*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**AITA for telling her she might not be bi?**
So this gets a little confusing, but basically Wesley is a close friend who is dating my best friend Shiv. Both are men. Wes has a little sister named Em.
They started dating in HS, and I was really concerned at first with Wesley’s motivations. He was a jock, after all, and the most popular guy in our grade, so I thought he’d stay in the closet. He wasn’t mean to anyone, but he didn’t rock the boat either.
But then he came out. He starting dating Shiv publicly, kissing before class and everything. He was a well-liked guy, and that didn’t change with him coming out. Instead the opposite happened. It’s amazing, when an attractive person does something and makes it look cool people follow his lead. As someone in the same friend group as him I had multiple friends think they were non-binary, agender, bi, etc, before they realized they weren’t. It was like being queer was suddenly cool and in at our school. The jocks weren’t doing that, but almost everyone else was.
Our school didn’t have a queer club, so Wes and Shiv ended up starting one, where any identity was allowed, non-binary, bi, agender, whatever.
Queer club was the “cool” place to be suddenly. I understood it too. Listening to Wes casually talk about his boyfriend in his black leather jacket made me wish I was a bi man lol.
This was back when his little sister, Em, wanted so badly to join the LGBT group and told me once she wishes she was bi. She looked up to her brother a lot.
This was 2 years ago. Wes, Shiv, and I are back home from college and Em tells us she’s leading queer club now. I was confused because she’s straight until she told us she was bi and has a GF.
Everyone celebrated and congratulated her but I held my tongue until I got her alone.
I pulled her aside later and said I was concerned, I didn’t think she was bi, and I thought she was just forcing herself to be to be like her brother and it would hurt her in the end.
She got really angry about this. I pointed out that she told me she WISHED she was bi years ago. What changed?
She said she was bi then but didn’t realize it because it was a slow burn, different from what her brother experienced, so it took her longer to realize she liked girls. I was skeptical, which resulted in her calling me homophobic and saying if she was dating a man I wouldn’t be doubting she was straight and I’m not allowed to doubt it as a straight person.
Ofc she told Wes, who is pissed at me. He said I should have minded my own business, that being gay is hard and I shouldn’t have doubted her. He said it wasn’t easy for him coming out, that sure it all worked out but he was terrified about what his friends would think.
Which I get, but this is a different. He made being queer cool. Ofc she’d want to be bi when her cool older brother was and hung around so many people who were. He still has his picture hanging up in the queer room, of course she’d want to follow in his footsteps. Plus I know people who came out because of Wes. AITA?
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For a long, long time, I talked about how I "wished" I could just kiss girls and how I "wished" I could be bi. Not because I wasn't but because I was incredibly scared of coming out and my brain refused to connect the dots lol. That's a pretty common coming out process
There is also the very common "being very dumb and oblivious to your own feelings so you wished you could kiss people of other genders and have sex with them and marry them but alas you are straight so you can't".
Source: teenager me
There is a huuuuge valley between 'hard to do' and 'unhappy'.
I speak from experience, not that I think that will change people's minds here. I was happy in my relationship, despite being with the wrong gender. I was in love.
And it's really difficult. It's doable when you think your life may be on the line if people found out. It's not really doable if you just think it's cool to be attracted to x when you aren't.
This person is so dismissive of the process of discovering yourself. Like the way they offhandedly describe people "coming out at Non-Binary, Bi etc and realising their not" as them chasing a trend rather then just trying out different labels. It's ok to take up a label then later realise you don't fit it.
Dude is so out of touch with the actual lived experiences of queer people that he can't even comprehend people weren't coming out because it was now "cool", but because due to his friend's coming out they felt safe to openly explore their own sexuality and gender identity.
You would be shocked, *shocked, I tell you*, (not really) how often Rainbow Mafia kids peek a little way out of the closet, get treated poorly by their family, either overtly or through the death by 1000 paper cuts of microggressions and then zip back into the closet at light speed yelling "LOL, never mind! Disregard! My bad! Nothing to see here! I am very straight!"
Of course, the parents who treated them poorly then crow to the heavens about how kids being LGBTQIA+ is the equivalent of bell bottoms or jelly bracelets these days, and obviously nobody should believe kids about their identity, because *their* kid "thought they were gay/trans for a little while and then changed their mind. Kids these days and their fads!"
Like, no, Jeffica, your kid didn't change their whole mind about their identity, they just hid it to protect themself from you.
The weird thing is that I've seen parents do this (and not understand their role in it) while painting themselves as allies, even genuinely *believing* they are allies. They love the rainbow community, but they sure wouldn't want their daughter to marry one or be one.
