The Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman To Political Lesbian Pipeline

Is she really any different from the rest of us?

Thus far, my writing has been directed towards the kind of woman who always felt, deep in her heart, that there are forces much more resourced than her seeking to keep her in a state of perpetual fear. This results in a sort of paranoia that seeps through my words and manifests as an author cautious in her argumentation. Even at my most radical, when I told you to heed the wisdom of whores, I did so after rummaging through memoirs, biographies, and historical case studies to ground my reasoning in a sense of historical inevitability. All that to say, I’ll never bullshit you. I appreciate the faith you have in me as I walk you through another radical argument. This time, the case of The Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman To Political Lesbian Pipeline.

“I Love My Daddy, Of Course We’re Still Together”

Even in my cultural traditionalism as a young West African woman residing in the United States of America, I’ve always dreamt of something just slightly different in regard to my romantic relationships. Something a little absurd; a little naughty; a little subversive. Love, as a verb, in a heterosexual context. Given the bout of heteropessimism going around, this is as radical as it sounds. A term coined by Asa Seresin, heteropessimism speaks to “performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.” Seresin writes that the bogeyman in all of this tends to come in the silhouette of a heterosexual man; that for all her complaints, the heterosexual woman who engages with heteropessimism, as a lens of understanding the world, rarely abandons heterosexuality as a practice—if sexuality can be seen as such a thing. Seresin writes, “Sure, some heteropessimists act on their beliefs, choosing celibacy or the now largely outmoded option of political lesbianism, yet most stick with heterosexuality even as they judge it to be irredeemable. Even incels, overflowing with heteropessimism, stress the involuntary nature of their condition.”

I’m interested in the heteropessimistic woman because I’m curious about the root of her disillusionment. Is she disenchanted by the expectations her society has for her because she’s female and heterosexual? Or, are her grievances with the suffering she’s experienced because of the romantic partners she’s found in her other sex, the heterosexual man? Better put, is she opposed to the conditions society places on female womanhood, or is she displeased with the terms offered to her in romantic relationships with heterosexual men? Further, would disregarding the former help her negotiate the latter? Meaning, does a woman who has a high sense of agency—even in circumstances designed to break her—believe herself to be at the whims of the fickleness of another human being?

This question of agency is paramount, as it is my belief that we live in times designed to break our psyches. This algorithmic surveillance state we find ourselves in situates in all of us certain incentives that tend to manifest as a double consciousness. A term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois, double consciousness can be understood as a state of always witnessing oneself through the lens of another. Therefore, the algorithm of so-called social platforms allows one to be commodified through a “personal brand” carefully tailored to one’s desired audience. This personal brand extends itself through other marketplaces such as labor, dating, and even friendships. Thus, if a heterosexual woman perpetually finds herself in the frame of mind where the reactions of others become a measuring stick for her innate sense of worth, it won’t be too long until she becomes heteropessimistic as she begins questioning her own sense of orientation. Not sexually, but positionally. Questions such as who am I next to the heterosexual man? Am I his wife? His mother? His lover? Am I anything to him at all?

To the last question, heteropessimism would answer, “nothing at all.” As my argument stands, however, a woman should never regard herself as the plaything of another human being’s whims. Instead, she must view herself as an arbiter of her own taste and director of her own agency. If her internal compass leads her back to the heterosexual man, with whom love is doomed from the start, then there’s a poetic justice in following one’s death drive. Doomed, in this case, should not be viewed through a framework of domestic violence, as that’s not what I’m suggesting. Instead, I’m referencing this wind of heteropessimism that has gripped the cultural zeitgeist, as seen through Sabrina Carpenter’s tongue-in-cheek Manchild from her aptly-titled album, Man’s Best Friend. Right now, as it’s always been, it’s fashionable to gripe about our dealings with heterosexual men as heterosexual women. But I argue that there’s an even more avant-garde position to take, and that’s one of transcendence.

