Sexual politics. Gender of the mind. Affectional preference. Life-style.

Here in the States the national psyche is preoccupied with sex. Puritans founded the USA, after all. We claim to want a world of simple, straight-forward, God-fearing copulating and then spend hours gawking at our neighbors wondering what positions they prefer and how weird and sinful their thoughts might be. I'm usually the one they invite for dinner. ["Honey, ask that girl you know if she'll come to the barbecue. The Jefferson's will never believe that she's a Lesbian!"]

Frankly, I am bored with being identified as a Lesbian. I now refuse to answer questions about my marital status. No one really wants to know if I have a lover. What they want to know is would I consider taking them as a lover. Or, they want to know if I'll be competing for the attention of their lover. The whole conversation is ridiculous.

Who decided that people should be broken up into little subgroups of subgroups of sexual behaviour, anyway? Generations of humans have been kissing in all sorts of directions and ways since we figured out how to write. Now we create labels for behaviour as a method of social control. The implication behind these labels (some of which are now polite to speak at a dinner party, apparently) is not acceptance, but denial. For every Lipstick Lesbian who gets to run for Town council there is a gang of Glam girls at the club who have to remember to wipe the glitter off the toes of their boots before walking into the local grocery store because it is definitely *not* ok to display the leftovers to the straight people. We accept the Town Council-Elect Lesbian so that we don't have to accept the Glam gal and we completely ignore the biker who leaves his wife on Friday nights to flirt with boys down at the corner. Instead of a sexual revolution, we have created a national ballot of Recognized Sexual Libertines. I assure you, it is a short list.

I used to believe that the more vocal I was about whom I loved and who I chose to kiss, the more everyone would just get used to Queer girls and I could get on with the real matters of my life. All I have managed to do is titillate the heterosexual people and bore myself silly. (I also refuse to give another "How I Came to Know that I was Gay" speech.) So then, this is my new manifesto: I quit.

Signed,
the Ex-Lesbian/Queer Activist.