Jacob, 29
One of our favourite things to do is ‘outercourse’
I was raised in a really conservative religious household and went to a Catholic school. I’m bisexual, or maybe the more correct term is pansexual – I don’t really see gender as a dividing line for who I’m attracted to. Growing up, I was ostracised for it, so I always masked my behaviour, and it wasn’t until my mid-20s that I started to think: hold on, I can’t just keep faking who I am.
By the time I met Kasey four years ago, I had been through enough to feel comfortable in myself. But sometimes I still have intrusive thoughts, like this school tutor in my head saying: “What you’re doing is wrong.” Kasey is also bisexual – being able to have someone that you love and trust in your corner helps you figure these things out.
I now see that many things that I hadn’t thought of before can constitute sex. One of our favourite things to do is outercourse. We will usually start with cuddling on the couch, kissing and then move to oral and grinding.
For us, sex means starting from a place of intimacy and touch and, depending on how we’re both feeling, we’ll decide whether we want to have penetrative sex, or if we just want to edge and stop just before we orgasm, and be close to each other for 40 minutes. Kasey is on antidepressants, so it is hard for her to get off, and there are times when we’ll be having sex and we know it’s not going to happen. So, we’ll go to bed and lie in each other’s arms. It’s frustrating sometimes for her, but it’s normal if it doesn’t happen.
Over time, I have started to want to cross-dress and present as more feminine. I was really self-conscious about it – I’m a fairly burly guy. But Kasey pointed out how great my legs looked in tights and other such nice things, so I now feel much better about it. In the same way, she has cut her hair and is presenting a lot more masculine, and she is still so attractive to me.
I want to continue exploring this part of ourselves. Sometimes I still get these nagging thoughts as a hangover from my childhood that there’s something wrong with what I’m doing. But it just takes time.
Kasey, 27
We don’t go through the motions assuming that we’re going to have heterosexual penetrative sex
Since we’ve been together, we have always been open with each other about not wanting to play the normal gender game. Jacob sometimes wants to be able to be more feminine. I have historically identified as agender but I’m moving toward identifying as trans masculine. I remember going to Pride during the first year of our relationship. Jacob wore my clothes and I wore some of his.
Still, when we first started dating, sex felt very performative. I think a big reason for that is that we were having the kind of sex they tell you about in school, where you have foreplay, then you have penetrative sex, and then the guy comes. We’d both internalised the cis attitude that sex means penetration.
As we’ve been more open about gender, we’ve had less penetrative sex and are less guided by the fact that he has a penis and I have a vagina. We don’t go through the motions assuming that we’re going to have heterosexual penetrative sex, and talking about our feelings of gender has helped us to not feel guilty about what kind of sex we “should” be having. Though we both had radically different backgrounds in terms of how we were told about sex as teenagers (I went to more of a hippy school), we’d both internalised societal norms.
I’m now on medication for my mental health, which makes it really tricky for me to orgasm, and penetrative sex can be uncomfortable. Jacob usually comes pretty fast, which I’m very jealous of. It’s frustrating to not be able to enjoy sex like I used to before I started this medication. But now we do a lot more foreplay like grinding and just lying together naked and touching each other.
We have sex one to three times a week. It’s more just a time for us to be together, to talk, to cuddle. We both want to explore more gender play, and I feel as though we have a foundation to do that.