Earlier, I stated my desire for heterosexual love that manifests as a verb and not a noun. Nouns are static: they’re people, places, and things. Titular references. Verbs, by definition, speak to actions. Therefore, heterosexual love as a verb speaks to love whose principal orientation is action, action, action. In this view, words mean nothing and actions say everything. Consequently, the heterosexual man who does nothing in service of me has told me everything I need to know about him. As a high-agency person, I cease all dealings with him. What I do after that choice is the difference between political lesbianism and heteropessimism. The heteropessimistic woman, as Seresin writes, continues on with heterosexuality despite finding it irredeemable because she embraces the strain of the “straight experience.” The political lesbian would do no such thing. Now, one could argue that the political lesbian was never heterosexual to begin with, and was bisexual this entire time, but that’s a different line of inquiry. The principal focus of this essay is the cause of the heterosexual woman’s disillusionment and her subsequent decision to become a political lesbian.

This pipeline idea of mine has its roots in theory. As I stated in my introduction, even at my most radical, I write from the perspective of historical inevitability. One of the key undercurrents to all of this is the question, how much of a feminist are you? A seemingly random question, but it’s part of the origin story of political lesbianism as a framework. In “What Heterosexuality Can Tell Us About Lesbianism,” scholar Rosemary Auchmuty wrote:

“To today’s postfeminist generations, the arguments of the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group seem so extreme that many find it hard to believe that anyone ever took them seriously. But we did. I was one of many, many women who found the “Political Lesbian” paper so persuasive that we chose to abandon our heterosexual pasts and become lesbians. And most of us have stayed lesbians, rethinking and refining our politics across the years but never quite getting rid of that conviction that as lesbians we have the potential to lead more feminist lives, to achieve more for women’s liberation, than our straight sisters whose energies are constantly being sapped by their association with men.”¹

The ending clause of her last sentence is, in my opinion, the operative clause. As she wrote, “...our straight sisters whose energies are constantly being sapped by their association with men.” This hunkers back to my line of inquiry earlier, where I asked if the heterosexual woman would ever place herself in a position to negotiate the terms and conditions of her romantic relationships with heterosexual men by choosing to disregard the ways in which society expects her to behave as a heterosexual woman. Instead of choosing a new sexuality, choose a new orientation. Instead of witnessing yourself as someone whom things happen to, view yourself as someone for whom things happen for and insist on love as a verb in your heterosexual context. This disavowal of society’s heterosexual female stereotype will consequently float any notions of traditional gender roles, which will have the intended effect of transcending the patriarchal understanding of heterosexual love.

I should state, clearly, that I do not believe you can choose your sexuality. Not the internal compass. You can choose to override it, but it’ll always point where it wants to point. However, in the literature I reviewed, there’s this “fundamental premise of feminism that sexuality is socially constructed rather than innate or acquired through faulty sexual development; it must therefore be susceptible to change.” This notion that sexuality is “susceptible to change”, in my opinion, has the potential to do more harm than good. Following the logic of the transitive property, if we can choose something, then we can unchoose it. Not to sound conspiratorial, but if it were to be in the fundamental interests of an institution to convince us to change our innate sexuality to something else, what would stop them from doing that, especially if their means to do so were cultural programming and not a constitutional violation of our civic rights? If we all believe our sexuality is indeed malleable, what’s stopping us from being receptive to that messaging? That said, everyone is free to choose the partner they feel most comfortable and at ease with, but that internal compass will always point wherever it wants to point.

As a heterosexual woman, my compass always points towards heterosexual men. Thus, my only option is to negotiate, through the means of emotional intelligence, the confines of my romantic relationships, such that love, as I’m experiencing it, manifests as a verb, and not a noun. Static love is what saps the energy of women until they’re shells of themselves. Kinetic love is devotional because it’s rooted in eternal consideration. I used to believe that this sense of profound consideration is something you find ready-made in a man, but that was simply the result of my seeking my divinity in men. I was looking for God in mortals. Eternal consideration is something you cultivate by being an active participant in your relationship through communicating your needs. That adage about closed mouths not getting fed isn’t just biblical, it’s ontological. If you do not advocate for yourself, anyone can take advantage of you. Even another woman.