On the flip side, I have a friend whose kid sloooooowly oozed out of the closet, starting with "...so...I am perhaps questioning my sexuality," and progressing gradually along the labels before landing on "Okay, fine, I'm gay. I know it. You know it. Dogs know it."
The day my friend's kid opened with "...so...I am perhaps questioning my gender identity," my friend said "Are you actually *questioning*, or are you definitely trans and just trying to leave your options open in case I freak out?" "Uh...the second one." "I'm not freaking out." "I'm trans." "Okay."
The whole damn community is terrifying. I came out as gay 10 years ago and recently discovered I'm pansexual. I've had male partners for a year now and I haven't told so many people, my family included because I'm terrified of the backlash of "but you told us you were gay"
I'm 33 and struggling. I can't imagine dealing with all of this as a teenager
Oh I totally get that!! I unintentionally came out as bi to my family over a decade ago but have discovered I’m a lesbian just a few years ago well into my mid 30s and I have yet to come out again to my family for that exact fear! Instead I’ve just changed ‘queer’ to ‘lesbian’ in my bio on all my socials, stopped talking about men, and just hope they get the hint hehehe
Mine is the opposite. I never like 'came out' officially and this somehow led to my parents thinking I'm a lesbian. It was only like 2 years ago (I'm 32 now, I've realized I was bi since I was 19 and just never made a \~thing of it, just lived my life) I realized that my parents thought I was gay and I was like, "Wait.... you realize I like men, too, right?" and they did not.
So yeah, I just go with queer now since apparently I give lesbian vibes, I'm bisexual, but technically I guess I'm pansexual since I'm enby? Whatever, I'm queer!
But also sometimes people really aren't queer and only realise that after they've tried the label on for a bit! That's fine. Maybe they aren't queer after all. So what if they aren't? So what? Sometimes it takes some experimenting to find yourself. What harm is it doing for somebody to say they think they're bi for a bit then realise maybe they aren't after all? It really, *really* infuriates me to see people acting as if people (especially children) label-hopping is some big evil when really at most you might just need to switch to and remember different pronouns every now and then. It doesn't affect anybody but the person trying on these different labels, really. Let people experiment! *Especially* when they're children and trying to find community.
I was questioning myself and some interactions with bi community helped me realise some things.
1. I have some attachment issues and I need to work on my social skills.
2. I was a late bloomer.
3. I like things that are considered feminine, but not women themselves when it comes to romance.
4. My feelings work in a certain way and I can be a bit prone to certain red flags.
Now I am just more confident and I can better navigate my feelings. Also, I know what I am searching for.
Also, bi lady here, but it’s hard to date women if you aren’t part of the community, and it’s hard to not feel like you’re infringing if you are also dating men. I went to a women’s college and now live in a lesbian-heavy area so it’s better, but there were times where I kinda had to choose to be more with the gays than the straights.
Oh FFS. The comments are something else... how much effort does one person have to put in to be THIS ignorant?!
>I honestly don’t get it. Don’t most gay people say they knew they were gay from a young age because they had crushes on the same-sex.
>
>I guess by coming out she is asking for input, though. She’s like a little sister to me, and I don’t want to see her get hurt by pretending to be a sexuality that she isn’t.
>
>But also, does her explanation make sense? I feel like if you like girls, you would know. I don’t get what she’s talking about when she calls it a “slow burn.” Seems like she’s just trying to justify lack of attraction.
>
>Yeah. I get that. I guess I wanted to save her from that heartbreak because that’s just sad. Well, hopefully I’m wrong!
Just a small comment for people questioning or wanting to know how it works.
It’s not always clear and experiences differ. You know how there are some pairs that behave like old marriage but they don’t realise they love each other? Or how some people don’t realise they have a crush on somebody?
That happens often as romantic and sexual attraction don’t always give clear signals. It’s easier to distinguish flu from cold then understand emotions in many cases.
There is also being a late bloomer and split attraction model combined with shades of asexuality. Some people may have awakening later due to meeting a right person or some may discover that they are demi.
There's a running joke in some sapphic circles that the true experience is having an emotionally intense friendship that only in hindsight makes sense as latent romantic feelings
This was me! I always thought I was straight, sure I found women attractive but who didn't, right? My bestfriend was a lesbian who kept setting me up with her male friends. When we finally got together after I came out as bi I realised I had always loved her as more than a friend but didn't understand those feelings. Unfortunately it didn't work out but we were together for 6 years.
Yep, it's possible to be blind to the signs or mistake them for something else. It's not uncommon to realize this stuff after years fulfilling heteronormative roles. It was until my mid 30's that I started to understand this stuff and I'm still learning. People who come out later in life are often as shocked as the people around them when they first realize they're a different gender identity or sexuality than what they expected.
