Sexual Fluidity: It's Not Just Gay and Straight | Nourished With Tish

Alright, we’re switching it up here on the blog today. I say ‘we’ as though I have a whole team behind the screen with me, when in fact, it is only me (with the occasional keyboard lick from my dog).

It has been a long-time goal of mine to branch out into more LGBT topics (you can read me day-dreaming of these things here and here). And there are many reasons for that. For one, I’m queer. Being gay is a really big part of my identity. Like talk to me for 20 minutes and you’ll quickly find out the following: I’m gluten-free, I’m a die-hard Taylor Swift fan, and I’m gay.

The second reason is that I find a lot of health food blogs to be super heteronormative. Which is totally cool and I have nothing against that. But what about the queer humans who also love nutrition? Where do they go? (Unless I’m the only one. Oh god. I hope not.)

So my answer to that is this subsection of the blog: Queer Focus. Where, hello, we focus on queer things that I spend too much time thinking about. So welcome!

What is Sexual Fluidity?

To start, I want to say that political climate aside, we live in a pretty cool time in the sense that we can have conversations like this. That we have these labels, and that we can (mostly) explore these ideas safely, is really awesome. A few years ago you really had two options: you were straight or you were gay. And before that you had two options: you were straight or you were pretending to be.

But now? There is so much in between. We have the language and the freedom to really explore sexuality and get to the core of who we are. That’s pretty neat.

I remember when I was in high school, I had the realization that I could be bisexual. I decided ultimately to just eat (and drink) those feelings away, because there was (and still is) a lot of stigma around bisexuality. For guys: there was the assumption that it’s just a stepping stone for them coming out as totally gay. For women: they’re promiscuous, slutty and will probably settle with a guy. A lot of these notions still exist, and are incredibly damaging, but I do see a shift as we become more open as a society.

Sexual fluidity is the idea that, for some people, your sexuality can change and is malleable. Of course, for a lot of people, sexuality is constant. You might be 100% straight and know that that will never change. Awesome. You do you, my friend. But for a lot of people, it absolutely can change, and that can be super terrifying.

We are starting to see more and more people (celebrities like Stephanie Beatriz, Nico Tortorella, Cara Delevigne, Halsey, Rita Ora, Kehlani, the list goes on) come out as bisexual or sexually fluid or queer. And that is bomb dot com.

Why Does This Matter?

The problem when we don’t have the right language or labels to accurately describe us, is that we feel stuck, forgotten or worse, we feel like we’re broken, damaged and weird. This can do so much damage in terms of mental health. Representation matters. Being able to define yourself, to express yourself authentically, absolutely matters. That’s why I’m talking about this today: if there’s even one person who relates to this, then cool, I’ve done my job. And if not, hopefully it’ll open your mind to the existence and acceptance of sexual fluidity.

Like most things in life, sexuality is a spectrum. Sure, there are people that are 100% gay or 100% straight. But there are a lot of people who fall somewhere in between.

Take me for example. I would describe myself as mostly gay: I prefer to date women, and I’ve been in a long-term relationship of 5 years with my lesbian partner. Before I came out, I dreamed a lot of dating women, and feel most comfortable and fulfilled by other women.

But, something that took me a few more years to realize after I came out, was that I was still attracted to men. When I first came out, I looked at all the casual relationships I had with guys, and chalked up the lack of commitment to my being gay. I decided then, that none of these relationships meant anything to me, they were just time fillers.

Awareness is Powerful

Looking back, I realize I could have made things easier for everyone if I had known how to better express myself. There would have been a lot less hurt feelings, and maybe some people wouldn’t have had to waste time with someone who didn’t want the same things.

As for today, being able to describe myself as sexually fluid, gives me the freedom to be more authentic. I still describe myself as ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ because those words best fit who I am. But for me, ‘lesbian’ isn’t actually a great fit (but I don’t mind if someone calls me that!) because it limits or negates previous experiences that have significant importance to me.

For some people, sexuality might look the way it does for me: I’m like 80% gay, but there’s some wiggle room. For others it could work in flux: they may have periods of their lives where they’re straight, and then transition into being gay, and then maybe even they go back to identifying as straight. Totally cool. For others, gender isn’t part of the equation at all, and it’s the individual person (or persons) they find themselves attracted to. It’s all good.

The point is, sexuality doesn’t just look like one thing. I think it would be cool if we got to a place where, if a queer lady dates a guy, she isn’t met with a “But aren’t you gay?”. Or if a girl dates a bisexual man, she doesn’t hear “Don’t you worry that he’ll cheat on you with another man?”. Because sex and love is just way more complicated than that.

It’s fluid.

Okay, that’s a wrap for this instalment of Queer Focus. Let me know your thoughts. Want more content like this? Let me know in the comments!