“Your Mom Called, I Told Her, You’re Fucking Up Big Time”

As my view of womanhood is rooted in humanity, I believe that women have the capacity to harm those they claim to love just as much as men. Traveling under the banner of womanhood does not exempt one from being unprincipled, contemptible, or untrustworthy nor does it prevent us from becoming the same forces that once sought to break us down. In her Daily Mail article, titled “I realised I could never depend on men after my husband’s selfish act... so I ditched him and became a lesbian. This is why there’s no such thing as ‘having it all’ unless you’re with a woman,” Professor Low writes:

“…‘I need you to know I’ve checked out of this marriage,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want to be with you any more. Or any other man.’ And then I dropped the bomb: ‘If I’m going to be with anyone, I want it to be a woman.’…me announcing I wanted to date women wasn’t about sex - though the knowledge that I wasn’t entirely straight helped. It was more about fairness, about believing that only with another woman could I build a partnership where the load would be shared.

…I wanted another child, but knew I couldn’t face raising one in this dynamic. If I was going to do it again, I wanted someone hardwired to pull their weight at home. A woman.…At first, I told him I wanted to stay married for the sake of the kids…He agreed, but I’m now sure that’s only because he thought I just needed to get this out of my system. The opposite happened. If anything, saying it all out loud solidified my intentions.

In Professor Low’s imagination, informed by both personal experience and extensive expert research, it is only women who are ‘hardwired’ to perform domestic labor. Thus, in seeking a more compatible partner, she imagined not that there could exist a man, seemingly heterosexual, who could, and would, do his fair share at home. So, Professor Low turned to patriarchy’s insurance policy: someone hardwired to pull her weight at home. A woman. To be fair to the professor, she makes it clear that she wasn’t after a “traditional wife type to take on all the domestic chores, leaving [her] as free as [her former] husband to pursue work ambitions.” She was simply after parity. An equal distribution of domestic labor. But she frames this pursuit as an escape from men, and their disappointments, and towards women, and our cosmic capacity to not be disappointments to those around us.

It’s true that my mother, being the African woman that she is, raised me to take care of a home: cooking, cleaning, tidying, laundry, and the endless anticipation of the needs of those in the household. I remember being in the kitchen with my grandmother in the early hours. Barely lucid, telling her I was still tired and wanted to return to bed. She told me what she was teaching me was just as important as my schoolwork; that “a man may find a woman more beautiful than you, but he won’t find one that cooks like you.” To my family, I was a girl to be raised, properly married off to steward the next generation of children. Now that I have become a woman who is enticed by the prospect of being married and having children, it’s not a bad proposition—if I can do it the Diouana Woman way. But I’ve always wondered how my childhood would have gone, had I been the same culturally rebellious child but a boy instead of a girl. Would these expectations of cooking, cleaning, tidying, laundry, and the endless anticipation of the needs of others in the household be placed upon me if I had a penis and not a uterus? Likely not. In my cultural programming, I resented the domestic projections made upon me due to my sex. It’s unlikely I’m special in this regard, and I’m certain there’s a woman out there who feels the same. She might even be a lesbian.

I am not hardwired to pull my weight at home. As a child, reading, studying, and daydreaming occupied most of my time. Because of this, I’ve always held faith that there exists a man who would appreciate a muse and oracle for a wife, in lieu of a domestic workhorse. A man who would understand that my unwillingness to slavishly clean and my limited prowess in the kitchen is neither a moral failure nor a stain on my sex, but a personal quirk, likely to be resolved as more and more of my time can be spent on personal projects and less in corporate environments that have always drained my spirit. As a show of faith, he’d pay for a housecleaner. As a show of appreciation, I’ll cook more than I do now.

I’ve always held faith that the man who would accept me for me, and not make me suffer for it in this life, exists. It seems Professor Low had no such faith. Not in her former husband, who never seemed to do his fair share of anything, anyway. Nor in heterosexual men at large. At least, not for her. She told The Cut, “I’m not physically repulsed by men…I’m socially and politically repulsed…being attracted to women wasn’t a conscious choice, but actively excluding men from my option set for partnership was…becoming a lesbian…was an ‘evidence-based decision.’”

That last bit, about how becoming a lesbian was an “evidence-based decision,” shares a silhouette with the 2025 essay “Lowkey, I Chose To Be A Lesbian” written by Malavika Kannan. She writes affectionately about her lesbian identity:

“I am not opposed to the bisexual label or here to negate its validity. I dream of a world without labels at all. But some time ago, I chose to start identifying and living as a lesbian. I was empowered by a rising tide of lesbian visibility to take the plunge into an identity I had previously believed was lonely, restrictive, or puritanical. (I fell for some propaganda, I fear.) Becoming a lesbian opened new portals in my heart and life. I knew what I was rejecting — men — but I couldn’t have imagined what I am accepting instead. I am still untangling its beauty.”

