Just a question as this is all new to me. I am trying to get my head around why people want other people, whom they don’t know at all, to ‘know’ where they sit on the sexuality-spectrum. I can hardly imagine where someone’s sexual identity would make one iota of difference to people on-line. You specify that you are ‘cis-gendered hetero male’, to what benefit? to whom? I don’t care. It doesn’t add or change anything to your article. All it seems to do, in my view, is create new boxes where there should be none. Sexuality is just one of many attributes. Why highlight it and be so specific? Sure, when it’s relevant to your explanations, treatise, story, or experience then it makes sense. But why make this THE central issue to have other people, again, whom you don’t know, identify you by? Why must people know you by your sexuality? Just like my race (a concept I don’t believe in), my religion, my psychological make-up, physical make-up, etc. are all, most of the time, irrelevant to my argument or story.
When I say that I am atheist or tennis-player it’s just a tidbit of info, but I do not ask people to treat my ideas with more respect because of that. Nor that they should treat me a certain way. Expressing my atheism can make religious trolls go after me. If that makes them happy, good luck to them. Opening up to complete strangers about where you pinpoint yourself on that great prism of sexuality opens you up to ignorant trolls, rich or not. If you are sensitive to that, why would you make it such a public issue? And, like I said: who of your on-line readers care? Or is it about creating new in-groups? New clans? Ah one of us.
Asking others to respect you for no other reason than where you sit on the sexuality spectrum seems odd, and adding a request that you prefer to be addressed with multiple pronouns just because you say so, seems to be expecting a bit much. The reality, to me, is that your ideas and arguments may be important to me. Your sexuality, is not, unless it is key to the story you are telling me.
The above is just my ignorant background on this subject. I am a newbie and don’t pretend to understand this phenomenon.
I see that some people think that this is an extremely important and sensitive issue. I am trying to understand why.
