1 I am a 23-year-old in a slim, petite female body.

2 I've been physically attracted to women since I was 9. I find femininity and the female figure more beautiful than anything in the world, I feel passionate about it, I wish I could talk about it every day.

3 Since I was 13 I've been struggling with what might be termed the sociality of homosexuality. I find it hard to communicate my sexuality to heteronormative people. At the same time, I don't feel comfortable with the gay scene, because I feel like a traitor for so consistently falling in love with men. In short, I'm carrying a huge amount of shame for both aspects of my sexual orientation.

4 I've fallen in love with around 4 men in my lifetime so far. All events have been extremely dramatic. My crushes on women are never quite as bothersome.

5 I was sexually abused by my last boyfriend. We broke up five months ago and I'm still coming to terms with it. The way he raped me was quite complicated, it wasn't like he held me down and forced himself on me. He was using "pick up" techniques to make me feel like my consent didn't really matter. In the end I was just letting him fuck me when I didn't want it, and I felt cold and worthless inside. The recovery process after all this is extremely difficult, and I frequently want to die rather than continue carrying this pain.

6 When I was 16 or 17 years old I experienced a lot of gender dysphoria. I hated being in a female body, felt very alienated from it, and wore very baggy male clothing almost all the time. Eventually this stopped, and I'm not sure why. I was very depressed for a while, so perhaps I was finding strength in my masculinity, and as I became happier again and wanted to embrace the world once more, I fell more in line with cisgendered social norms.

7 My gender expression became yet more feminine because my ex put me under a lot of pressure to change my appearance and personality to suit his idealization of a perfect girlfriend, so that he could feel like more of a man. Since breaking up with him, I almost immediately felt drawn to the masculine side of my personality again. I've taken up an idiosyncratic kind of crossdressing, wearing dapper male clothing and binding my chest, and while I don't feel uncomfortable in a female body anymore, I don't feel cisgendered either. I don't know how long this will continue, but I don't want it to fade away again like it did before; even though it makes my identity more complicated, I really love this side of my personality.

8 If this does continue for a long while, I will be proud to call myself genderqueer. I feel uncomfortable calling myself bisexual, but I think being genderqueer is awesome. I've very recently started participating in genderqueer activity online and IRL, and I find it so encouraging and inclusive.

9 I'm worried that my masculinity is a response to the sexual abuse, since I've become very aware of the submissiveness of femininity and I'm terrified by my complicity in the abuse. I'd be heartbroken if I discovered that I was only presenting as masculine because I'm afraid of being raped again. However, my crossdressing feels more positive this time around than it did when I was a teenager. I don't hate being female, and I still present as feminine fairly regularly, I just really love presenting as masculine.

10 I'm currently in a relationship with a wonderful man. Although he presents as male consistently, our relationship doesn't feel gendered at all; it works no matter what gender I present as, we seem to have a strong connection that has nothing to do with reinforcing the oppositional gender of the other partner.

11 It feels absolutely awesome to finally be in a relationship with another bisexual person. I feel more comfortable with my bisexuality than I used to, because within the context of our relationship it's completely normal. Neither one of us can comprehend exclusive homo- or heterosexuality.

12 With my current partner I've been able to take up pegging, and I love it. We'd been talking about it for a while, and I was putting it off because I wasn't sure what it meant for me to want something like that. I finally decided to take the plunge and buy myself a strap-on when I was playing with my dildo one night and seriously got off on imagining it was my own penis, pretending to masturbate like a man. My partner really enjoys it, and often has multiple orgasms.

13 My dick is goddamn awesome. I sometimes wish I could have a real penis, but most of the time I'm perfectly satisfied with my shiny, silicone, curvy, black dildo. I only wish I had sensation on the shaft itself, rather than having to rely on the pressure it puts on my clitoris. My partner is researching cyborging, so I'm hoping that one day, many years from now when nerve splicing has been perfected, we can build me a prosthetic with sensation.

