Are you sure about your sexuality? And if you have even a shadow of doubt, would you be willing to try to work out the truth?

We're about to have a kid. Some days I daydream about the future, and what she'll be like when she grows up, and what she'll be passionate about, and if she'll fall in love, and who that person might be, and whether they'll have children. And I tell myself she might, or she might not, find the kind of joy her father and I share, in the way we have. She might find love with another woman. She might become a man and love another man. She may do whatever she wants – and I want her to feel free to love as she pleases – yet I even as I let my head wander down this dream-road of maybes and ifs, I'm conscious of clouds of doubt floating up above. What if her path is so very different from mine? Will I be able to help? Will I understand? And how will the world react?

Actress Ruby Rose, who identifies as gender fluid, is challenging gender and sexuality "norms". Credit:Anthony Harvey

It's stunning, isn't it, how pervasive the concept of so-called "normalcy" is. If I am honest, my unguided, unconscious thoughts about the future of my baby become distinctly deliberate when they steer in the direction of sexuality. Of course, this baby will be whoever, and love whoever, this baby wants. That is what I think, and what I believe to be true. Yet there's the briefest of blinks in my mind's eye before this truth comes into view. Upon admitting to this, I feel guilt, but I reason this need for conscious adjustment is natural. After all, I'm used to seeing things from my perspective – my broadly heterosexual perspective that is. A perspective I guess I've had all my life, despite trying different outlooks at various stages of my "teenties", "just to make sure". Just to make sure I was, actually, "straight".

But here's the thing. What if I didn't have the word "straight" in my vocabulary. What if the terms heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, et cetera, did not exist? Indeed, homosexual and heterosexual only sprang into being relatively recently, according to this article in The New York Times, as recently as 19th-century Germany. Further explanation of the etymological origins can be found at Salon, care of this interview with author Hanne Blank about her book Straight. She reveals it was the Austro-Hungarian journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny who coined both heterosexual and homosexual "as part of his response to a piece of Prussian legislation that made same-sex erotic behaviour illegal, even in cases where the identical act performed by a man and a woman would be considered legal… [which was] a really very clever bid to try to equalise same-sex and different-sex." According to Blank, Kertbeny wanted to suggest "that there are these two categories in which human beings could be sexual, that they were not part of a hierarchy, that they were just two different flavours of the same thing".

That "thing" being the sexual nature of humankind – our sexuality. It's something we obsess about today – something the politically correct go to great lengths to "get right". We classify and clarify in a bid to give legitimacy to the ideas of difference. We're determined to not be a society that regards everyone as the same; everyone must be different, and unique – or, at the very least, they must be allowed to believe they are, and can be. Recoiling from horrific memories of what it was like when one group dominated, and quested for their own homogenous supremacy, we – rightly – encourage everyone to be equally different. Right down to what goes on beyond closed doors. But there's a crack in the brilliance of this beautiful world. We get angsty when we don't know where we belong. And with many options comes much angst. Right down to what goes on beyond closed doors.

Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I bi? Am I somewhere in between? What am I? So many questions – so hard to find an answer. What if we took the words away and just let people be people – existing wherever they exist on the spectrum, without having to ever classify themselves with a tick in a box on a form? What if we could just love other people, not because they were "our kind", but because we actually truly loved them. Could you ever look beyond the label to find love?

Katherine Feeney is a journalist with the Nine Network Australia.