Bisexual by Seasons
Coming out as a person with weather related gender dysphoria.
This is the Snarky Sunday edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.
Trigger Warning: You may be offended by this issue. If so, restrain your impulse to bash me. I’m just trying to be funny.
In the early 60s my college girlfriends and I used to hang out in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan to score marijuana and date hot Puerto Rican guys. My college buddy David Ramirez who grew up there— and was the only one of his friends to go to college—introduced us to his posse. Think In the Heights, 60s edition. One of the guys—I’ll call him Ramon (I don’t remember his real name)--would disappear in the winter. When I asked where Ramon was I was told he was “downtown.” Why only in the winter? “Ramon is bisexual by seasons” was the matter-of-fact answer. In the winter he’d dress up in women’s clothes and hang out downtown. In the summer he returned to the hood, totally butch.
Ramon was a great guy, beloved by all, and no one thought twice about his rather strange sexual proclivities. This was long before Stonewall when it was actually illegal for men to dress as women in New York City.
I don’t know whatever happened to the real Ramon but here is my imagining of his Facebook status update today, when he finally comes out and is bashed by the social media gender police.
STATUS UPDATE:
Today I decided to come out on Facebook with my true gender identity: I can finally admit I’m bisexual by seasons. There are so many genders now that I thought it must be safe for me to exit the closet, or cabana--as it happens--as a person with weather related gender dysphoria. I am LGBTQW. (I’m told there’s an “I” in there somewhere but I don’t know what that means so I left it out.) It may seem strange but my gender is determined by the weather. In the summer I’m straight and in the winter gay….in the spring and in the fall, nothing at all.
I’m looking for a support group. Know any?
COMMENTS:
You are a sexist. There is no such thing as bisexual by seasons. You’re either transgender or cisgender or misgender or agender or genderqueer, or binary or non-binary or transitioning or gender fluid or pansexual, or possibly even on a gender bender due to too much booze, pot and sex with strangers. Make up your goddamned mind.
You are a racist. Only a white person would claim to be bisexual by seasons. A person of color would realize that such a frivolous claim was an expression of white privilege. You are cute though. I’d do you. PM me.
You are homophobic. You obviously are trying to deny your homosexuality because you think being gay for half the year is more acceptable than for the whole year. You are only halfway out of the closet, or cabana as you call it.
You are transphobic. You must think it’s shameful to be trans so you just do it part time. What is your pronoun? That must be a real problem if it changes every six months.
You are a climate change denier. As we all know gender seasonality is a social construct based on climate change. What if the artic gets warmer and an iceberg “calves?” Is that iceberg now female?
You are triggering me with your microagressions. What are you during a monsoon, or hurricane? How about Indian summer? Do you switch for short warm ups?
You are a lying POS. You told me last summer that you loved me and you wanted me to be your baby mama. What happened to all those promises? Now that it’s winter are you going to be the baby mama? What do we tell the baby?
Spread the word!
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