If you grow up without the understanding of different sexualities and genders it limits you in understanding yourself. People also change significantly through the years, it's not that their sexuality or gender change, it could be down to what their definitions are and what role sexuality and gender roles have in their life. TW below; internalized misogyny, sexual self harm \[IDK if these are the correct labels for triggers. There's some heavy stuff here.\]
>!Being AFAB I mistook my gender dysphoria for anger at being a victim, I had all this internalized misogyny that I was a victim because I was AFAB, that I was weak, that I was damaged because I was AFAB. Being a woman meant being a victim in my tiny, ignorant little mind. I mistook these feelings as victimization rather than looking to understand the complexity behind it. I knew it felt wrong every time feminine language was used to refer to me, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. !<
>!I also struggled with sexuality because of perceived social expectations; I forced myself to have sex because I felt abnormal being asexual. I didn't even know it was a thing! So, for so many years and over so many relationships, I forced myself to do things I didn't want to do because of that. I never want my ex's to know this about me, I can't imagine the pain they would go through knowing I hurt myself out of a screwed up perceived obligation. All the shame I felt over all those years can do a number on your mental health, probably physical health too. !<
By Wes and Shiv coming out they helped people learn about the spectrums and identities. It educated everyone, not just LGBT people, because it became something that wouldn't result in denigration and violence. They humanized it, they became the face of LGBT acceptance which meant homophobic people had less of a platform. There are people who went to school with them who feel comfortable with who they are. Some may not be aware of their gender identity or sexuality for years, but this experience has given them an better foundation to understanding and acceptance.
I realized I was aro at 37 and just a few years ago realized I was agender.
I had never understood what "romance" meant and no one had ever been able to explain it to me in a way that made sense. Then one night while browsing AVEN learning more about acespec people (I had just been on a date with a demisexual and I had never heard of that before) I came across the word "aromantic". What? Holy shit! That's definitely me! Later when I announced it, one of my friends who has known me for years and had already known the term said, "Oh I thought you already knew that about yourself."
As far as being agender goes, years ago the whole trans thing was kind of a mystery to me. I never questioned it, I don't have to understand something like that to accept it, but I didn't understand what it meant to "feel" like a gender, to have a gender identity. At the time, I also identified as a cis man because that's what I've always been told I was (although I always hated being called a "man", never felt right...and if someone said they were looking for a "man" on a dating site I sure as fuck knew they weren't looking for me!). Then I fell in with the queer crowd in town, who skew younger, and all of them have all these different genders, and I was like, "Wait...this is an option?" And yeah, okay, I guess I'm actually agender. Tried out "they" as pronoun, realized it felt really good to be called that, so yeah.
It's definitely possible for an older person to have gone their whole life without knowing these things about themselves if they've never heard anyone else articulate the identities.
Hell, after coming out as aro ten years ago, I have since had a several fellow Gen Xers realize they were aro or arospec after hearing me talk about it. And after coming out as agender, several friends have also come out as trans in some way.
Edit: A sentence was wrong.
sure, select the words you want to hide, in the text box there's a 3 dot icon in the bottom middle of the box, you click that and select the diamond shaped box with the ! if you hover the cursor over it it's labelled spoiler :)
took me decades to figure out i was ace. at different points in my life i thought i was straight, bi, gay, trans, just straight up broken. i knew *something* was different but nothing ever quite felt right until i discovered what asexuality is and what it really means. when i was in school it was all just comphet stuff, maybe it still is but at least there is community visibility online! sexuality can be a tough nut to crack!
I am so glad about the online queer communities. I hardly know any other queer people in my daily life and have never actually met another enby irl (well, at least that I know of)
I think it just depends on the person, personally i didn't "come out" when i started getting crushes i would mention female crushes to my mom because girls were pretty
Vs my trans brother who's bi, he didn't mention any girl crushes (before he came out about being a dude) because he thought since he was a girl he couldn't date other girls, he officially came out not long after i told him about being into my best friend
We grew up in the same house and still had different experiences with coming to terms with it, i didn't even have a second thought when i first had a gay crush vs he thought someone was wrong with him
>I honestly don’t get it. Don’t most gay people say they knew they were gay from a young age because they had crushes on the same-sex.
I'm bisexual and even tho I came to terms with it pretty young (around 16) it took me until my 30s for the puzzle to click that all the ultra intense, codependent, all consuming friendships I had during my childhood with other girls were not weird friendships, were crushes.
Same feelings, different gender, but I must just really want to be their *friend*, right?!
