USC Student Feels the Pressure of Labels

I have a quick story that relates to Wednesday's lecture about the variety of desire! Check it out!

I was hanging out with my friends the other day and we were talking about what we did over the weekend. One of my guy friends who had told us a while ago that he was gay, starts talking about a really pretty girl he kissed over the weekend.

We all said in surprise, "Really? I thought you said you were gay?"

He said, "Oh I am. It's just that I kind of like girls sometimes too."

My friends: "So you're bisexual."

"No, no it's more like I'm attracted to boys 60% of the time and girls 40% of the time. Even though I like girls I just prefer boys."

One of my guy friend said, "That means you're, bi, dude."

But he explained that the term bisexual puts him into a label that doesn't full describe how he feels. The word, he said, makes him feel restricted especially since it typically implies an equal attraction to the two sexes, which he doesn't have. He feels his sexual orientation is complex and not something that can be simply titled.

I found this conversation really interesting because it reminded me of the lecture on Wednesday about how sexuality and identity is like a color spectrum. There is just so much variety to human desire and there are many types of desires that we don't have names for. It's also like when Professor talked about how even creating one gender neutral pronoun would not suffice for the large variety of people who do not feel 100% female or 100% male. It's interesting that both the labeling and lack of labeling can put pressure on people and how they feel.