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[–]yousaythosethingsFind and Replace "gatekeeping" with "having boundaries" 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What data best supports that LGB is a minority in the +++ “community”? I know it feels like we are and I’m not aware of a consistent enough definition of how the wider “community” is defined to get full aggregate numbers. I also don’t know how we can even accurately assess this with the popularization of effectively meaningless identifications like queer and pansexual replacing LGB in many cases but also often S.

This is why I think data needs to be gathered not based on identity or exclusively based on identity, but the underlying facts: What’s your sex? What sex(es)are you attracted to? Do you have an intersex condition? What is it? Do you have a gender identity different from your sex? What is it? If people want to claim to have an orientation that factors in gender identity, they can add that in, but on top of orientation based on sex. Same with non-binary. Then we can also map out patterns of differences in identification and reality.

I would also like to see more bisexual infrastructure and organizations. There is so much to be studied with bisexuality since it really is such a wide spectrum of experience. Maybe it’s not all coming from the same place? I don’t even know that all of homosexuality is coming from the same place and there are differences among us that can be parsed out including in how we experience our lack of attraction to the opposite sex. Idk how we get any mmore much-needed research into sexual orientation or female sexuality without being regimented about this data collection and insulating it from the pressures of political forces..

And because I’m rambling, there are a lot of questions I now have surrounding testosterone and other hormones and what possible influence they have on sexual orientation and under what circumstances. Like what the heck is going on with so many FtMs saying their sexual orientation seems to have changed after taking testosterone? I’ve now heard it both ways: FtMs previously only attracted to males now attracted to seemingly only attracted to females (for ex: Aaron Terrell) and previous lesbian-identifying FtMs now attracted to males (countless people; also a plot on the original L Word). I want to know what’s going on and not with some queer theory post-modernist explanation.

At the same time I do worry about the implications on LGB people in hostile places like Iran, not that they’re not already trying to trans the gay away.