Carnivorous Cow was left wondering, why should someone's sexual orientation be remotely of interest to someone else, unless that person had plans to use that information in an algorithmic "Yes worth pursuing / No not worth pursuing" manner. And why should a seemingly straight man find a "lipstick lesbian" more palatable (sorry!) than the more butch variety? It was all very puzzling.
Particularly as two conversations with two lesbian friends over the weekend left her wondering about her own sexual orientation - having moved rather beyond the 80s when forms asking for "race" routinely received "100m" as a response, and "sex" elicited "yes please". Is sexual orientation simply about whom (if anyone) one choses to bed, or does it reach deeper down into questions of identity and how one chooses to present oneself in different contexts? In which case, most colleagues wondering around Campus would definitely warrant classification - in their work contexts, at least - as asexual.
Carnivorous Cow has never been big on labels, simply because her grasshopper mind doesn't allow her to swear allegiance to any state of mind for too long before boredom kicks in, but keeps bumping up against the driving need here at UCT to attach labels and categories to people, to define them and tie them down. One is a colour, a gender, an academic or its converse, one is a rank, a performance category, a permanent or contractor, a member of an organisational unit or a discipline. And, it seems, one is a sexual orientation.