I was finally able to put my finger on the thing that's been nagging at me with regard to me specifically with pansexuality vs. bisexuality.


So the traditional, binary-gendered definition of bisexuality is:

I can be sexually attracted to both genders: male and female.


The modern and non-binary inclusive definition of bisexuality is:

I can be sexually attracted to both people of my own gender and people of different genders.

(Note that my gender has been *eyeroll* "well, I have a uterus, so ... maybe as an honorary status? but it's really not very applicable..." when filling out forms lately. So "my gender" is a pretty small group, and people firmly in the Men and Women camps are both in "different genders" these days.)


Pansexuality attempts to explicitly challenge the gender binary (as implied by the traditional definition of bisexuality), and states:

I can be sexually attracted to people from any of the vast collection of gender identities that exist.


I ditched the traditional definition of "bisexual" as applies to myself as soon as I became aware that a) there were people who were outside the gender binary, and b) I had encountered enough non-binary-gendered people to know that they were a diverse group with different traits and personalities that included people I liked and who had not earned an immediate personality based disqualification from dating me.

However, some small groups of people do occasionally collect themselves together and tend to share traits which would be dealbreakers if they ever considered applying to date me. Groupings in the gender pandemonium are not exempt, though I do always try to keep an open mind until I've encountered a reasonable sample size.


"Pansexuality" implies that gender identification or gender expression is never a dealbreaker if I'm reviewing a relationship application.

"Dudebro" is a fairly distinct gender expression.


Sorry, dudebros. I'm bisexual, but the odds are not in your favor here.

I have a half-written entry about the latest Kipper/Llama-related stunts. Hilariously, it involves basically zero problems from the actual Kipper/Llama team, and an ever-escalating metric fuckton of DNS woes. That thing that Mr. Bronze said, once upon a time: "When two black magicians fight in a room? The stuff that falls to the floor? That's DNS." All of which means I am now going up against the black magicians. The Renaissance Man has made a helpful suggestion; said helpful suggestion has been passed along through the Kipper/Llama lines, and might actually happen, depending on the number of affected users.



Sadly I missed the new year lunch, which doubled as a going-away lunch for Researcher Lannister, whose last day is Friday. Alas, sleep schedule.


In case anybody else has not independently come up with this one: ( Fun with calendars. )


I'm feeling halfway++ confident again about the workplace events planning. I suspect I am due for sending more candy in the direction of the Events team, via inter-office mail.


I found Mr. Zune staring at a wall in my wing. He was staring at some papers my teammates had put up: he's working on a thing that involves some design elements, and he doesn't want my department to fucking kill him. He explained a little of what his problem was while I refilled my coffee (decaf). I facilitated an introduction to one of the people on said papers on the wall, and they'll be having a meeting tomorrow to help him figure out what the entire fuck he's doing, visually speaking.


It turns out that the Renaissance Man and I have both read a rather lot of Bujold. This occasioned a high-five, and I'm going to have to send him the patch-package for the back of CryoBurn. He is not a current or former Listee, which would have been just too hilarious. He did, however, have The Warrior's Apprentice recommended to him by Lois Herself, with instructions to omg ignore the cover, omg. :D


It turns out that I can in fact explain "knotting" usefully. I am now going to have to search to see if there is a fic that is simultaneously involving knotting, a tied hockey score, and Shibari. (I just explained it via werewolves; I didn't actually get into A/B/O.) Also, the game "lube/not-lube" is fundamentally different when you think the game is about whether you would require lube in order to stick that item up somewhere, rather than if that item would work as lube. Consider the pineapple. Consider the pineapple, sideways. Fortunately we got that one straightened out.


Apropos of hilarity earlier, I find myself watching Ally McBeal tonight. "Whipped cream moment" has been added to my personal lexicon. The Renaissance Man explained the three simple questions. It is a defining moment of realization involving the licking of whipped cream out of anatomy, and whether and how viscerally that gets you going.

