I’m not demi, because I can be sexually attracted to people I don’t know that well, or at all, but who I’m attracted to seems almost arbitrary. I usually call myself bisexual or bi/pan, but the only description that I’m wholly comfortable with is that my orientation is non-gender-specific. I may be pansexual, I don’t know! I’ve never crushed on a non-binary person, as far as I know, so how can I tell? But I doubt it would make a difference to my spinning bottle type orientation.

I’ve always had crushes on boys and girls since kindergarten. I accepted my attraction to girls was sexual around the age of 14, and it was rather liberating. It was the end of any confusion I might have felt. Just admitting it was real and valid meant a lot, and I think it’s the reason why I don’t try to censor my attractions. I accept them when they show up, and don’t try to force them in expected directions either.

It’s not just gender. I don’t seem to have a type, either. Women, men, butches, femmes, long, tall, short, fat, thin, early 20s, late 50s, symmetrical faces, non-symmetrical faces, resonant voices, soft voices, dark, fair, music nerds, potheads, gaming geeks, goths, hippies, Republicans, anarchists, queens of frump, I could go on. I’m not attracted to everybody – in fact, it’s a tiny teeny percentage of people. Who they happen to be is just something I can’t predict at all. Not even my stated turn-offs are absolute.

It doesn’t confuse me, because I already know and accept that this is how it works for me, and I know when I’m attracted to someone, when I’m not, and when I wouldn’t mind hanky-panky despite there being little or no preliminary attraction. It’s clear as day, same as the difference between a crush and a not-crush (which are independent of attraction). I guess I should be grateful that this is so easily distinguishable for me, because I wouldn’t want to have to work it out with diagrams and descriptions!

I am rather happy that I ended up with a woman, though, because I’m much more comfortable being identified as queer than I would be being assumed straight. Being straight comes with a lot of heteronormative assumptions that frankly appall me, and that might cast a shadow on any straight relationship, at least unless my beau was also queer and out. I did have a serious boyfriend once. I loved him to bits (still do, differently and more awkwardly) and even he had to endure some of my iffiness about the idea of being a “girlfriend”. It seems too much like being fitted into a cookie cutter mold with all the expectations of couplehood and grandchildren and normalcy attached to it. Nobody’s asked me about grandchildren since I’ve been with my girl, despite the fact that we’re vaguely planning on having a sprog someday.

I guess it’s odd that I’m also monogamous, but there you have it. That, too, makes sense to me, and seems removed from the world of attractions.

As the author of the OP I wanted to affirm what you’ve said about the importance of language and naming things for political purposes (i.e. visibility, activism, articulating the needs of minority groups). I want to clarify that even though my personal sexual journey was contextual, I do not use “fluidity” as a way to escape the politics of queerness. I’m out as a woman who is partnered with a same-sex lover, and I use “lesbian” and “bisexual” and “queer” as identity labels for myself.

It isn’t that I object to the fact that the labels exist, or that they are useful politically, or that they feel comfortable for some folks. Hell, they even feel comfortable to ME. What I object to is the fixity of those labels. The idea that you must settle on one label in our culture that somehow defines your “true” sexual orientation. And that, once discovered, that orientation is constant throughout your life. Emerging research into human sexuality shows a remarkable variety of behaviors and self-conceptions over the life-span. What I dislike is the cultural narrative that posits that human beings are each born with a sexual orientation that is (upon puberty) somehow knowable to that person. Knowable and fixed forever. Because real peoples’ experience seems to belie that narrative.

just some thoughts. not sure how clear i was.

I typically identify as fluid or pansexual, but I used to joke to people who asked that I’m “friendsexual,” simply because while I’m perfectly capable of finding someone’s looks aesthetically pleasing, and recognizing specific looks as being attractive to others, I have a really hard time wanting to jump in the sack with someone unless I’ve been friends with them a good long time.

I’m so glad I’m not alone!!