identity

Steelflower’s question continued: I’m deadly frightened to tell him because this is something I am really ashamed of. I trust him and know my secret would be safe with him, but I’m terrified that he’ll suddenly find me disgusting, or frightening, or that he’ll never be able to trust me again -…

It’s hard to say when things finally changed for me. All the pieces were there for a long time, waiting to fall into place, but I just wasn’t ready to let go and watch them tumble down. The idea of having to put it all behind me scared me. The idea of losing such a close relationship. Of losing something so familiar.

It’s hard to say when things finally changed for me. All the pieces were there for a long time, waiting to fall into place, but I just wasn’t ready to let go and watch them tumble down. The idea of having to put it all behind me scared me. The idea of losing such a close relationship. Of losing something so familiar.

Figuring out who you are as a sexual being, and what your sexual experiences mean to you, in a world full of double standards and outdated definitions can be quite confusing. Here’s my story of “losing my virginity” and finding my identity when it comes to sex.

Life has scripts. Little socially-agreed plays that we enact rather than trying to figure out all our interactions from scratch every time. Many of them are very simple. There’s also scripts for sex. Unfortunately, the most common script out there is terrible.

Words for gender, sexual or other kinds of identity don’t usually mean the same things to all people. In fact, they very, very rarely do. Those words also can never tell us all or even most of what someone is comfortable with sexually, what their sexual boundaries and limits are and what they are…

Although I think of myself as South Asian, I was born overseas and have always lived in a Western country. Our family still carries many of our traditional values from back home and we have a large community here. I came out to my parents around 3 years after having my own realizations. The impetus for this was that they had started to look for marriage partners for me.

My family is supportive of my life, as long as they get to ignore the queer part. I know they can’t handle it so I don’t talk about it with them. As for my community of colour, the only one I’ve ever really been a part of is my mom’s church family, and I know they wouldn’t be able to handle it either.

What’s it mean to be questioning, why would you or someone else identify that way, how do you deal in the process and how might you answer the question?

Maybe you know what safer sex is. But do you also know what it isn’t? Take a minute and fact-check your ideas about what can protect you from STIs and what cannot.