Sunday, July 17, 2011

Pollar Opposites

Thank you for taking part.  The poll is still open, and will be for a few days.  If you haven't, please take the poll.  Details are here.

Realistically, there should be a grid or a scale or something, which would replace almost all of the answers.

                 0 = always with a boy, 100 = always with a girl
                When I'm a boy, my partner is: [pick 0 to 100]

and so on.

But then how do transgender partners fit in?  This is really a multi-dimentional problem.

In any survey, sexual orientation, to be complete, should have a trans option.  For instance, there are men who swear they are straight but will spend a happy hour with a transvestite prostitute.  They probably need to answer the therapist question I posed the other day.  And there are some unknown number of admirers and chasers.  I'd like to put a number on them.  And I'd like to find a better term than "chaser."

I'm trying to figure out how to follow up with people who enjoy the (sexual) company of trans partners sometimes, and people who answered "flexible."

It's not easy, and I'll probably get it wrong.  I'm open to suggestions.

The next poll will be on Wednesday.  I'll still be writing daily though.



4 comments:

  1. I am actually pretty flexible when I'm a boy...I see myself (and am) with men and with women, as well as trans (transmen and transwomen). As a girl however, I am almost exclusively with men, sometimes transmen if he is attractive to me. I describe myself as a "straight woman born male."

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  2. That's interesting. I'll be writing soon about Things That Don't Have A Name Yet. I'm not sure where you fit in. This is why labels, classifications, etc, suck.

    If I had to put you in a box though, it would be "gay." I'll explain why as the poll result posts go on. Please don't take offense at the label, or my labelling of you.

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  3. This page has some great options for finding labels for the less usual orientations. For trans* people who are genderfluid, the gyno- and andro- prefixes can be more useful than the hetero- and homo- ones.

    Personally I went with flexible because for me the primary and secondary sexual characteristics of my partner are no more important than the color of their hair, or their height, or handedness. I know that puts me in a tiny minority and you'll have readers who choose flexible for other reasons, but it's why I choose the pan- prefix for myself rather than the bi- one. The difference is important, I feel.

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  4. Sage ~ my readers are a small minority. You're a tiny minority of that minority (as a female, you're about 2%). I bet if I went with the "pan-" label you'd be in a larger group. I'll be asking more about "flexible" next week. This week, my poll gets hijacked by a reader!

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