Name calling

Gentle readers,

This past weekend I learned a new word. It both concerned and confused me. The word was "pansexual". Pansexual? I looked it up. It means someone who is attracted to people regardless of gender identity or biological sex. Great. That's just what we need. Another category. Another box in which to fit people.

I'll explain. In my lifetime alone, here's how things have changed. When I was a child and young adult I knew that if someone was "gay" they were a homosexual...a man who liked men or a woman who like women. Shortly after that, I learned that gay, although used generically was technically a boys-only phrase. Girls who like girls were called lesbians...although this word was very hard for people to say out in the open until the mid-80's.

Then, alas, enter the bisexual. A bisexual person was a person who liked both men and women. So there we were. "Normal" (I was raised Catholic), gay, lesbian and bisexual. If you couldn't fit yourself in to one of those categories...you could probably at least fake it.

Now the 90's come along and ta da...we now have a category for our transgendered and transexual community. Transgendered refers to a person's gender identity. A transgendered person may be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or any number of categories that would come along later. A transexual is usually someone who has physically altered themselves through surgery. I'll say right now that I apologize if my understanding of any of these categories is not correct...this is just my understanding and I'm willing to learn.

Ok, good-bye 20th century! Hello 21st Century...the Century of Categories!!!

So, now, we arrive at the metrosexual. Metrosexuals are straight men who put product in their hair and concern themselves with their appearance. Now we've got pansexuals, polysexuals (I'm not making this up) or even asexuals if you like.

I mean no offense to anyone who identifies themselves in any of these categories. My issue is with the society who has forced us to create these boxes. Why can't we just love who we love without fear of judgement or consequence? We'll have a lot fewer politicians stomping their feet in men's room stalls if we could just shake ourselves of our Puritanical roots.

So, here's a few more categories that I thought we could add.

panorama-sexual - someone who'll sleep with whoever's around. I went to college with many of these

omnipo-impotent - an older gentlemen who's prescription for Viagra has him so ready for action that he'll sleep with all things...animal, vegetable or mineral

Inter-sexual - someone who sleeps with people they met over the internet

Transcend-sexual - someone who has sex while reading Ralph Waldo Emerson poems

So, that was my lesson. We'll keep adding boxes until there's only three people in each box. I'll ask it again. Can we just please all love who we love without question?

Daily Random Musing Item: How is it that we wound up with the heart shape that we all know...the one we'll soon be buying chocolates in the shape of etc.? Obviously chocolate in the shape of the human heart would gross me out. Just wondering.