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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Fewer gays, fewer straights. more "just people" ?
Fewer gays, fewer straights. more "just people" ?  [message #73670] Tue, 28 November 2017 00:00 Go to previous message
NW is currently offline  NW

On fire!
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1559



I'm lucky enough to be able to have pretty open and deep discussions with my 21-year-old niece, and her boyfriend/fiance. Something we talked about a fair bit last time they came to stay with me was how we label sexuality, and to what extent we need to. Both of them tell me that their friends, nearly all of whom are students in London, increasingly don't identify as "gay" or "straight", nor really even as "bisexual", but tend to see things just in terms of who they are currently having a relationship with.

Obviously, it's different for me - I've been fully (though not aggressively) out as a gay man, and moderately activist, for very nearly four decades now. "Gay" is an essential component of my self-image, and of my social personna.  But I think I feel that if youngsters are less attached to such labels, it's probably a good thing ... even if it's only a minority of liberal youngsters in a fairly diverse and accepting city.

That doesn't mean that I'll stop fighting for "gay" causes. But somehow, in my head, I think I'm in the process of re-framing them as "people" causes: the right of adults to form relationships with each other regardless of genders.

Have others here run into this "not really identifying as gay or straight or bi" thing? What do we think? Are those who like me have spent over half a lifetime fighting the "gay" corner in some sense now superseded (I for one hope we are) by a coming generation having a wider and more inbuilt understanding of diversity ?


"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
 
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