"For young men, adolescence has always been a difficult time. I remember it well. The insecurity. The awkwardness. The peer pressure. Looking back, though, there’s one thing I’m profoundly grateful for.
At least in my day we didn’t have to know what a polyamorous pansexual AFAB was.
Today’s young men have no such luck. I’ve just been reading the agony uncle page on the website of Men’s Health, the world’s biggest men’s magazine. An unnamed young man has written in because he’s confused about his sexuality. “If I’m sexually attracted to people AFAB because of anatomy,” he asks, “does that make me pansexual?”
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term “people AFAB”, it stands for “people assigned female at birth”. Or, as we used to call them in the old days, “women”.
The reader goes on to explain that he’s “not attracted to people AMAB” (people assigned male at birth, or as they were formerly known, “men”).
On the other hand, he imagines that he could conceivably be attracted to “someone AFAB who comes out as a trans man but doesn’t choose surgery” (that is, a woman who identifies as a man but still has the body of a woman). Hence his question about whether he might be “pansexual”.
At this point you may be thinking, “Hang on. He’s a man who’s physically attracted to women. Doesn’t that make him heterosexual?” If so, I’m afraid you’re dreadfully behind the times – as is made clear by the magazine’s agony uncle, Zachary Zane, a self-proclaimed “sex-positive, polyamorous, bisexual kinkster” and “ethical boyslut”.
Mr Zane explains that the reader’s tastes “technically meet the definition of bisexuality”, because he’s “attracted to vulva-owners of multiple genders”. He expresses some concern, however, that the reader may be “fetishizing people with a vulva”…
The young men of today often get a bad rap, but if this is the kind of advice they’re getting, I feel sorry for them. Adolescence is confusing enough without having to learn all this mad woke jargon. The question that must confuse them most, however, is this.
Why is the magazine they’re reading still called Men’s Health? Surely it should be called Penis-Owners’ Health, or AMAB Monthly."
Is this the one?