Find Your Flag - Find Your Community - Then Wait For It To Find You

This flag is the flag for people who see themselves as demi-sexual, which is to say that they see themselves as sexual beings, unlike people who see themselves as asexual, and who cannot find any sexual resonance towards others from within themselves when the occasion demands it, not that they are as ill at ease with themselves as transexuals have been, historically. Transexuals feel that being of a different gender, or having the body of a different gender to the one they were born with would be much more comfortable for them. Nor are demi-sexuals bi-sexual, a people for whom sex presents itself as a different set of dilemas, choices and commitments, including which gender they find attractive and why, ala Harry Styles.

When I was growing up sex and sexuality, as described by sexual preferance were as coarsely misrepresented as humanly possible. Within the lumpen poretariat educatrion on offer to me as a child sex was measured out as being asexual-all children were expected to be asexual enough to need no instruction. Only within marraige should anyone have sex therefore if you were not maried you were asexual. Crudely put, the point of sex was to create children whilst ignoring the economic and social implications of bringing children into the world. Implications that had to be ignored included how the family was the economic responcibility of the male breadwinner. The rearing of the children was based around the material provided by the male head of household provided, as organised by the subordinate wife. And if there was a life outside of marriage for an adult then it was seen as irresponcible and dishonest to itself unless it could be annexed by a family to extend family values. Any such life had to be secretive. The churches helped by limiting the duties of church commitment for many to hatches, infant baptism, matches, marriage, and despatches, the funeral service at the end of a life. 

Such a treadmill style treadbare view of spirituality, and materiality was not much of a guide to how to live a life. Much less was it a guide to how through the mutiality of family and marriage mental health was meant to be preserved. Mental ill health was seen as a curse where the person who suffered it was meant to blame themselves for their lack of understanding of how to fit in with the family, to find their individual well being.

The less said about the misuse of alcohol by married men the better. Beyond that it was endemic, seen as virtuous and the hidden cause of a lot of misanthropy and dishonesty. I was not looking when things slowly changed. When different, more precise, mental health labels were created and accepted, and broke down into 'diversity' the many component parts of what mental was about. I ws not watching as slowly the new labels allowed for difference to became the norm that bred mutuality and respect. In those times there was still only two terms that it took courage to claim a life outside of family. One was 'being gay', the  other was more clinical 'homosexiuality'. Families preferred to ignore behaviour and evidence of both, where it was evident. Like mental health problems families masked and bury the such things to hide the sense of the family member showing evidence of being cursed.

Nowadays it seems there are over twenty flags for different sexualities, and twenty different possible communities identities, assuming that the people of each flag fits can find each other. The earliest flag designs originating from the 1970s and San Franciso mayor Harvey Milk. I am not surveyor of pride marches across the world, so I don't know where I would see all, or any, of these different flags. What I do know is that well away from the brutal binaries of the world I gre up in, where might was rife and ignorance was too common to be worth measuring the speculative discernment thar seems to come with demi-sexuality, where I look for a measurable bond with a person before imagining anything nearer agreeable sexual activity seems about right to me. But looking for a bond, some agreed emotion, with another before thinking further makes me want to be sure of the capability for forming a bond, from within myself, first. 

In a world dizzy with the possibilities of diversiy I need, we all need, to be calm and still, for us to be able to find the same with each other.