1. I am twenty-nine and female. I do not understand the concepts of queer, cis/trans-gendered/identified, zir, ze, etc. I am not stupid but I am not interested. I feel that these concepts, even if in rebellion against, are still responses to a culture in which gender politics are framed in the context of heteronormative relationships, and that... just doesn’t interest me. As a woman, as a lover, as a political being: I’m not concerned. Not because I don’t think it matters—it matters immensely—but because there is no rewarding and truthful way at the end to label something as intimate and experiential as sexuality, and gender.

2. If pressed, I suppose I am bisexual, though that doesn’t take into account the different ways in which I am attracted to anyone: men turn me on more than women, for example, and more of my sexual fantasies involve them, but I have always enjoyed sex with women more and am incredibly attracted to the female body from an aesthetic perspective. I have a large collection of softcore porn on my computer that I enjoy as I enjoy and think about art. How can the word "bisexual" explain all of this?

3. I don’t orgasm through PinV sex, but I enjoy it. I like the warmth and the closeness and the sensation of having something inside of me.

4. I love performing oral sex on either gender. I consider myself to be, and have been told that I am, very skilled, and am not only turned on by doing it but also feel proud in the same way I feel when I bake a good batch of cookies or write a draft of a promising poem. I also enjoy receiving it sometimes, but I have to trust my partner very, very much.

5. My sexual experience has been overwhelmingly heterosexual—ten male partners and three female. Would I like to have more experience with women? Yes. Am I going crazy because I’m not currently expressing that side of my sexuality? No, not really.

6. My best friend is a lesbian who believes that I am gay and have not figured it out yet, and because I dress somewhat androgynously—in a dapper, scholarly way—I am often "mistaken" for a lesbian. This does not bother me. When my friend and I are out together, people assume that we are a couple, and something about this pleases me, though not in a sexually arousing way.

7. My most sexually rewarding relationship was with a man I dated for almost two years, and lived with for under a year. He was assertive and, though not particularly kinky, knew what he wanted. Outside of the bedroom, we were rather unhappy and fought often. Now...

8. ...I am in a monogamous relationship with a man sixteen years my senior. Emotionally and intellectually, we are a perfect match. As a potential partner in life and child-raising, I can imagine no one better suited. But we rarely have sex, and when we do it is a stiffly-performed perfunctory act. At the same time, there is a great deal of unsatisfied sexual chemistry between us, a definite electricity, that even after three years together we have not yet figured out how to access. This frustrates me, but I am also hopeful that we will at some point break through.

9. Some of this is because we are both very timid in bed. It has taken me a very long time not to feel disturbed by and ashamed of my own sexual fantasies. I still have a hard time placing myself in my own sexual fantasies as an object of desire, and always feel ashamed and presumptuous even in my sexual imagination. This is frustrating and also somewhat absurd because I am regarded as an attractive young woman.

10. I love older men. I don’t mean that like some twenty-something women say that and mean men in their mid-thirties; I mean, I like men in their fifties and sixties, and not necessarily men who look "good for their age". Some of them aren’t even good-looking men, period. One of my biggest crushes right now is a doctor where I work. He is in his fifties, has white hair, and is short and thin. I cannot imagine his body being anything but white and slackly frail, and he has this little pinched, stiff-featured face. He does not have a pleasant personality, from what I’ve seen. Yet it’s exactly all of this—his age, his homeliness, and the fact that he is an Affluent White Guy—that turns me on.

11. One of my favorite sexual fantasies involves being watched, secretly, by an older man, such as the one described above. In the fantasy, I know that he is watching me masturbate and is aroused, but he does not know that I know. An extension of that involves me going down on the wife of such a man, having been seduced by her, while he secretly or openly watches.

12. A vast majority of my sexual experience has consisted of one-night stands or short-term "fuck-buddy" relationships. I find these to be very satisfying, and would prefer to be able to still have them. At the same time, I am too possessive of my partner to allow him the same, and I do not wish to cheat.

13. I am also interested in the idea of a polygamous relationship. Not an open one, but a relationship involving myself and two others, of any gender combination, who love one another as well as me, and whom I both love.

14. I have never done anything particularly kinky, but almost always end up having very, very rough sex. I just can’t keep it slow and easy.

15. Attractive male celebrities: Donald Sutherland, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, David Lynch. Attractive female celebrities: Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Myrna Loy, Debbie Harry.

16. There’s clearly a very D/s theme to my fantasies, but I’m not interested in many of the things like restraint, blindfolding, etc. I AM into being spanked, and have always enjoyed it.

17. The first boy I kissed was my cousin. I also touched his penis. I didn’t want to do any of those things, but did not resist. Now I resent him, even though we were both the same age (early adolescence), and he never coerced me. Later, in high school, a friend (or a boy who, until that day, was a friend) tried to rape me. We had been in my bedroom, just hanging out, which we’d done many times before. I shoved him off of me and out of my room. It has taken me a long time to accept that no, it was not my fault, just because I’d allowed him into my room.

18. I resent the fact that some may view my sexual fantasies as being disempowering, or "not feminist." Accepting one’s sexual imagination is one of the most significant acts of self-empowerment that an individual can perform, whether or not one is overtly a figure of power in those fantasies. I think it’s bizarre and exclusionary to label some fantasies as being "more" or "less" politically correct than others. I also think that such an attitude fails to acknowledge the intricacies of power exchange in relationships in which one partner is only apparently dominant, and the other only apparently submissive.

19. Penises are beautiful. I especially love erections concealed by and/or felt through cloth. That’s one of the sexiest things I can think of.

20. Sometimes when I masturbate my most powerful orgasms occur when I am not thinking about sex but an idea/concept/art, intense weather, or listening carefully to good music. I have to even "remind" myself to think sexual thoughts. I also masturbate to keep warm at night, because my room gets very cold. For me, it is a functional act that helps me to relax and to clear my head, and is not always sexual. But I revel in it most (even if I do not have a great orgasm) when I am thinking dirty thoughts, and thinking of my body as a sexual being and/or object.

21. I am much more uncomfortable talking about my sexuality with others than I expected, but I think it’s good for me.

22. I was an obese teenager, peaking at 240 lbs at 5’6" in the tenth grade. I wore a U.S. size 18/20. I have since then lost most of that weight, currently 160 and size 8, but my breasts, which are still quite large, will always sag, and my lower stomach will always hang low. I have only in the last year or so come to recognize that despite that my body is OK.

23. I’d like to be photographed in the nude. Not because I’d want anyone to see the pictures or to have them, but because I’d just like to see what I look like through an eye that is not constantly self-critical, neurotic, and self-loathing. I have a secret suspicion that I am actually quite sexy in the nude but have no "proof".

24. I like looking, and I like being looked at. My current partner closes his eyes during sex, and I wish he wouldn’t. He is also very quiet, even when he is enjoying himself very much, and this bothers me as well. I am actually quite loud. When I first began having sex I was astonished by the fact that I actually sounded, quite instinctively, like women I’d seen in pornography.

25. The most powerful erotic dream I’ve ever had was about Groucho Marx. I also have a great many sexual dreams about Alfred Molina—at least, a great many in proportion to how often I think about him in day-to-day life, which is... not ever, unless I’m actively watching him in a movie and thinking to myself, "why do I have so many dirty dreams about this dude?"