I still remember one of those moments for me. The thing about getting to know someone new is that we don't already know each other's deep backstories. So in order for that whipped cream moment to make sense when related, I had to start at Beltane of 1995, with another sexuality-defining three simple questions. And the thing about Beltane 1995 is, the story starts in September of 1994 when Bugs posed in the doorway of the hands-on tech-based bio class on the first day of our freshman year and announced that he was IN THE HOUSE.

( Hilarity ensues, including me desperately trying not to grope my amazing ex A in her amazing tits while offering platonic comfort before we were dating. )

The mating plumage of the BISEXUAL is vivid and unmistakable. ;)

I got to thinking about how my queerness (bi/pan-sexuality) is often invisible, even to me. Perhaps more to me than to others.

The environment in which I was raised provided narratives and tips to help me contextualize my attraction to the male of the species. In time I learned to distrust the immediate crushes on all the shiny ones, and to only take action if it persisted. Hail the mysterious workings of Azz's brain.

It did not prove half so helpful with my feelings for other girls and women. A sudden tropism for the company of a guy, and a need to know all about him, shyness in his presence -- probably a crush. A girl? Friendship, right?

( I ramble. )

Ten years ago today, I lost my current paper journal, which had an uncomfortable number of my thoughts, and contact information, and so much that I was very very unhappy to have lost. I begged a friend for a LiveJournal invite code, and started a journal that I would never be able to drop in a classroom.

It wasn't my very first attempt at an online journal -- the Angelfire site I made is still up kicking around somewhere, and I had a "rants" section in there that resembled a blog. But LJ was the one that stuck, and as you can see, while I may have migrated, I have not forgotten my first beloved journal, and I have every intention of keeping it warm and occupied until either I die or the lights go off in the data center. (And if I should die first, if any asshat should tell you that my journal should be deleted, please tell them very kindly that I would not have wanted it that way, and that you'll be honoring my wishes thanks very much.)

This particular lineage of journal was started twenty years ago in January. The US had started air attacks in the Persian Gulf, and I realized that keeping an account of my (sheltered, privileged little ten-year-old) thoughts might be valuable at least to my descendents. (I'd been reading Rilla of Ingleside.) I'd kept journals for school before, but this was the first one I was keeping for myself and my own purposes. It soon degenerated from my Deep Thoughts to my far more candid thoughts about Boys and School and similar. I kept the journal in a succession of volumes, and to this day still maintain a paper version, albeit infrequently updated.



Sixteen years ago yesterday, I had a very awkward phone conversation with my friend Bugs. He had a crush on a particular senior, and he'd walked from one high school building to the other with her. He was actually supposed to walk with me. We were going to take the path through the woods and make out. He knew about and condoned my crush on a friend of his (he'd tried to set us up, and it hadn't entirely worked); I knew about and condoned his crush on the senior. I had to convince him that I wasn't about to kill him. Once he realized that I wasn't mad, he suddenly realized that hey wait, I thought she was hot too!

This necessitated a call with our mutual friend, the single out-of-the-closet lesbian in the entire high school. (There couldn't have been more than a thousand kids there. I had to go trawl wikipedia looking for the answers, which wasn't very satisfying because then I had to go to other sources to get the frelling numbers I wanted, which weren't actually the numbers I wanted, just maximum capacity, which we'd exceeded my freshman year.) Out of our less-than-a-thousand, we had Savil, and a guy who I shall call Anton. No one else was brave enough to expose themselves to the possible static that could be generated by a school who thought that a fun joke when getting control of the scrolling LED sign in the commons was to put 'KKK' on it.

Savil asked questions, and I answered them honestly, and soon I was in possession of the nearest thing to a Certified Bisexual sign that you could get: the realization that I had a bit of a crush on this senior, and that I wouldn't be any more opposed to some hanky-panky with a woman than I would with a man, and that a Real Live Lesbian had told me that in her opinion I was bisexual.


It's been more than half my life now. I'm an adult. I started beginningcocks, which is sex-ed as well as painful hilarity. I'm helping raise a chatful of fish. I get assorted questions about sexuality, gender, and the like. My fish are a lot more aware of the various possibilities out there as far as sexuality and so forth than I was. They are aware that bisexuality exists. I wasn't until 1995 January 13. They are aware that the gender of some people's brains don't fit the sex that they were described as being at birth. Most of them may even be aware that some people are asexual.



