For this Pride month and beyond, we're shining a spotlight on some lesser known parts of the LGBTQIA+ community, to build visibility, allyship and celebrate individual stories and experiences. 

To coincide with the release of our first video from our global ‘A Letter From…’ series (featuring intersex activist, model, writer and filmmaker River Gallo), we asked intersex activist, stand-up comedian, and Hollywood tour-de-force Seven Graham to write about their experience with dating, trying new things, and honesty with themselves and others:

I’m going to be very honest with you, I have been dating longer than some of you have been alive. 

And in these past 18 months, since turning 50, my dating life is more fun and hotter than ever. 

When my second marriage broke up, I felt like a total failure at relationships - and had a mental and physical health crisis. 

With lots of time alone to think, I realized that I was ridiculously out of touch with who I am as a sexual being and had been playing safe dating only cis women for years. 

Who might I be attracted to if I let myself look around? How socially conditioned was my desire? 

You see for years, I kept a Dark Secret: I’m intersex - which means I’m not male or female, I’m both. Biologically non-binary. 

Part of the reason I only dated women was I felt they are more accepting and less judgmental. Men felt much more scary and I do love women, so why bother giving (cis) men the benefit of the doubt?

I made a decision to challenge my thinking and self-limiting beliefs and commit to taking huge action, to feel the fear and do it anyway. 

I began experimenting to find the right dating app for my needs, and learning how to write an engaging profile. 

I started getting messages and asked out and I decided to say yes to a wide range of people, including some I might think I wasn’t attracted to. Some of these dates took my breath away, literally. 

I was surprised to find that each time I rewrote my profile, with more honesty, interest in me went up, not down! I started asking people out too and enjoying being the person taking control.

In asserting myself, and starting to “own my power”, my dating confidence massively improved and I found the key to a new paradise of fun, that I never thought was going to be open to me. Everyone else, yes, but not poor old, freaky, oddball, me. 

Aside from having a body that is noticeably different to “normal”, I felt like I was born without the dating and relationships manual. So through my teens and twenties, I accumulated a library of self-help books to teach myself. 

I’ve always felt at home hiding behind a good book but it wasn’t until I packed up my books in UK to move to LA that I realized just how many books I owned about sex and relationships. I was obsessed! Probably because I have always found relationships with real live humans didn’t come naturally to me. 

Knowing the theory of sex and love is all well and good but to get into practice as a teen, I had totally relied on the “dutch courage” of drink and drugs to overcome my body insecurities and low self-worth.

In recovery from addictions and 18 years sober now, as a sober person in their early 30s, I had to learn how to do everything again without my old crutches. It was a hard time.

But it’s been worth it because, as well as having a lot of good clean (and dirty) fun, I now (practically) have a PhD in dating, sex and relationships. I’ve called my “research” Project Panda and use it -hilariously- in my stand-up comedy. I’ve amassed a lot of data (and dick pics) that might help and inspire you, or just make you gag. 

At the very least, reading this will reassure you that no matter how big/small your perceived problems and/or low you rank yourself on the 1-10 attractiveness score, you too can go on great dates and have sex with people you desire, if you get out of your own way and stop saying NO and start saying YES to the Universe.

I’ve been on some wonderful dates and met truly incredible people, and I’ve had dates so bad that they aren’t funny or stories you’d ever want to tell anyone over dinner.

Just off the top of my head, there’s the guy who gave me a floating rubber squeaky frog, attached to a bath plug, as a thank you for having sex on the first “date”. 

I don’t know why he gave me a bath toy. My guess is because I had just kissed a frog who was never going to turn into Prince Charming.

Then there was the “lesbian rock musician”, as she called herself in a magazine dating column, who was much shorter in real life than her picture suggested; and actually played violin in a terrible 80s-sound-a-like pub band. Violins are NOT rock n roll. 

I was so disgusted by the gulf between her sales pitch and reality that even though she seemed very nice, and I actually find polly-pocket people I can pick up and carry over my shoulder to bed very sexy, I couldn’t get beyond the lies.

The worst ever date (thus far) seemed so promising in the Uber there - he invited me back to his $20 million Malibu beach house, he was tall and handsome, and I let him lead me by the hand upstairs to lay on his huge bed overlooking the ocean and we began to kiss to the sound of the waves crashing. 

I felt like I was in a Hollywood romance movie, especially exciting for a Brit, now living in LA. 

Then things turned Hollyweird, he asked me to suck his armpit, to ‘bond with his man scent.’

That wasn’t even the worse thing. He had awful, and I mean AWFUL, taste in music. As we kissed, if a song came on he liked, he would sit bolt upright and, in all seriousness, start singing the song to me. Not just the chorus. The whole song. Every word. He couldn’t sing. And he wanted me to applaud him at the end. Then return his passionate kisses, like a hero returning from battle. 

By the end of the date so many truly odd things had happened and he’d told me such far-fetched sounding stories, I wasn’t even sure the house was his. 

Was he really the cleaner with a spare set of keys? And even if he did own a patent - allegedly to a piece of technology we all use every day - and the house was really his, I refused the second date. He seemed very surprised by my rejection.

In all these years of experience of dating, I’ve learned the hard way(s), there is nothing more important than honesty and real authentic communication if we want to attract cool people to have a good time with, and go on life enhancing dates that lead to great sex and connection. 

A committed relationship that will allow us to be ourselves and grow and flourish, needs a rock solid foundation.

Dates based on concealing the truth and relationships founded in fantasy, always whither and die. Sexual attraction (no matter how HOT they are) will not sustain over months and years, or remain vigorous and fulfilling, without real connections and intimacy. 

A Bad Marriage feels like a life sentence and the marital bed can become the loneliest place in the world. There were times in my second marriage I wished I was dead. Or she was. Neither option is the fairy story ending of ‘And They Lived Happily Ever After’. It’s just grim!

It took me a long and winding road to discover that HONESTY is the magic fairy dust that can make our dreams come true. 

Being honest was really hard for me: hardly anyone knows we intersex exist, and because of how the doctors had treated me as a child, I felt deeply ashamed that my body and gender identity were outside the common two “binary sexes”. 

There were literally no role models to look to, to affirm that being intersex is natural, rare, and interesting. Doctors call us “Disorders of Sexual Development”, which of course makes us see our bodies as flawed, and harms our sense of self.

I was so good at burying the truth, I even fooled myself into trying to fit into the pink box of femininity, and totally overlooked the fact I’m attracted to lots of things - especially a kind, sensitive heart and intelligence; and I really enjoy a good penis. 

Through dating honestly I’ve found that lots of people are attracted to my being a hybrid human. 

Nobody ever rejected me as badly as I rejected myself.

I’m now so confident I’m actively tearing up the old rule book! 

I still haven’t quite plucked up courage to try some of the more Out There things on my dating wish list. The California King beds are so big here they are a blank canvas with so much potential; for exploration and adventure! And space enough for lots of friends (with benefits) to come too. 

I’m really looking forward to fulfilling my dreams. And theirs.