Up Chocolate Creek Without a Popsicle Stick.

I'm a Lesbian. I prefer the word "Dyke", it fits me well, and it's comfortable, but "Lesbian" or "Gay Womyn" will suffice.

As a Dyke, I am automatically lumped into a category of people referred to as, get this:

GLBT2QQI

That, for the uninitiated, stands for: Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered, 2 Spirited, Queer, Questioning, and Intersexed.

Pretty big label for one white bread Lesbian.

I have almost nothing in common with an intersexed person, aside from the fact that we are both human beings. I'm a womyn who loves womyn, I was a girl who loved girls. I am comfortable in my own body, feel quite normal, and I feel more kinship with my straight female friends than I do with intersexed people. The same goes for transgendered people......I do not understand the challenges they face to find a place in this world, and although I can sympathize with the struggle, I do not empathize, how can I when my reality is so far removed?

I hate being tossed into a big pot to be stirred into a huge mass of "other than". All of us who fall, often unwillingly, under the massive umbrella of GLBT2QQI are something other than straight. Lumping us all together snatches away our individuality and tars us all with the same brush. I'm not a Drag Queen, I'm not a Boi, I'm not Trans, Bi, Intersexed or questioning. My questions were answered long ago, when my best friend and I were six, and I informed her that we were going to be married someday.

I married my best friend, although not the same one. We live a relatively quiet life filled with dogs, friends, work, family, engaging in all the same "normal" activities that any other married couple does. No fetishes, no costumes, no strap-ons, no womyn with mustaches, no guys in dresses, no threesomes, no "this week I'm Lesbian, next week I'm straight".

I don't think I'm an exception, I think I'm a pretty typical Dyke. Maybe it's time to stop identifying every non-heterosexual as "other", and letting us all be ourselves.