A strong start to an essay about one’s lesbian identity. But the passages that follow reveal a writer who cannot escape herself in her writing. Yes, she now travels under the banner of lesbianism, but she arrived there from the creeping feeling that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t have to keep suffering at the hands of men. Again, a pursuit informed by an escape from men, and their disappointments, and towards women, and our cosmic capacity to not be disappointments to those around us. She continues writing:

“It sounds silly to say, but my last straw was a pregnancy scare. I’d had numerous negative experiences with men in college, some even traumatic, but I managed to recover from them, to keep an open heart. Although I primarily dated women, I had, in some way, accepted occasional violence as an occupational hazard of dating men, of the sexual liberation I was lucky to have. I thought I could roll with the punches, stay in the ring. But I had to take a Plan B because of a dumb man who had bell hooks on his bookshelf. My stomach was cramping like an omen from God, and I thought, never again. This was shortly after the fall of Roe v Wade, putting everyone with a uterus at the mercy of men and the state, and I felt, with sudden certainty, that men were no longer worth it. I did not want to play this incredibly rigged game. (I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed by women calling for a 4B movement after Trump’s re-election.) That’s why I stepped away.

This is where definitions, and their pairing with certain words, change the meaning that readers are meant to, and will take. Kannan writes that she “stepped away” from men. The threat of the state seeking autonomy over her body through legislative change made the reality of sex with men uninspiring; if not, a direct threat to her and her future. In this “rigged game” that exists as a biological female (the emphasis on biology here is its continuity with the author’s own emphasis of her concerns—e.g., “everyone with a uterus”) in a patriarchal system, sexual-emotional-romantic relations with women are the only safe space for human connection for women. I posit to you that this is the definition of a political lesbian. Remember Rosemary Auchmuty’s words: “I was one of many, many women who found the ‘Political Lesbian’ paper so persuasive that we chose to abandon our heterosexual pasts and become lesbians. And most of us have stayed lesbians, rethinking and refining our politics across the years but never quite getting rid of that conviction that as lesbians we have the potential to lead more feminist lives, to achieve more for women’s liberation, than our straight sisters whose energies are constantly being sapped by their association with men.” Kannan’s words, more than Auchmuty’s, bring up a lingering question: in the absence of a patriarchal system, in the reinstatement of Roe v. Wade, or even in the face of a devastating heartbreak perpetuated by another woman, will Kannan continue to date women? Will she continue to be a lesbian? In summation, in the absence of a threat, are you still who you say you are?

When I speak of The Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman To Political Lesbian Pipeline, I write of the heterosexual woman who, in looking at what awaits her in relationships with heterosexual men, decides for herself, “I won’t do it—it’s simply not worth it.” Turning, she seeks a woman with whom she can find reprieve from men and their endless disappointments. Compellingly, Rictor Norton touched on an interesting dynamic in “Political Definitions of ‘The Lesbian’”: that the choice of sexuality, for women, becomes an expression of power. If the choice is to be heterosexual and weak, the solution is to be homosexual and strong. It’s even more interesting what he said of male’s sexuality—”The choice to become weak.” My mind conjures delicious images of a man happily brought to his knees, but we can have that interrogation at another time. Let us continue our exploration of the Disillusioned Heterosexual Woman. Kannan, in her essay, goes on to write:

“It’s easy for me, at 24, to hold out in my principles. I wonder what will happen when I get older. Our society has made it very structurally difficult for me to envision a life outside of partnership with a man…I don’t think I can ever raise a family by myself in New York, my chosen home. I don’t blame those who can’t hold out: Being a lesbian is not for the weak. Most often, we speak of the financial disadvantage when you refuse male money...

…As my dear friend recently told me, in a gay appropriation of George Bush: “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” Patriarchy is the terror. I want to terrorize it back.

