Angel woke me up at 6:20 a.m., exactly the time we're supposed to wake up on weekdays. Dogs don't know from weekends and sleeping in. I got up, fed everybody, took Angel for a short walk, started my Luzianne with chickory coffee brewing, and turned on the computer for a brief look at my e-mail and guestbook.

At 7:40, I turned on the heat for the first time this fall, and crawled between the flannel sheets to snuggle, spooned up to my sleeping wife for 20 more minutes before it was time for her to wake up and get ready for work. A perfect morning.

There have been times when I thought it was a bad thing, never to have had any high aspirations or lofty goals in life. But it's mornings like this that make me realize that I already have everything I ever wanted, and more. I hope everyone out there gets to find this same level of contentment.

There was a new Guestbook query from Charlene this morning.

"just out of interest... in your own words what is a lesbian? and don't give me any of that "it's whatever you want it to be" bollox. You all say you hate labels yet still label yourselves. [1] So you lot who say you are lesbians.... what does that mean? Oh and just another thing. I put the opinions of you lot up in a couple of forums - the main response was "WHAAAATTT???????? Haven't they heard of bi-sexual????" I still can't get over when Badsnake said [2] straight men suck cocks hahahaha awwwwww I'm still lmao on that one. Please tell what sort of warped little world you live in. [3]"

She's not just asking me, but all the folks who identify as lesbian and who participated in this debate. So if you want to give your own answer, my request is that you make it an entry in your own diary (or e-mail your answer to me if you don't have an online diary, and send a cc to Charlene), let me know about it, and I'll make a page of links. I'd also like to request that you leave out any insulting or antagonizing language, and just go with your straightforward opinion.

Here's mine:

lesbian�n., (lez-bee-ahn) a woman whose affectional and sexual preference or orientation is for other women.

Yep. That's me. And in my view, the affectional is just as or more important than the sexual. The only people I've ever fallen in love with are women.

The gay community has always made a big deal out of you must always say sexual orientation rather than sexual preference, because anti-gay folks, the right wing, and the Ex-gay folks use the word "preference" to imply that we could be straight if we just tried hard enough. That puts a lot of power into the hands of the people who want us to change our behavior. Basically, the difference between "preference" and "orientation" is PR; it's spin. But not without due cause in its time.

When the big push to get the media to use the term orientation was going on, the powers that be in the gay rights community were trying to teach a society at large, populated by individuals who didn't think they personally knew anyone who was gay, that queers weren't having sex with the same sex just to be rebellious and contrary to "all that is natural". We were trying to drive home the point that having sex and making affectional connections with the same sex is what feels natural to us. And educating the public is most efficiently done in simple terms without shades of gray. Thus came the "we're born this way" movement, and searches for genetic indicators of sexual orientation.

Nowadays, queers have come out in droves, and there aren't nearly as many people who can say "I don't know any gay people". And polls have found that people who know someone who is gay and out, have a far better understanding of queers as fellow humans rather than some sort of threatening "other". So I don't feel like I need to fight the preference vs. orientation battle anymore.

I'm an adherent to the Kinsey Scale theory that most of us fall somewhere on a spectrum between exclusive homosexuality and exclusive heterosexuality. In practice, I'm currently a Kinsey 6; in thought, I'm probably a Kinsey 4 or 5, but in sort of a twisted, gender fucking way.

Where do I draw the line between lesbian/gay, bisexual, and heterosexual? I'd say anyone who's a Kinsey 5 or 6 can safely say they're gay or lesbian. If you have an incidental act of heterosexuality here and there, I don't think you should get your queer card snatched away. Your clear preference is still for the same sex. But heart and lust don't always follow tradition or boundaries. A Kinsey 2 or 4 gets to pick their own identity, and may change their mind from time to time. And a Kinsey 3 is pretty much bi.

[1] I don't have much of a problem with labels, as long as you can find an accurate one. But we often don't have the right terms to categorize the fluent nuances of sexuality. What do you call a butch lesbian top who thinks like a man when she's topping one lover and like a woman when she's making love to the other, but always like her own self in her heart?

Some people might call me transgendered. I could certainly blend into the TG community if I wanted to. But that's not what I feel in my heart and in my head.

I'm starting to feel the irony of having watched a bit of "High Art" last night and catching that great line when Ally Sheedy's lesbian photographer character says, "I haven't been deconstructed in a long time." I feel like I'm deconstructing myself. If I use the word "interiorize", shoot me.

I could tell the story of how, when I was 19, I realized my preference of the heart for women, but it's a long one and probably not interesting to anyone but me. Let's just say that I found that my connection with certain women was far more fulfilling than anything that I ever experienced with a man, but I'm far too agnostic to honestly say that I could never, ever, ever fall in love with a man, because I haven't met every man in the world. So, based on my emotions and my experience, I consider myself a lesbian.

The way I see it, Catriona and Charlene face a lot of the crap that North American lesbians had to deal with in the '70s and '80s on a regular basis. Challenges to their right just to be lesbians. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen here at all anymore, but our society has grown quite a bit in words at least, if not in thought. I haven't had to personally face that "you just need a man" school of thought, ever. And I imagine a lot of my vehement readers, especially the younger ones, haven't either. Maybe it's because I live in a fairly enlightened city, or maybe it's the class of guys I interact with on a daily basis.

So, the world where I live [3] probably feels a lot more safe than C&C's world, where any sign of behavior that incorporates anything even remotely male-related into the sexual formula would be taken as a chink in the lesbian armor by some macho segment of society.

It seems to me that C&C are using very similar weapons to defend themselves to the ones gays and lesbians here were using back in the day, when we were still struggling for the most basic of gay rights�the right to exist. So maybe we should cut them some slack.

And that, Regis, is my final answer.

Charlene, if you can, please post the link to this response in your forum. Thanks.

[2] It was Chemykal Girl who said that. If you read it in context, she's talking about straight men who will kneel down before her when she's in dominatrix mode and take her strap-on down their throat. Or at least that's how I read it. CG, correct me if I'm wrong.

Moving on - 12:11 p.m. , 2007-08-14

Where the hell have I been? - 12:10 p.m. , 2007-02-19

Holy shit! - 2:24 p.m. , 2006-01-11

Stuffing recipe - 6:17 p.m. , 2005-12-13

Good Life Update - 10:22 a.m. , 2005-11-11