The labels have the character's name followed by 受 (uke), which means being the receptive or passive partner, or in BL slang means the bottom. Most underrated organizational system ever by the way. Please show this to anyone who claims that "unwoke" Japan doesn't "shoehorn queerness into everything".
It depends, like if I only like people with full on masculine features I'm a pretty standard gay man, if I only like people with feminine features I'm probably straight, and then it starts to break down in the middle, unless I don't care about certain features, but there isn't a hard line. Regardless of what specific person I am attracted to, I feel like if all I can think about is getting all up in a thick beard then I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I guess it's all about the things that specifically are important to someone
"In the middle" shouts to the gender binary. I find it interesting that you acknowledge sexuality as being highly personal and deeply complicated, yet view it through a simple binary. Not that I broadly disagree with what you've said, fwiw
I guess by in the middle I just mean not exclusively attracted to masculine or feminine attributes, speaking in terms of like more superficial physical attraction and not so much about romantic attraction and how that can be affected by gendered cultural norms and that sort of thing
Sexuality definitely is hard to pin down, it's like, all abstractions upon abstractions, it's so complex really that identifying "objective" information about it is basically absurd- basically trying to describe a thought or emotion by listing out neuron states or something, it's not possible