These dates are far more important to me, and have far more directly to do with who I am from day to day, than global events. Those build the world that I live in, yes, but I build the me who lives inside that world.

So a number of authors, some I've never heard of, and some I love dearly, were invited to an anthology, "Wicked Pretty Things". Then Jessica Verday announced that the editor had asked her to change a male/male romance in her story to a male/female romance, and was withdrawing from the anthology because that is just not okay.

cleolinda has been keeping track of some of the fallout. Seanan McGuire withdrew.


Please allow me to digress a bit.


It was 1995. I was engaged. We were fifteen and fourteen. We'd met at a summer academic camp; I'd been taking a writing class. We lived some few thousand miles apart: Pennsylvania and Alaska. Around Christmas, I bought matching, interlocking silver rings, and sent one off in the mail with a promise and a proposition -- a proposal: if we still feel this way after we're done with high school, after we're done with college, why don't we get married? The ring I got back didn't quite cross in the mail with the one I sent out, but it was pretty close. We'd been making the same plans. We were officially engaged.

In the ensuing year, I met a local guy in my theatre class. Longtime readers of this journal will know him as Shawn. (That Idiot Shawn, to be precise.) I fell head-over-heels for him. I'd already tackled the polyamory concept at camp, though I didn't realize that there was a word for it until boojum sent me an email telling me that there was such a thing and here were some starting points for research. So I was polyamorous. So I was engaged, and I was also in love with this local guy, and while it wasn't exactly okay -- I was in denial about the love for the local guy, I let him know I was off the market on account of being engaged, I knew that I was wired polyamorously but the only permissable Other Significant Other in this case would have been pyrogenic -- it was not something that challenged my identity. I was able to trace the ethical stack that made polyamory, and accepting it where all parties were in agreement, the thing to do, back to preschool. Montessori school. Raffi. "The More We Get Together", "The Sharing Song". I should share my toys. I should share my treats. I should share my books. I should share my friends. So why shouldn't people share boyfriends or girlfriends?

It was a long-distance high school romance. The odds were already stacked against it. I fell harder for Shawn. Shawn started behaving dangerously, scarily, and I went right along with him as if I'd never heard that such thing as a lie could exist. I was a mess, jumping when the phone rang and crying at night, and dragging people into the mess with me.

Eventually (too soon, not soon enough) I realized that my engagement was dead, mostly on account of me being mixed up with Shawn.

1996. Summer vacation. Not even a year from when we'd first met. I felt horrible. I was still in love -- but I loved Shawn more, and it wasn't right to not set my partner free. It was a morning. Tuesday, I think. I was alone in the house, listening to the radio. It was the expensive time of day to call, $0.37 a minute. I'd already racked up a horrendous phone bill with all of the Shawn-related problems. This couldn't wait, and it wouldn't take long.

As I picked up the phone to dial the number my fingers knew so well, a song came on the radio: Roxette, "It Must Have Been Love". It was indeed over now. I made the call. The conversation was short, and a painful relief for both of us. Less than a minute ended the future we'd been imagining for ourselves. I'd already cried myself out. There were no tears, not until much later.

1997. Fairbanks Summer Fine Arts Camp. This year I was enrolled as a writing student, not a visual arts student. It was my first experience of a formal peer critique group outside the halfhearted attempts in my English class, and I craved the feedback of my peers, the more incisive the better. My ego wasn't bound up in the words I'd already produced, but in the determination that with enough people telling me what I got right and what I got wrong, I could write a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. I wrote fearlessly, edited relentlessly, and put out twice as many words as any other member of the class.

It was time for me to lay my soul bare before the rest of the class. I wrote the story of that sickening minute of breakup, simply entitled "$0.37". It was my turn to read. I started. I paused.

"... he ...", I said, and edited myself on the fly as I read aloud.

