Gender-wise, I identify as male, which corresponds to the anatomy I was born with. Sexuality-wise, I identify as straight-plus, or minus, or other—I’m not too sure. I feel like a third-culture kid, sexually speaking. I’m welcome in queer and non-queer communities, but don’t belong in either. Too “weird,” in the former, and too hetero “normal” in the latter.
I’ve tried to come up with some terms for how I identify, since there aren’t any that I know of, which is surprising given all terms today—Myers-Briggs, astrological, adjacent adjacencies, etc. Suggestions included Third-Script Sexual, In-Between Straight, Soft-Straight, Straight-Adjacent, Liminal Hetero, Heterofluid Exile, Closetless Straight, Third-Rail Straight, and finally—and hilariously—Straight, But Not Like That. I didn’t like any of them and will eventually share what I did land on, at least for the sake of my identity as a writer. But a bit more on why I don’t simply use the term sub.
I intentionally have a picture of me in a princess dress from my quinceañera on all my dating profiles. This is to filter out rigid gender-role people. Nonetheless, a few months back, someone asked me about the pic and specifically if it signaled that I was gay. I said no, and made a joke about how, if it were a choice, of course I’d be bi—ice cubes, awkward pause, tone shift.
I called the change in tone out and was met with, “If you wish you were gay, I could never find you attractive.” This same date also told me they hated machismo but usually only dated cops and military officers. Seems both our filters failed. Fine.
The cost of living in that in-between is exhaustion and confusion—the slow wear of being legible everywhere but fully received nowhere. There’s a specific loneliness in being welcomed but not claimed, included but never understood, that accumulates even when no one means harm.
When I explain this part of myself to potential partners, you can often see the excitement vanish from their faces. “But you look so manly.” “That picture of you with the thick beard in the woods—you can’t be a sub, even sometimes.” “Have you gone to therapy about it? Maybe you can fix it.” “Since you’re great otherwise, I might be open to accepting that baggage, but I just don’t know—it’s a lot.” “Are you actually straight? Are you sure?”
One way I used to pitch male submissiveness to potential female partners was that it takes balls to ask to be kicked in them. Perhaps this was partially based on the fear that they’d see me as less of a man, so I had to convince them that it was the opposite. I was more of a man for knowing what I’m into and having the courage to ask for it.
I’ve since started viewing that kind of bargaining—whether with myself or others—as troubling, because any type of “real men do blank” is everything I stand against. If a potential partner wasn’t already enlightened enough to understand that dominance and submission weren’t innately gendered, they shouldn’t be a potential partner in the first place. But with any reasoning or rationalizing, that ends with a version of “that means fewer options for me,” it can be scary.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me encouraging potential partners who’ve never explored their dominant sides to explore with me. However, how I go about it affects how I view myself and how I view the world. It’s not manly or unmanly to want to turn off your brain in the bedroom and feel owned and taken.
When launching my blog earlier this year, I eventually landed on the title of SubVersal Man—submissive without shame, wanting to be actively subversal to the patriarchy and reject its frameworks, and reversing and rethinking roles.
It’s been about 11 months since I adopted the name SubVersal for my blog, for the project in general. I like the name; however, I didn’t succeed in the goal of having something I could say to potential partners, throw in a dating profile, or use to find like-minded people for camaraderie.
I don’t think it’s because there aren’t enough of us out there. It’s because it’s still not accepted, including sometimes by the other whatever-the-fuck-we’re-calleds. Having a term would help with acceptance, yet for one to take hold, there needs to be some acceptance, or at least acknowledgment. I’ll keep telling myself and others that I’m different somehow—subversal.