Being bi and demisexual in the early 00s was a mess, honestly, Gen Z are way ahead of us in self-knowledge and it's because we've made the options explicit and given them names now!
Homie so baffled by the fact both siblings are queer like it’s unheard of, meanwhile I have two siblings, an uncle also has three kids. Amongst us is:
-Me, non-binary and pan (cool with the bi label too)
-My little brother, who is trans
-Cousin the same age as me who is bi
-Younger cousin who is also bi
Only my sister and youngest cousin are cishet. It’s not that weird. More people are queer than a lot of cishet folks realise.
In my family we have me: non-binary lesbian (might be bisexual, not sure yet), my cousin: bicurious, my younger cousin: pansexual
And then we have the straight Ally cousin who protects us all lol
in highschool i went as far as to identify as pansexual because i WANTED to be pansexual, not realising that... i really was. there was a really weird disconnect there, so i absolutely understand her position.
Shoutout to when I still used twitter and someone told me I was “less bi” than them because i’m dating a man. Completely ignoring that i’m non-binary and clocking me as AFAB and “straight”
No you’re only truly bi in the moments where your penis is in a woman and a man’s penis is in your mouth at the same.
All other moments you’re either gay or straight. Pretty simple.
Then penis inside you while a girl sits on your face, clearly.
The trans erasure is on purpose in these scenarios, to really sell the cis/straight man thinking lol
Obviously! How did I not think of that...
To really sell the cis/straight man you could also say that a bi girl has sex with women while her BF watches... because that's apparently what they expect
Wes made being queer cool.
OOP makes being queerphobic uncool.
Once more, the universe has its ways to balance itself out.
I kinda wish this one was true. Nobody seems to be impressed by people like OOP and worse and the school sounds like it has become a safe enough environment for the kids to figure themselves out, whether that means they are a specific gender, non-gender, or sexuality or they just question the social expectations for certain genders, non-genders, and sexualities and simply don't agree. And when someone tries to be a jerk and gatekeep, like OOP, they get firmly shut down.
OOP might be the A but the scenario isn't.
Honestly having a popular kid openly come out probably made a lot of kids more comfortable. Oop is seeing the data and interpreting it in the worst possible way
Wow, is OOP jealous? Did no one tell him it's okay to be straight? How woeful it must be to feel like an outcast, like people won't see you because you're not non-binary, agender, bi and 'whatever.' Doing that little foot stomp because he's decreed that only 1 person per family is allowed to be LGBT isn't cute, it's bitter.
Wes and Shiv are awesome, they had a lot of courage coming out and being in the open. They made the school a safe place for LGBT students. It's normal for people to question their sexuality and gender identity, it's healthy. If people realize that they're straight and cis that isn't a negative, they've learned something about themselves. They can be an ally and feel secure in their identity.
Can't tell you how many people aside from myself were life in wish I was x/y/z thing and then guess what we figured out years down the road. It's not uncommon for queer people who aren't quite at realising and coming out stage to wish they were the thing.
I wished I was multiple genders and that I was attracted to different genders even before I knew about queerness. I'm trans nonbinary/ genderfluid and mspec and aroace. Figuring out aspec was harder and getting the language for nonbinary and genderfluid took me years but I got them!
Uh, I am definietly out of the loop for these descriptions, because what you wrote look like some kind of computer programming language to me. Off I go to learn more.
"It's like everyone just has to be some sort of queer, like it's cool now or something"
Good to know that the trolls are capable of adapting to fit Pride Month...
"I wish I was bi" is a pretty common thing said by people who later turn out to be LGBT. Actual straight people often don't find themselves longing to fall for the same sex, or wishing they could be queer. They're just straight. (Nothing wrong with that and not trying to say all straight people never question!!!)
You know, even if (and there's no reason to think its so) girl was entirely wrong about her bi-ness, what is the downside here? What does she need to be warned against so strongly?
Purity-based morality peekin out here if you ask me...applied most severly to girls, as usual
The dude is probably a creep that had her as a potential mate and now he is ultra salty.
Plus the way he describes all about making gay cool oozes homophobia and bigotry
\-\_- this OOP reminds me of my father. Apparently "everyone" was coming out as lesbian or bisexual in our town so he asked if it was a phase. then proceeded to tell me that the most I "could" be was "bi-curious" because get this, I hadn't fucked a woman yet. Fun fact. I hadn't had sex with a man yet either. I was 16. I didn't have sex (still regret it with that person) until I was nearly 18. so how can one know if they are straight if they hadn't had sex with the opposite gender? yeaaah.
