Sex, Gender, or Sexual Orientation

[Nat]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

I choose to identify my gender as femme, I choose to eat oreos one way, but how I was and have been, that is no choice, it just is.

I think in this way, you and I just have a different structure/organization to the way we think about it?

For me there is a separation between how a person is and how a person IDs. As a person who also feels like I've always been queer, this is how I think about it for myself.

I was born queer - it's a natural part of me and I suspect it's biological whether or not a biological connection can ever be proven.

I can also ID as queer - which is a choice. What would my other choices be? I could choose to be one of those people who refuses to ID, who says, "love is just where you find it." I could hate the term "queer" because somebody called me that once and it made me cry (for example), and so I might embrace some other term that doesn't make me feel bad. Or I could ID as straight, etc. To me the term "ID" definitely has choice involved in it - the choice to own or not own an identity.

So I think what I am hearing (and I would never dare to speak for you because you make me tremble in my boots!) is that you feel that you are queer by nature / queer since birth - and to me that's not a discussion of "ID" as much as it's an honest open observation about your experience.