A Pride Month Questionnaire

[silveradept]

A thing I saw going around for Pride month. I note it makes a big assumption that you are part of 2SLGBTQAI+ if you are answering these questions, but I feel like this could be adapted, without too many tweaks, to people who want to normalize talking about these kinds of topics between people of age to discuss them seriously, but who feel they are not part of the community themselves.

• ❤️🌈Sexuality: The longer I spend exploring the idea and hanging around cool people with interesting ideas and lives, the less I feel like my sexuality is specifically gender-based and more based on liking or disliking specific acts, specific situations, and/or specific dynamics. I don't know what that translates to.


• 💛🌈Gender pronouns: They/them are the correct pronouns to use for me. In specific contexts, the use of he/him pronouns will still be wrong, but it will go uncorrected.


• 💚🌈Gender: A conscientious objector to the toxicity that still undergirds masculinity. Definitely not a woman. "I'm a book dragon, not a bookworm" sometimes used as an answer for the persistent that can't accept that I've set my house up somewhere outside the gender binary.


• 💙🌈Relationship status: I am a terminus in another person's polyamory network, so I look like I'm monoamorous. I'm not, but I may not have the capacity to do anything else successfully unless it is under very specific circumstances. (Does that make me a disaster or just disastrous?)


• 💜🌈Celebrity crush: There are many people of multiple genders that I have aesthetic appreciation for, but I don't really know enough of any celebrity's inner life to know whether they would be anything more than eye candy.


• 💙🌈Crush: See above about aesthetic appreciation and understanding about someone's inner life. Also, there's a good chance that if I am crushing on someone, I'm oblivious that I am, for good or ill, and it's almost always physical. (Because I have trouble believing that other people would see me in a romantic or crush kind of way, I'm not disposed to seeimg others in that way, either. Also, it may be closer to the line that I'm somewhere in the grey-romantic or possibly quoiromantic space. I get the concept, but I don't notice the execution when it's aimed at me, and I have to consciously put in the effort to execute it when I'm trying to do it for others.)


• 💚🌈Best Friend: Like I'm supposed to choose only one. While I have friends who I am more or less likely to talk to about things, I am more likely to have a core of trusted friends than a singular bestie. (That also assumes I'm not in a mood where I believe nobody actually likes me or wants to hear me whine about my trivial problems when there are Real Issues happening elsewhere.)


• 💛🌈When you came out: I have been the person I am for at least as long as my blogging presence in the world, but I haven't really been displaying outward signs of it until a few years ago. It's not something, for me, that was momentous and life-changing and the needed a ceremonial break from the person I was before. (Which is also the cause for one of those "are you sure you're not really just straight and pretending to be something else?" brainweasels.)


• ❤️🌈First person you came out to: Again, not exactly ever done anything that's an official coming out of anything, just affixing pronouns to places or looking back on previous posts and going "ah, I knew who I was, even then, even if I was going on at length about some other thing."


• 💛🌈First gf/bf: Went approximately as well as you might expect for someone who has to work at the concept of doing romantic things or being a romantic partner.


• 💚🌈First heart break: Being (appropriately) frozen out by someone who was getting over a breakup when I mentioned that I thought of her as someone dateable.


• 💙🌈Ever had a crush on a straight person?: Yes, insomuch as I had pantsfeelings for someone who is straight.


• 💜🌈Fallen for a friend?: Yes, same definition as above.


• 💙🌈Cool straight friend: I am likely to be wrong if I name any names.


• 💚🌈Cool LGBTQ+ friend: Lots, thanks. Being someone who is not a horrible person on the matter means learning how many people around me are not cishet.


• 💛🌈Person that made you doubt your sexuality: That would be me. Since there is no easy label to describe me that I know of, I'm constantly asking whether or not the things I think are real actually are.


• ❤️🌈Are you proud of your sexuality?: I'm not ashamed to articulate what I like in a situation where that's pertinent information.


• 💛🌈Are you comfortable with your sexuality?: There's nothing about it that I want to get rid of, even if there are parts that I'm still learning about myself.


• 💚🌈Describe yourself: Queer, which is a big umbrella that I can fit under without having to let my tail get wet trying to huddle underneath any of the more specific ones. Tall, bearded, and masc-presenting, favors T-shirts with characters and cargo pockets on trousers and shorts when not at work.


• 💙🌈LGBTQ+ hero: Anyone who is out in our current hostile times exhibits heroism. Anyone who is true to themselves, even when they're not out, is also heroic.


• 💜🌈Favourite part of being LGBTQ+?: I haven't yet come across some perk or level up reward that I can really use in my life or that makes the grind easier. I suspect that there's some benefit I'm giving to others who can recognize a friend or someone more understanding in a situation where a person might want to or have to ask questions where another queer person will understand and not need 098 education on the matter.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Queer, which is a big umbrella that I can fit under without having to let my tail get wet trying to huddle underneath any of the more specific ones.

This is such a great statement.

[silveradept]

Thanks. I was thinking of the Totoro bus stop scene, just with a dragon and a bigger umbrella to work with.