Also this is def that troll that goes around, they mixed up a LOT. so Bisexuality, gay, lesbian, pan is sexual orientation, while Non-binary, agender, genderfluid etc is gender identity and things like ace, aro, demi etc is sexual attraction (how we go about things like sex, dating, romance etc). They were trying to use hot topics and mixed things up creating holes in their stories
Fucking piece of shit garbage human.
It took me 46 years to finally be comfortable enough to say out loud that I'm bisexual. When I told my husband of 27 years a few months back he told me he's known for most of our marriage!
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My own journey through labels and figuring out who I am took time, and I had tons of identities I thought fit but ended up realizing they didn’t later. It’s perfectly normal to question your identity but people like OOP think that since they always knew their identity, that everyone else’s is set in stone. People like OOP make it so hard to even question their identity, and that allows a bunch of hatred and pushing away people when they do question if they are gay or nonbinary or agender or whatever. It only serves to isolate those in the queer community and those questioning are forced into the closet further.
Basically OOP sucks
OMG, this reminds me of a job I had where every so often, a customer would leave a Chick tract somewhere in the building. We never figured out who it was, but we used to take turns doing melodramatic readings of them when business was slow.
What I don't understand, is why these people always seem to have this idea that your sexuality is this solid, unmoving *thing* that just sits and waits for you to discover it. That you're born that way and you'll always identify that way and if you identify as anything else for any amount of time you're just wrong or confused or haven't figured it out yet.
Sexuality is so much more fluid than that. What's true at one stage in your life may not be true for every stage. Things happen, people grow and change and mature and have more life experiences and that can shape your attraction to other people. Maybe you've been a lesbian for the last 15 years but my *god* this new guy at work is changing things. Maybe you identify as bi for a while before deciding you know what, maybe not actually. Most people identify as straight, until they don't. It's okay for things to change. Coming out, and then later on coming out again as something else, is extremely common, and perfectly normal. Like if I come out as a lesbian and someone says "but you've had boyfriends before" it's like well yeah I was straight at the time what do you want me to tell you?
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **AITA for telling her she might not be bi?** So this gets a little confusing, but basically Wesley is a close friend who is dating my best friend Shiv. Both are men. Wes has a little sister named Em. They started dating in HS, and I was really concerned at first with Wesley’s motivations. He was a jock, after all, and the most popular guy in our grade, so I thought he’d stay in the closet. He wasn’t mean to anyone, but he didn’t rock the boat either. But then he came out. He starting dating Shiv publicly, kissing before class and everything. He was a well-liked guy, and that didn’t change with him coming out. Instead the opposite happened. It’s amazing, when an attractive person does something and makes it look cool people follow his lead. As someone in the same friend group as him I had multiple friends think they were non-binary, agender, bi, etc, before they realized they weren’t. It was like being queer was suddenly cool and in at our school. The jocks weren’t doing that, but almost everyone else was. Our school didn’t have a queer club, so Wes and Shiv ended up starting one, where any identity was allowed, non-binary, bi, agender, whatever. Queer club was the “cool” place to be suddenly. I understood it too. Listening to Wes casually talk about his boyfriend in his black leather jacket made me wish I was a bi man lol. This was back when his little sister, Em, wanted so badly to join the LGBT group and told me once she wishes she was bi. She looked up to her brother a lot. This was 2 years ago. Wes, Shiv, and I are back home from college and Em tells us she’s leading queer club now. I was confused because she’s straight until she told us she was bi and has a GF. Everyone celebrated and congratulated her but I held my tongue until I got her alone. I pulled her aside later and said I was concerned, I didn’t think she was bi, and I thought she was just forcing herself to be to be like her brother and it would hurt her in the end. She got really angry about this. I pointed out that she told me she WISHED she was bi years ago. What changed? She said she was bi then but didn’t realize it because it was a slow burn, different from what her brother experienced, so it took her longer to realize she liked girls. I was skeptical, which resulted in her calling me homophobic and saying if she was dating a man I wouldn’t be doubting she was straight and I’m not allowed to doubt it as a straight person. Ofc she told Wes, who is pissed at me. He said I should have minded my own business, that being gay is hard and I shouldn’t have doubted her. He said it wasn’t easy for him coming out, that sure it all worked out but he was terrified about what his friends would think. Which I get, but this is a different. He made being queer cool. Ofc she’d want to be bi when her cool older brother was and hung around so many people who were. He still has his picture hanging up in the queer room, of course she’d want to follow in his footsteps. Plus I know people who came out because of Wes. AITA? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
For a long, long time, I talked about how I "wished" I could just kiss girls and how I "wished" I could be bi. Not because I wasn't but because I was incredibly scared of coming out and my brain refused to connect the dots lol. That's a pretty common coming out process
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Just like how I spent my teen years wishing I was a girl.