It was still my story, but it wasn't true anymore. I was erasing my identity as I spoke, afraid that my class would turn against me as my friend Sara, the one from the big Mormon family, had. I was polyamorous. I was bisexual. I was slamming the closet door shut and crying inside it. I felt horrible. My reading fell flat. I was still acting, as I'd been trained to do in those theatre classes, but it was no longer in service of making the audience feel their way through my breakup, but in service of me not crying in front of them, not betraying the edit. The praise from my classmates didn't make me feel any better. My ex-fiancée wasn't named Eric, and she wasn't a boy.

I confessed my crime to the teacher, afterward, in private. She comforted me, and said that she'd suspected when I read it. She told me it was more powerful the way it belonged, and I should not be ashamed of having written it.

1997. Winter. I had a new, local, girlfriend. One fine evening, her father invited a co-worker of his to a family dinner. When he found out that the co-worker had a son close to his daughter's age, the son was invited too. And since both of them knew me, why didn't Azzie come too? So I came. And ... it was me, my girlfriend, and Shawn. Awkward!

Eventually, we three teenagers retreated to her room, letting the grown-ups talk shop. It was quiet in there. Dark. Perfect for sharing the sorts of secrets you can't repeat in the light. You could have cut the sexual tension with a knife. We were on the verge of an enthusiastic bisexual polyamorous snogging session -- my fingers were skating up her leg, Shawn's hand tracing patterns on her arm, Shawn's other hand holding me by the shoulder, completing the triangle -- when her little brother barged in and entirely ruined the mood. It was hot and hilarious and deserved to be written down for posterity. So I did. And then an English teacher asked the class if maybe any of us had any essays or anything that we'd written that we might like to share with the class.

I started reading. This essay started slow, with all the hilarious mishaps of dinner, and my class was giggling and eating out of the palm of my hand. Things started to get hot and heavy, even though I'd only written about how we were sitting on her bed and looking at the stars. The class was totally in the moment, listening to me. I had that flash of awareness you sometimes get when you're performing -- I'm telling this story, I have this power, they are totally engaged, I am making them feel what I felt in this moment, all the anticipation, the sexual potential, the love -- if I finished reading this, the class would be all the way with me, they would know exactly how I felt, and they would probably agree with me.

I chickened out. "And-then-her-little-brother-barged-in-and-ruined-the-mood, the end," I babbled, and slammed the green notebook shut. It was truthful, but it wasn't true. (I lost that green notebook. I have hoped to find it for many years now. I wonder what became of it.)


Before I got engaged, I told my mother I was bisexual. She tried to argue me out of giving up on boys, because she knew boys my age could be trolls. That wasn't the point. If I'd been giving up on boys, I would have said I was a lesbian. She told me to keep it quiet, because people would try to hurt me if they knew, and it could hurt my father's career. I tried asking my friend Sara, daughter of the colleague of my father's who I later suspected Mama was talking about, what she thought of two girls dating, or two boys. She said it was disgusting. I stopped talking to her. She never knew why. I told my fourth grade teacher, the one who I told all about my love life and its complications even years after elementary school, that a girl friend of mine had a crush on me. "Eewww!" she said. I stopped confiding in her.

My fiancée and I looked desperately for signs that we weren't alone in the world. Michael Stipe refusing to label his sexuality was amazingly inspirational to us. There were other hints of respected adults who weren't straight, and it was a lifeline to us. Ginger gave me Dykes to Watch Out For clippings. We existed, no matter how hard other people tried to pretend we didn't. I ignored the chilling implications of "was bisexual: now he's monogamous" for the bisexual part. Aral Vorkosigan was attracted to soldiers, on a planet where heterosexuality was the only acceptable path. He was out there. I just had to survive long enough to see a world where I could live as myself freely and without fear.


Editing my stories as I did was an act of self-erasure: sometimes necessary to survive, but not okay, never okay, merely the lesser of two evils. Pretending that the world only contains straight people is not okay. Teaching your children that the world only contains straight people is not okay. It is a denial of that-which-is, a denial of c'thia. Treating any mention of same-sex romance as inherently more sexually explicit than an equivalent action of an opposite-sex couple is not okay. Trying to pretend that the only possible ethical instance of human sexual behavior is for reproduction is not okay. Teaching your children that is not okay either.


