Was thinking of movie commentary in the car this morning, and of Return of the Living Dead, and something that’s been in my head on and off came to mind: Why isn’t there a word that defines what gender you’re attracted to, but doesn’t do so in relation to you?
I mean, the movie has a striptease scene in a graveyard, and part of the commentary (or possibly an interview I read once; regardless) is along the lines of “Yeah, we did this for the guys… If we’d known there would have been so many girls in the audience, we’d have put in eye candy for them too.”
Which is actually kind of nice to hear, but that’s a tangent–what I’m trying to address right now is that the group meeting the definition of “finds women attractive” is not the same as the group that meets the definition of “guys”. (And yes, I get that the movie is nearly thirty years old, I am perfectly aware of colloquial assumptions, I know there is a long habit of going with the “everyone is straight until proven otherwise” assumption, and I think it’s at best a bit of a lazy and horribly erasing habit but that is neither here nor there. So.)
So what is the word or term for people who are attracted to men or women? As humans we tend to label and categorize and articulate; I can’t believe that there hasn’t been a term a little less unwieldy than “straight women and gay men and bisexuals of either any or all genders” created yet. I doubt it’s a perfect term, because one of the other things we tend to do is simplify and generalize, but there has to be something.
And am I completely missing something? Christ knows it’s possible–this knapsack is invisible, but it does one hell of a job as a pair of blinders.
Thoughts?
Edited to note:
The terms exist! They are androphile and gynophile.