What does it mean to be gay or a lesbian?

I posted this on a lesbian forum but I thought my questions and my rant are relevant to anyone who doesn't identify as straight.

Rant below:


If a self-identified straight man has sexual experiences with other men, people will insist he's gay or bi. If a self-identified straight woman has sexual experiences with other women, she's just "partying" or "experimenting" and is assumed to not really be gay at all.

Society hasn't decided if being gay is about what actions you take, or the feelings you have internally. Society hasn't decided if it's about sexual attraction only, or if it encompasses romantic feelings too. Society hasn't decided if being gay is defined by your past, or by your present.

I hate labels and struggle to label myself. Twice in my life, I've fallen in love with men and had semifulfilling relationships with them, but I've never felt sexual attraction to a man and men's bodies either bore me or disgust me. People will insist to me that I'm bi. Others refer to me as a lesbian.

I feel like labels are a trap. It's a shorthand that assumes one word can encompass a person's past, present, and future. That one word can encompass how a person experiences sexual and romantic attraction. And maybe it DOES actually hold true for a lot of lesbians that all their feelings and behavior, now, then, and for forever, only involved other women. But the rest of us are left with two equally stupid options:

  1. Find some way to define yourself with other labels. There are hundreds of them and the list only grows longer. Most non-maintstream labels have limited recognition, and even among circles "in the know" you end up with some godawful monstrosity of a label like "gray-ace gynesexual panromantic". The more "exact" you try to get, the more ridiculous your label becomes, and the less it will be recognized. (I'm not trying to shit on those of you who really like this system. I'm a biromantic homosexual! However, it's a system with extremely limited and obscure uses. The average person knows about 3 sexual orientation labels at best)

  2. Call yourself a lesbian for simplicity's sake and risk offending lesbians who think you don't deserve to say so, and confuse anyone when they learn about feelings and behavior of yours that wasn't/isn't "lesbian"


I'm curious where you guys stand in this debate. Even the people who disagree with me. Especially the people who disagree!

"True" lesbian/gay or not, all of us might feel like we're being erased. So when disagreeing, it would do us all some good to be polite and try to have empathy.

Questions:

  1. Who should call themselves gay or a lesbian?

  2. Do labels do more good or more harm?