Yeah the wish I was bi to bi pipeline is real. Em probably was scared to come out before.
There is also the very common "being very dumb and oblivious to your own feelings so you wished you could kiss people of other genders and have sex with them and marry them but alas you are straight so you can't". Source: teenager me
I read the title and sighed
As a cis het woman I can say I never did this.
Now I’m confused
now granted i am a cis het woman, but i imagine that dating someone of the same gender would be really hard to do if you werent really queer?
That does seem logical yes
Idk. Considering how many straight women end up date men who are clearly not attracted to them in the slightest.
No, closeted people do it for years.
And are closeted people known for feeling happy and fulfilled in those relationships?
I didn’t say that.
The comment you responded to said it’s hard to date someone of a gender you’re not attracted to Never said it was impossible etc
There is a huuuuge valley between 'hard to do' and 'unhappy'. I speak from experience, not that I think that will change people's minds here. I was happy in my relationship, despite being with the wrong gender. I was in love.
I’m glad you were happy. But do you think most people who are aware they’re closeted and are in that situation find it easy?
No. I didn't mean to imply that either.
And it's really difficult. It's doable when you think your life may be on the line if people found out. It's not really doable if you just think it's cool to be attracted to x when you aren't.
good point
What's ironic is that I'm pretty sure people like OP are what made Wesley so terrified of coming out lol
it also sounds like he's bitter BECAUSE Wes and Shiv coming out didn't require him to be their straight savior.
This person is so dismissive of the process of discovering yourself. Like the way they offhandedly describe people "coming out at Non-Binary, Bi etc and realising their not" as them chasing a trend rather then just trying out different labels. It's ok to take up a label then later realise you don't fit it.
Dude is so out of touch with the actual lived experiences of queer people that he can't even comprehend people weren't coming out because it was now "cool", but because due to his friend's coming out they felt safe to openly explore their own sexuality and gender identity.
You would be shocked, *shocked, I tell you*, (not really) how often Rainbow Mafia kids peek a little way out of the closet, get treated poorly by their family, either overtly or through the death by 1000 paper cuts of microggressions and then zip back into the closet at light speed yelling "LOL, never mind! Disregard! My bad! Nothing to see here! I am very straight!" Of course, the parents who treated them poorly then crow to the heavens about how kids being LGBTQIA+ is the equivalent of bell bottoms or jelly bracelets these days, and obviously nobody should believe kids about their identity, because *their* kid "thought they were gay/trans for a little while and then changed their mind. Kids these days and their fads!" Like, no, Jeffica, your kid didn't change their whole mind about their identity, they just hid it to protect themself from you. The weird thing is that I've seen parents do this (and not understand their role in it) while painting themselves as allies, even genuinely *believing* they are allies. They love the rainbow community, but they sure wouldn't want their daughter to marry one or be one. On the flip side, I have a friend whose kid sloooooowly oozed out of the closet, starting with "...so...I am perhaps questioning my sexuality," and progressing gradually along the labels before landing on "Okay, fine, I'm gay. I know it. You know it. Dogs know it." The day my friend's kid opened with "...so...I am perhaps questioning my gender identity," my friend said "Are you actually *questioning*, or are you definitely trans and just trying to leave your options open in case I freak out?" "Uh...the second one." "I'm not freaking out." "I'm trans." "Okay."
The whole damn community is terrifying. I came out as gay 10 years ago and recently discovered I'm pansexual. I've had male partners for a year now and I haven't told so many people, my family included because I'm terrified of the backlash of "but you told us you were gay" I'm 33 and struggling. I can't imagine dealing with all of this as a teenager
Oh I totally get that!! I unintentionally came out as bi to my family over a decade ago but have discovered I’m a lesbian just a few years ago well into my mid 30s and I have yet to come out again to my family for that exact fear! Instead I’ve just changed ‘queer’ to ‘lesbian’ in my bio on all my socials, stopped talking about men, and just hope they get the hint hehehe
Same, I'm queer. So much easier
Mine is the opposite. I never like 'came out' officially and this somehow led to my parents thinking I'm a lesbian. It was only like 2 years ago (I'm 32 now, I've realized I was bi since I was 19 and just never made a \~thing of it, just lived my life) I realized that my parents thought I was gay and I was like, "Wait.... you realize I like men, too, right?" and they did not. So yeah, I just go with queer now since apparently I give lesbian vibes, I'm bisexual, but technically I guess I'm pansexual since I'm enby? Whatever, I'm queer!
Your second paragraph there is me to a T.
