What is your sexual orientation?

[vivster]

dan_banan said:

vivster said:

It's not just closeted people, though. Current society massively discourages sexual exploration, so I expect a huge number of at least bi people who don't even know they are because they never dared to explore. LGB population might be 20% or more.

Yes! This whole thing about labels is so interesting. Labels are great for inanimate objects; we call a table a table to know what we're talking about.
But human emotions and especially sexual orientation is so much more complex than that. Labels can be very limiting and come with a lot of prejudice and fear of rejection should one embrace such a label for themselves (or even just begin to explore their own sexuality, like you said).
On the other hand, a label can also be very empowering for your identity, and bring you a sense of belonging. Which in turn can be very beneficial for your mental health and self esteem. So interesting! And I haven't personally made up my mind really, when it comes to labelling my own sexual orientation. I consider myself a cis guy, attracted to other guys. And not sexually attracted to women. So I guess that makes me gay, even though I seldom call myself that.

Labels are generally bad. Cis and trans+ being the worst.

I couldn't give a shit how good applying labels to oneself makes people feel, it is bad and will inevitably lead to toxicity. A person's Identity should never EVER EVER be based on belonging to a certain group. Group thinking will always lead to antipathy towards outsiders, especially when a person considers belonging to a group as part of their identity.

Personality is personal and has nothing to do with anyone else. Personalities are too complex for any label anyway. Even my hardcore introversion doesn't fit at all times, so I try to not call myself an introvert, but rather just say that I am mostly introverted. Seems like not a huge difference, but it really is, because I do not count myself as part of a group called "introverts".

Same with my sexuality. Depending on wildly different definitions I might be called straight, bi or even gay by different people. So I rather describe what body parts and traits I'm attracted to.

There is simply no need to label anything about my personality or identity, especially not my gender or sexuality.

Anyone who labels their identity is part of one of the biggest social problems we as humans face.