“Holding out.” An unexpected turn of phrase. It brings up images of callous men, disappointed at our unwillingness. To play, to laugh, to fuck. Disappointed in us for not going along with the joke. But we’re not laughing because we’re not in on it. Kannan writes as an author in jest. “I don’t blame those who can’t hold out: being a lesbian is not for the weak.” One’s sexuality becomes a commodity, something that can be bartered. Traded for better goods and certainly better services. This idea that we can mold our sexuality at will, fueled by “evidence-based decisions,” ignores the reality of some disillusioned heterosexual women and likely many lesbian women, who, despite the fact that no one seems to take lesbianism seriously, continue to simply exist as lesbians. Not bisexuals or asexuals. Just lesbians. Professor Low felt her ex-husband agreed to her new reality because he assumed she “just needed to get this out of [her] system.” But the desire to build a life-long haven with someone of your same sex is not a feeling you “just get out of your system.” It’s not a feeling that just goes away; so there’s nothing “to hold out on.” That compass will continue to point wherever it desires. Sure, we can choose to override it, but it points just the same.

What’s curious about Kannan’s essay is the lack of singular love. Mentions of euphoria, yes. Mentions of communal effervescence, yes. But not love. Young love. This is consistent between Professor Low’s and Kannan’s experiences. Both made the choice to become lesbians, yes. Both, in their experiences with heterosexual men, experienced an absence of dignified love. Trauma, exhaustion, and disappointment—each has its own chapter. Kannan’s final straw was a pregnancy scare. A vulnerable moment in which the absence of the man’s consideration made things perfectly clear for her. Professor Low’s final straw was a vampiric man who feasted on her energy without replenishing her. These two women examined their lives and made the decisions they felt were best for them. As we all should.

“It’s Not About Having Someone To Love Me Anymore…”

What will become of us, those who remain in our heterosexual context? Those of us not bisexual or asexual. Simply heterosexual. We’re not leaving because we have no desire to override our compass. Heteropessimistic we are not, but heterorealistic we must be.

Young heterosexual men, it seems, are not alright. They’re economically behind, socially isolated, and increasingly view conservatism as the only culture welcoming of them. By contrast, young heterosexual women are outpacing, outworking, and outearning their male peers. This is typically where people will insert, “Well, looks like women don’t need men anymore!” Yet women are not productive, capitalistic machines devoid of emotions or souls. We are human beings with the most innate human desire: intimate connection. We yearn. We fantasize. We aspire for love rooted in spiritual eroticism—not a humiliation ritual. Thus, even if we can pay our rent and fund our own vacations, this self-sufficiency does not erase the very human impulse towards shared moments with a special someone. This is the milieu where the 21st-century heterosexual man and woman cross paths. One has surpassed her ancestors’ expectations; the other has found himself a disappointment to a society intent on reminding him of his shortcomings. It’s generous to think that these two would even end up in the same room together; in fact, it’s likely that they didn’t, and instead met through a dating app. Which, by algorithmic nature, exposes us all to people whose circumstances wouldn’t intersect with our trajectory if left to nature’s social Darwinistic distribution.

It’s this divergence in trajectory that crystallizes the contextual background of Professor Low’s 2014 paper, Pricing the Biological Clock: Reproductive Capital on the US Marriage Market. Here, too, our heterosexual man and woman cross paths through a dating app:

By running an online dating‑profile experiment in which age (30–40) and income were randomly assigned while every other attribute (photo, interests, “looking for serious relationship”) was held constant, Professor Low had participants (white, single, 30‑40  years old) rate 40 fictitious profiles on a 1‑10 scale; after rating, they ordered the profiles from most to least preferred, providing a second check on consistency.

The main result was that men, but not women, gave lower ratings to profiles that were older. Income raised ratings for both sexes, but the age penalty persisted even after controlling for visual age, respondent age, and other covariates. Heterogeneity tests in the experiment show that the age penalty was strongest among men who had no children, wanted children soon, and understood that female fertility declines before age 45; interestingly, these men exhibited no age bias when they lacked fertility knowledge. Robustness checks (excluding inattentive respondents, etc.) did not alter this finding.

By comparing the age coefficient to the income coefficient (approximately $7,000 of extra income offsets one additional year of age), Professor Low’s experiment places a “price” on the biological clock at $7,000 per year. Which in today’s dollars would be $9,600.² Her study concludes that men’s fertility‑based preference for younger partners drives the marriage‑market penalty faced by highly educated women who delay childbearing.