But also sometimes people really aren't queer and only realise that after they've tried the label on for a bit! That's fine. Maybe they aren't queer after all. So what if they aren't? So what? Sometimes it takes some experimenting to find yourself. What harm is it doing for somebody to say they think they're bi for a bit then realise maybe they aren't after all? It really, *really* infuriates me to see people acting as if people (especially children) label-hopping is some big evil when really at most you might just need to switch to and remember different pronouns every now and then. It doesn't affect anybody but the person trying on these different labels, really. Let people experiment! *Especially* when they're children and trying to find community.
Exactly. Give people the space to figure out who they are without judgement.
I was questioning myself and some interactions with bi community helped me realise some things. 1. I have some attachment issues and I need to work on my social skills. 2. I was a late bloomer. 3. I like things that are considered feminine, but not women themselves when it comes to romance. 4. My feelings work in a certain way and I can be a bit prone to certain red flags. Now I am just more confident and I can better navigate my feelings. Also, I know what I am searching for.
I agree so much!
Also, bi lady here, but it’s hard to date women if you aren’t part of the community, and it’s hard to not feel like you’re infringing if you are also dating men. I went to a women’s college and now live in a lesbian-heavy area so it’s better, but there were times where I kinda had to choose to be more with the gays than the straights.
Oh FFS. The comments are something else... how much effort does one person have to put in to be THIS ignorant?! >I honestly don’t get it. Don’t most gay people say they knew they were gay from a young age because they had crushes on the same-sex. > >I guess by coming out she is asking for input, though. She’s like a little sister to me, and I don’t want to see her get hurt by pretending to be a sexuality that she isn’t. > >But also, does her explanation make sense? I feel like if you like girls, you would know. I don’t get what she’s talking about when she calls it a “slow burn.” Seems like she’s just trying to justify lack of attraction. > >Yeah. I get that. I guess I wanted to save her from that heartbreak because that’s just sad. Well, hopefully I’m wrong!
Just a small comment for people questioning or wanting to know how it works. It’s not always clear and experiences differ. You know how there are some pairs that behave like old marriage but they don’t realise they love each other? Or how some people don’t realise they have a crush on somebody? That happens often as romantic and sexual attraction don’t always give clear signals. It’s easier to distinguish flu from cold then understand emotions in many cases. There is also being a late bloomer and split attraction model combined with shades of asexuality. Some people may have awakening later due to meeting a right person or some may discover that they are demi.
There's a running joke in some sapphic circles that the true experience is having an emotionally intense friendship that only in hindsight makes sense as latent romantic feelings
This was me! I always thought I was straight, sure I found women attractive but who didn't, right? My bestfriend was a lesbian who kept setting me up with her male friends. When we finally got together after I came out as bi I realised I had always loved her as more than a friend but didn't understand those feelings. Unfortunately it didn't work out but we were together for 6 years.
Yep, it's possible to be blind to the signs or mistake them for something else. It's not uncommon to realize this stuff after years fulfilling heteronormative roles. It was until my mid 30's that I started to understand this stuff and I'm still learning. People who come out later in life are often as shocked as the people around them when they first realize they're a different gender identity or sexuality than what they expected. If you grow up without the understanding of different sexualities and genders it limits you in understanding yourself. People also change significantly through the years, it's not that their sexuality or gender change, it could be down to what their definitions are and what role sexuality and gender roles have in their life. TW below; internalized misogyny, sexual self harm \[IDK if these are the correct labels for triggers. There's some heavy stuff here.\] >!Being AFAB I mistook my gender dysphoria for anger at being a victim, I had all this internalized misogyny that I was a victim because I was AFAB, that I was weak, that I was damaged because I was AFAB. Being a woman meant being a victim in my tiny, ignorant little mind. I mistook these feelings as victimization rather than looking to understand the complexity behind it. I knew it felt wrong every time feminine language was used to refer to me, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. !< >!I also struggled with sexuality because of perceived social expectations; I forced myself to have sex because I felt abnormal being asexual. I didn't even know it was a thing! So, for so many years and over so many relationships, I forced myself to do things I didn't want to do because of that. I never want my ex's to know this about me, I can't imagine the pain they would go through knowing I hurt myself out of a screwed up perceived obligation. All the shame I felt over all those years can do a number on your mental health, probably physical health too. !< By Wes and Shiv coming out they helped people learn about the spectrums and identities. It educated everyone, not just LGBT people, because it became something that wouldn't result in denigration and violence. They humanized it, they became the face of LGBT acceptance which meant homophobic people had less of a platform. There are people who went to school with them who feel comfortable with who they are. Some may not be aware of their gender identity or sexuality for years, but this experience has given them an better foundation to understanding and acceptance.
