Congresswoman Mary Gonzalez was elected in May as the state's first lesbian member of the House of Representatives. At the time she was dubbed the 'Latina lesbian lawmaker'.
In a thought-provoking interview with the Dallas Voice, she now explains that her identity is pansexual. Not bisexual, as in attracted to both men and women, but pansexual - attracted to people whatever their gender identity.
It is an odd feature of the English language that our sexual orientation is defined by the gender of the person we are attracted to. And it moves from odd to unworkable as soon as you take into account trans people. What is the correct term for a person attracted to trans people, or to both trans and cisgendered people?
There are in the world people attracted only to trans people. How would you describe their sexual orientation?
If your partner is transsexual and transitions from one gender to the other, does that mean your sexual orientation has changed?
For me, 'queer' solves a multitude of problems of that kind. I think that it is conceptually weird to say that if my partner changes gender, my sexual orientation has changed if I stay with my partner. First of all, if s/he is transsexual, maybe it was her/his transsexuality (rather than her ascribed gender) that I was, even unknowingly, attracted to in the first place. Second, even if her/his genitals have changed, her/his gender identity has not: s/he had the 'wrong' genitals in the first place. So if my sexual attraction was to someone who transitioned from male to female, she was always female. Though the world would have 'seen' me as being involved with a man, and after her transition, with a woman, and the world would have described my sexual orientation as "changing" if we stayed together after her transition, I think that way of describing what is going on is simply inadequate.
What do you think?
In a thought-provoking interview with the Dallas Voice, she now explains that her identity is pansexual. Not bisexual, as in attracted to both men and women, but pansexual - attracted to people whatever their gender identity.
It is an odd feature of the English language that our sexual orientation is defined by the gender of the person we are attracted to. And it moves from odd to unworkable as soon as you take into account trans people. What is the correct term for a person attracted to trans people, or to both trans and cisgendered people?
There are in the world people attracted only to trans people. How would you describe their sexual orientation?
If your partner is transsexual and transitions from one gender to the other, does that mean your sexual orientation has changed?
For me, 'queer' solves a multitude of problems of that kind. I think that it is conceptually weird to say that if my partner changes gender, my sexual orientation has changed if I stay with my partner. First of all, if s/he is transsexual, maybe it was her/his transsexuality (rather than her ascribed gender) that I was, even unknowingly, attracted to in the first place. Second, even if her/his genitals have changed, her/his gender identity has not: s/he had the 'wrong' genitals in the first place. So if my sexual attraction was to someone who transitioned from male to female, she was always female. Though the world would have 'seen' me as being involved with a man, and after her transition, with a woman, and the world would have described my sexual orientation as "changing" if we stayed together after her transition, I think that way of describing what is going on is simply inadequate.
What do you think?
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