioritize a person in their life in a different way from their friends, they’re serious. It’s not just hyperbole or a joke. To me, sex is an activity you can choose to do with anyone and a relationship is comparable to a very close friendship. To many others though, both are much different than that.
Sex, and even romance to an extent, have always been shown as human needs. Our society focuses HEAVILY on sex and even romance, or rather, relationships with a romantic label. It seems that your status or your level of success/happiness in life is determined by how much sex you have or whether or not you’re in a relationship. In shows, I see so many jokes about how a character is acting a certain way because they haven’t been laid in a while. At times, a person’s value also seems to correlate to how “fuckable” they are or whether or not they seem like romantic partner material (this arbitrarily assigned value directly relates to societal beauty standards rooted in white supremacy and ableism).
The idea that having sex is a fulfillment of a base, human need, and something inherently human is awkward for me to grapple with as someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction or even like, sexual arousal the majority of the time. I’m still human even if I don’t experience those desires in the way that everyone else does, aren’t I? I think the strict definitions that people operate under when discussing sex and romance are extremely rigid and eliminate people like me, who don’t experience sexual and romantic attraction in a way that fits within our neurotypical, heteronormative society. These definitions are heavily predicated on the belief that sex and romantic relationships are between one able-bodied cis man and one abled-bodied cis woman. For a long time, these definitions also depended on the idea that only white people were falling in love and procreating correctly.
Within the queer community, there is a lot of division when it comes to definitions regarding sexuality and gender as well. Online, there’s a lot of senseless discourse where people try to force labels onto those who choose not to be labeled or choose to identify a certain way. Again, this is all in an effort to define sex and relationships. I can understand wanting to make sense of identities and anchor yourself when confronted with so many possibilities of existence and sex and love. However, it’s all incredibly community-breaking and only recreates the experience of alienation we already experience as queer people in mainstream society.
Living by what is most authentic to you and allowing others this same right is crucial. Ultimately, I think abandoning definitions and embracing a more personal view of sex and romance has been incredibly helpful for me and I think it would helpful for others too.
Unruly Bodies 
Society’s seemingly constant focus on sex and romantic relationships, as well as the arbitrary importance and worth of people that is staked upon them, will always confuse me. Like you said, it ultimately stems from a laundry list of bigoted ideologies like white supremacy, heteronormativity, ableism, misogyny, etc. – but even then I struggle to grasp the entitlement that people are able to draw from these privileges when they could just choose to be…a good person? I also totally agree with you on the discourse in queer spaces. I understand the need to acknowledge historical context and of course there are ways we can be hurt by others within the community, but to tell others what they can and cannot label themselves has always felt a bit retroactive to me. Thank you for sharing your experiences and your thoughts, this was a great post to read!
Thank you for reading and commenting! I can’t wait for the day we can all just. Exist.
“it’s easier to identify as queer instead of explaining to people”… ok how did you get into my brain. This is such a shared experience in the queer community. I can’t even begin to explain all the different labels I went through in order to just stick on queer, it just feels easier to say and while sometimes it can feel bland or disconnected, it’s very open-ended and allows me to just be me. My feelings and emotions towards sex and romance are so complex because of my experiences that I really just don’t feel like I fit a label or title. This is a wonderful post and I loved reading your thoughts so thank you for writing them!
Thank you for commenting! I’m glad others feel the same way; it’s very freeing to just say the word queer and have that be the end of the discussion.
Great blog!! Your point about sex being more of a choice while society sees it as a need is something I haven’t really heard before! Due to the omnipresence of sex and a specific form of love that is constantly advertised to us, I’ve always assumed that sex is a human need and instinct because we are built to be sexual beings. Maybe we don’t have to be ravenous animals who are incapable of completing simple tasks without thinking of sex… After reading, I am now considering that maybe sex is important but, as you stated, it is incredibly personal and subjective to the participants (and not as imperative an action as people make it out to be).