I support Jessica Verday, and the authors who have withdrawn from this anthology, and the authors who are choosing to avoid this editor until such time as she realizes the full implications of what she asked Jessica to do, and makes a meaningful acknowledgment of this. I can hardly do otherwise.

You say "coming out" like it's a neat little package, sometimes: realize that X or Y person has likely assumed that you are a heterosexual (as it's the societal default, given that it is the mode of sexual orientations, so it's perhaps a 90% safe assumption, and depending on your high school teacher, a 90% might even have been an A), then declare to them, "Hello, I am your old [relationship], [name]! I bet you had no idea, but I am [orientation]!"

And then they react to it, and eventually both of you go on your merry ways, and with any good luck they would not have been one of the people who is inclined to berate/fire/beat/rape/murder you for revealing that you are not straight.


There's a feeling I pick up from the community at large, and the feeling is that no matter how long it takes, if in the end the result of you coming out to someone is that someone accepting it, then coming out is worth it, both on a personal level for you, and for queer society as a whole.

The other part of that feeling is that the big hurdle to be overcome that is preventing people from coming out is their own fears of being rejected building up the act of coming out into a big devastating hurdle: if only people would realize that in the end many people who come out are acknowledged/embraced by the people they come out to, perhaps they would not fear it as much.

(And yes, of course these are gross oversimplifications, but they're oversimplifications that stick like little toxic needles into the hearts of young queer folk.)


It's not the act of saying "Hi, I am Azz, and I am bisexual*" to a workmate that I dread. The words are simple, and I know that particularly these days, for a woman, my risks are relatively low.

The part I dread comes in between the declaration and the acceptance where we go our own directions, where I am likely to be called upon by someone in the full exercise of their heterosexual privilege, demanding of me at least some of the following:

The commonly-understood definition of my orientation (because they have never heard of it before, and/or cannot Google it themselves)
Defense of my orientation's right to exist and/or seek romantic and sexual fulfillment
Whether I meet their preconceptions of my orientation
Exactly how I personally align and/or differ from the commonly-understood definition of my orientation
My personal relationship and sexual history
Whether or not my history complies with the definition of my orientation (either the commonly-understood definition, their own preconceived definition, or some weird combination of both)
Defense of why I identify as my orientation and not another orientation that they feel suits me better
Intimate details of my sexual activity and practices
Education on any other non-majority sexual practices and preferences they may have conflated or associated with my orientation

If, after an extensive and painful session of being quizzed about intimate details that are frankly none of their business, they then deign to accept that the orientation I stated at the beginning of things applies to me, and continue to treat me warmly, or at least continue to treat me the same as they previously had or better, then I am supposed to be grateful that the coming-out "went well", and be grateful that I was given the opportunity to educate them so that they could learn to accept our community.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have been reading and following the most prominent parts of Racefail '09, and I was ashamed to see that as a white woman, I have been guilty of expecting the People of Color to provide me with a free/neat/tidy education after they had pointed out problematical points -- even though in most cases I did not say anything to ask or demand this. Despite not often opening my big mouth to make the situation worse, I was still failing in my mind and expectations.

Only now, after having repeatedly seen why it is my responsibility as a would-be clueful white woman to do my own damned homework, not their responsibility to give me the answers, do I begin to see why the nearly inevitable question and answer session that near-inescapably accompanies a coming-out is an exercise of heterosexual privilege and heterosexuals not wanting to do their homework.

The ritual of "Coming Out" enjoins youth to become educators and ambassadors, but also sends the message that it is OK for heterosexuals to not do their homework, that the queer community will gladly do the heavy intellectual lifting, that it is okay to anticipate a lengthy debate during which one's instinctive and possibly not thoroughly examined feelings will be expected to not be found conflicting and adhere to logical principles after announcing one's orientation (directly or indirectly).

Oh yes. Indirectly. The stereotypical "Coming Out" is when the queer person becomes tired of hiding their true self, works themselves up to it, addresses an important person in their life, and tells them their orientation. This is not the only way it gets done, oh no. There are a thousand times when you have to come out or choose not to do it, and it gets very old very fast.