14 I've never before felt so immediately sure that I want to marry someone as I have my current partner. It usually takes much longer for me to cross that boundary. I've also never believed in the shared vision of a future together so strongly as I do with my current partner. Unfortunately, he is going away to study for a Ph.D abroad. He'll be home every few months, and in 18 months I can move out there to be with him. Hopefully it will work out between us. If we make it to me moving out there I'm going to propose.

15 I come extremely easily - usually within less than a minute of stimulation. The people I've slept with seem to really enjoy this. I enjoy it too, of course, but it does make it a little too easy for me to receive more foreplay than I give, which is a pity. Thankfully, now that I'm pegging I can give back, which feels awesome.

16 I squirt, in huge quantities. Until my current partner, everyone I had slept with found this kind of unusual and inconvenient. My partner finds it a huge turn-on. He often tries to drink as much of it as possible, but it usually comes out faster than he can swallow it. Since we started sleeping together, I've been able to really enjoy squirting.

17 I feel very masculine when I squirt. I'm very proud of being able to ejaculate; on people, and on furniture. I feel like I'm marking my territory, or at least my presence in someone's life. I also love coming back and making out in the same spot a few hours later and smelling my own scent; I become deeply and primally turned on by it.

18 Masochism was a prominent part of my sexual expression for a very long time. I still get turned on when wrestling with my partner and getting pinned down, but I soon become overwhelmingly frightened because it reminds me of being abused by my ex.

19 The same goes for any flirtatious talk about tying my partner up. It turns me on a little, but that quickly gives way to a panic attack as I become afraid of becoming a rapist. I don't feel like I'm dominating my partner in a sadistic way when I'm pegging him, although the power balance does shift tremendously when he's the one being penetrated rather than me.

20 It might also be that my S&M desires have faded away since a psychoanalyst advised me that it probably has its roots in my experiences as a baby with a cleft lip and palette. I couldn't breastfeed, and even bottle feeding was a struggle, so those first experiences of intimacy with my mother became a desperate attempt to get food and intimacy by inflicting pain on myself. My sexuality became the same way. Masochism has lost some of its power for me since I learned that.

21 I feel slightly burdened by my own physical attractiveness. I'm not exactly pretty enough for the media, but I do have a close-to-ideal female body. I'm a US size zero, although I'm very short so I don't look skeletal. I have C- to D-cup breasts and a small waist, and slim legs. This means that if I do turn out to be masculine-of-center for the long term, the decision to start bodybuilding to make my body suit my gender expression will be a huge step. I don't want to have such a feminine body, but knowing how much this body is prized by wider society, it's hard to give it up.

22 The ideal body for my gender expression as it is right now would probably be the same from the waist down, but I would want smaller, more muscular breasts and wider shoulders. Generally I would like to be more muscular, partly so that I look good wearing short sleeves when I'm in boy mode, and partly so that I could spar on an equal footing with my partner if I learn a martial art. I'd never be buff by the standards expected of a man, but I'm okay with that, I'd just like to build some muscle.

23 Although I've had sex with women, I feel like the sex with my partner is the queerest I've ever had. I think by that I mean that it feels totally authentic - I'm not trying to be anything I'm not, and I don't think he is either. We only have sex when we really want to have sex with each other - we never compromise for the other person, and never use the other person just to get off recreationally. It feels queer when he has multiple orgasms with my beautiful silicone dick inside him, and it feels queer when he eats me out and drinks my ejaculate, because we're engaging fully and completely in our own sexual expression, rather than performing what Hollywood told us sex was supposed to be like.

24 I'll probably start missing sex with women at some point, but the desire isn't there at the moment. I'm okay admiring women and flirting with them without doing anything. I know that polyamory is not for me, but if the time comes that both of us need to fulfill sexual desires that can't be met by the other person then I'd be happy with us both going and doing that for a short time.

25 My last relationship was semi-open, which was terrible, for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons was that it was easier for my ex to meet girls than it was for me, partly because of him being a heterosexual male, but also because I'm near-teetotal and he wasn't. Most girls my age seem to find it kind of odd and alienating that I don't smoke weed. Again, it's great to finally have a partner who is on the same page as me on that one, as he also only drinks for taste and isn't interested in drugs. He's never going to bug me about not being able to have wine with dinner, or not being able to have sex while high.