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Sometimes you don’t know your sexual preference until someone asks you

We recently asked you to take part in our Female Nation Survey where we asked you questions about your personal life and the world around you.

One of our reader’s felt the survey didn’t give her enough room to engage with the questions. So here are her elaborated answers on the implications society, sex and the workplace have on women.

Women24: Where do you see yourself on the scale if 1 is completely heterosexual, 5 is bisexual and 10 is completely gay?

A: This is interesting because I’ve been thinking about this question. I think that sexuality is so complex it defies labeling or categorizing.

I’m aware that Lisa Diamond broke new ground in her book Sexual Fluidity, because it shook the base of this belief that sexuality is an either/or thing and introduced the idea that it is rather a sliding scale.

I find that limiting as well, though, because even that implies that sexuality is somehow linear. And I don’t think it is.

What if I, a woman, am attracted to a transgendered person? Where on this scale between completely heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual would I then fall? What if I am attracted to an androgynous person precisely because I cannot place them in any gender category?

What if I am attracted to someone, start dating them and then find out that they are inter-sexed, i.e. born with ambiguous genitalia? What if (and this has actually happened to me) I am checking out a hot, sexy man and then later find out that he’s actually a hot, sexy butch lesbian? What am I then?

I think that placing biological sex at the center of sexual attraction when there is so much more that draws us to people is a problem. And it limits our thinking about sexuality.

There are so many people who ‘colour outside the lines’ where this is concerned, that I cannot believe that these classifications are very useful. (Except when it comes to activism though.)

And now for my own thoughts...

Thank you doing this survey, and particularly one that addresses such varied aspects of women’s lives. I am sure that with the growing number of media publications who have launched women’s sections in the recent past, there is a realisation that women’s issues sadly do not make the mainstream newsreels.

The women we hear most about on TV are victims of rape and abuse, poor civilians waiting for government housing or ditzy celebrities who have no interest in anything but their “brand”.

Very rarely do we hear of women who are sitting in decision-makers’ chairs, women who have defied the odds and changed the world (and I do believe they exist) or community workers who are effecting change. I am most interested in hearing about these stories. I hope that you contribute to presenting a more nuanced, richer view of South African women. It’s about time we truly had a voice!
 
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