It’s helpful to remember that Professor Low published this paper in 2014, but her experiment touches on the core of today’s tension: young heterosexual women have become more yoked than young heterosexual men. In turn, on paper, our pool of supposedly eligible bachelors has decreased.

Side Bar —

There’s this sociological adage about black America being the canary in the coal mine for white America. Meaning, that whatever affects African Americans (not necessarily black immigrants or first-generation black Americans) will, in turn, affect white Americans a decade or so later.

In this conversation surrounding young women outpacing young men economically and educationally, I’m reminded of the 2011 book by Stanford Law School professor Ralph Richard Banks titled Is Marriage For White People? In this book, Professor Banks analyzed the statistics concerning the marriage gap between black and white women and found the culprit to be two-fold: 1) black women do not seek to marry outside of their race, and 2) college-educated, economically prosperous black women do not have a 1:1 dating pool with college-educated, economically prosperous black men.

Fast forward ten or so years, Professor Scott Galloway of NYU begins to write about the crisis affecting young, mainly white, men and how their female peers are likely not to match with them because no college-educated, economically successful white woman wants to pair with a man not of her same economic 3status.

What’s curious about both the insights of Professor Ralph Richard Banks and Scott Galloway is that the tension is the same, but is now felt across racial lines: young women are becoming more successful than young men, and the dating landscape is changing because of it, which will have ramifications on marriage rates. This was the case for many black women for years, decades even. Now that it’s reached white America, it’s national news. So it goes.

It seems everyone is hellbent on insisting to young women that the decision to use our most fertile years in pursuit of education and career development will lead to a loveless end—or worse, love with an “unequal” partner. If we turn to Professor Low’s paper, we see that the price of our fertility is an extra $9,400 in our paychecks. This assumes we are head of households. A scary thought to some. A reality for most.

Is becoming head of household, as an economic fact, all that bad? It seems it’s not the money that scares us, but the reality that the money won’t save us. It didn’t save Professor Low from an unsupportive husband who contributed nothing—tangible and otherwise—to the running of their household. Kannan ponders if refusing male money in lieu of lesbian love is wise in a society that makes it “structurally difficult for [her] to envision a life outside of partnership with a man.” Everyone’s favorite guru advises us to only pair with men who can pay our bills, and yet, author and psychologist Darcy Lockman found that across every distribution of couples, wives always ended up doing more than they thought they would, and husbands ended up doing less than they thought they would.

It would seem money isn’t what saves us. What can, then?

Some political lesbians expect that women will not harm them the way heterosexual men have. What happens if this is not the case? Some heterosexual women expect that a rich man’s money will save them the grief of an exhaustive female existence in a capitalistic society. What happens if this is not the case?

What happens when all of our disillusionments find new hosts?

“It turns out, everywhere you go, you take yourself, that’s not a lie,” Lana croons on West Coast. If our projections on another human being becomes our escape from disillusionments rooted in systematic, institutional grievances, we will never find peace. Homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual³. The choice shouldn’t be in a new sexuality, but a different orientation. Instead of playing out our revenge fantasies through our romantic relationships, let’s transcend these systems altogether. Especially those forces hellbent on keeping us all in a state of perpetual fear.

Sweet dreams,
A Diouana Woman

P.S. Truth or Dare

You know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? Yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

Truth: Gods among Men.

Dare: Entanglements. Always be above the fray.

A Nightcap Before You Go…

If you enjoyed the mood and tone of this essay, these essays may be up your alley:

1. Auchmuty, R. (1997). What Heterosexuality Can Tell Us About Lesbianism. The Lesbian Review of Books, Iii(4), 33. https://sandiego.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/what-heterosexuality-can-tell-us-about-lesbianism/docview/218141406/se-2

2. Using the annual average CPI-U for 2014 (236.7) and the January 2026 CPI-U index level (325.252), we calculate an inflation factor of approximately 1.37. Multiplying the original $7,000 by this factor yields about $9,618, which we round to roughly $9,600 in January 2026 dollars (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026).

3. Pansexual, asexual, etc.