Someone says something that assumes you are heterosexual, and you don't feel like letting that assumption pass.
Someone says something that assumes you are heterosexual, and you actually have to correct them because them getting it wrong is going to cause problems.
Someone assumes your sexual orientation, but got the wrong minority orientation.
Someone makes a disparaging comment about your orientation (and you don't believe they know that you are).
Someone asks about details of your personal life that would not cause comment if you were heterosexual, and you can be rude, lie, or come out. ("Is that your sister?" "Are you married?" etc.)


On a personal level for me, coming out to every person I know is too damned exhausting, even though I am okay with 99% or more of the people I have met knowing that a woman approaching me in a potential romantic or sexual sense would not get an immediate veto based solely on the fact that she is a woman. Sometimes it would even be unsafe (that other less-than-one-percent).

For the greater good of queer society as a whole, I am sometimes made to feel guilty that I do not have the resources to devote to coming out to everyone to whom it would be safe to come out to. When I do gird my loins and speak out about my sexuality even when I know there's a painful discussion coming up, I know that while I may not immediately reap the benefits of it, I'm taking one for the team, so it's all going to be OK in the end, provided I don't die of it.

I am not exactly shy about allowing people to know my sexuality. I make references to both ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends. I make mention of bisexuality (mine) in public journal entries. I belong to orientation-specific communities. I state the orientation on Facebook. My car sports a rainbow sticker and a bi pride flag sticker. Generally I do not get flak about these things, so they are not a problem. I do not mind people knowing. I do mind going through the fucking third degree when someone finds out.


It's not OK for queer people to be made to feel that they must pass as heterosexual in order to avoid conflict or be safe.
It's not OK to add to a young queer person's misery by expecting them to be a debater and ambassador on top of their other issues (and blaming them if they don't), unless they feel like doing that.
It's not OK for heterosexuals to expect us to do their homework.
It's not OK for heterosexuals to greet a queer person directly or indirectly revealing their orientation as time to attack or debate their sexuality. Revealing one's sexuality is not always and without exception an invitation to start a discussion.



*Bisexual is an oversimplification in itself. I suspect my true orientation is more in the direction of sapiosexuality, particularly as dumbasses of any gender identity actively repulse me.

Tonks sees slash everywhere. Adult-rated, a must-read for slashgirls. Hilarious.

Fanfic Warnings (for badfic & beyond)!

Pat Robertson thinks some members of Islam are Satanists planning to take over the world. And says so.

(via norabombay) Note to media: sexuality and gender identity aren't necessarily linked.

It would probably be hilarious if the reason that I feel sexually submissive to my ideal male mate, and sexually dominant to my ideal female mate is because of the chickens.

Have you ever watched chickens having sex? The rooster trips over his wing in a courtship dance, putting his wing down and sidling over to the hen of his fancy. If she's feeling receptive, she freezes in place, wings spread ever so slightly, so it's painfully obvious that he's supposed to hop on top and do his thing.

As far as I'd seen, the only chickens who might be termed 'bisexual' had been older hens, more dominant ones, who took to crowing in their old age, and may have occasionally tripped over their wings at less-prominent hens. (Calamity, the teenage rooster, had been so horny that he would on occasion fuck a stump. That chick was a problem and a misfit; it rarely does well to raise a chick, especially one who should be an alpha rooster, by himself with little socialization and then introduce him to an established society.)

I learned so much about how to interact with others from watching chickens. When a rooster wants a hen, he will trip over his wing at her; the hen will either walk off, knock him on the noggin with her beak, or squat submissively for him. So, in order for chickens to successfully have sex, the hen has to be submissive (or somewhat squished).

I always identified more with the dominant hens, treating them as equals and the submissive hens like children.


If substantial ideas about sexuality are formed before the age of ten... heh.

This day at school, my quasi-boyfriend the drummer "Bugs" walked back from Hutch with the female senior he'd been lusting after instead of walking back with me as he'd promised.

On the phone with him and Savil later, it was determined that I am, in fact, bisexual.