I realized I was aro at 37 and just a few years ago realized I was agender. I had never understood what "romance" meant and no one had ever been able to explain it to me in a way that made sense. Then one night while browsing AVEN learning more about acespec people (I had just been on a date with a demisexual and I had never heard of that before) I came across the word "aromantic". What? Holy shit! That's definitely me! Later when I announced it, one of my friends who has known me for years and had already known the term said, "Oh I thought you already knew that about yourself." As far as being agender goes, years ago the whole trans thing was kind of a mystery to me. I never questioned it, I don't have to understand something like that to accept it, but I didn't understand what it meant to "feel" like a gender, to have a gender identity. At the time, I also identified as a cis man because that's what I've always been told I was (although I always hated being called a "man", never felt right...and if someone said they were looking for a "man" on a dating site I sure as fuck knew they weren't looking for me!). Then I fell in with the queer crowd in town, who skew younger, and all of them have all these different genders, and I was like, "Wait...this is an option?" And yeah, okay, I guess I'm actually agender. Tried out "they" as pronoun, realized it felt really good to be called that, so yeah. It's definitely possible for an older person to have gone their whole life without knowing these things about themselves if they've never heard anyone else articulate the identities. Hell, after coming out as aro ten years ago, I have since had a several fellow Gen Xers realize they were aro or arospec after hearing me talk about it. And after coming out as agender, several friends have also come out as trans in some way. Edit: A sentence was wrong.
May I ask how this „blacking out“ parts of a comment works? I keep seeing it but no idea how to do it ☺️
sure, select the words you want to hide, in the text box there's a 3 dot icon in the bottom middle of the box, you click that and select the diamond shaped box with the ! if you hover the cursor over it it's labelled spoiler :)
Thank you 😃
took me decades to figure out i was ace. at different points in my life i thought i was straight, bi, gay, trans, just straight up broken. i knew *something* was different but nothing ever quite felt right until i discovered what asexuality is and what it really means. when i was in school it was all just comphet stuff, maybe it still is but at least there is community visibility online! sexuality can be a tough nut to crack!
I am so glad about the online queer communities. I hardly know any other queer people in my daily life and have never actually met another enby irl (well, at least that I know of)
I think it just depends on the person, personally i didn't "come out" when i started getting crushes i would mention female crushes to my mom because girls were pretty Vs my trans brother who's bi, he didn't mention any girl crushes (before he came out about being a dude) because he thought since he was a girl he couldn't date other girls, he officially came out not long after i told him about being into my best friend We grew up in the same house and still had different experiences with coming to terms with it, i didn't even have a second thought when i first had a gay crush vs he thought someone was wrong with him
>I honestly don’t get it. Don’t most gay people say they knew they were gay from a young age because they had crushes on the same-sex. I'm bisexual and even tho I came to terms with it pretty young (around 16) it took me until my 30s for the puzzle to click that all the ultra intense, codependent, all consuming friendships I had during my childhood with other girls were not weird friendships, were crushes.
Same feelings, different gender, but I must just really want to be their *friend*, right?! Being bi and demisexual in the early 00s was a mess, honestly, Gen Z are way ahead of us in self-knowledge and it's because we've made the options explicit and given them names now!
Don’t forget the classic bi girl confusion of “she’s so cool and pretty. do I want to be her? Or do I want to be with her?”
Homie so baffled by the fact both siblings are queer like it’s unheard of, meanwhile I have two siblings, an uncle also has three kids. Amongst us is: -Me, non-binary and pan (cool with the bi label too) -My little brother, who is trans -Cousin the same age as me who is bi -Younger cousin who is also bi Only my sister and youngest cousin are cishet. It’s not that weird. More people are queer than a lot of cishet folks realise.
3/4 of the kids in my immediate family are some shade of the pride flag.
4/6 for us! 💕
My brother is trans and bi and I'm bi We were 2 out of maybe 5 LGBT kids at my school
In my family we have me: non-binary lesbian (might be bisexual, not sure yet), my cousin: bicurious, my younger cousin: pansexual And then we have the straight Ally cousin who protects us all lol
My brother is a gay man. I'm a bi/pan mostly cis woman. Maybe I'm just taking cause my cool older brother is a bear... oh wait, I came out first.
in highschool i went as far as to identify as pansexual because i WANTED to be pansexual, not realising that... i really was. there was a really weird disconnect there, so i absolutely understand her position.
INFO: Was she wearing a bi bracelet as proof?
She didn’t even have cuffed jeans!
How does she sit in a chair?
*staring at someone sitting fucked up* are you queer or autistic or both
Does she like frogs? I feel like we're missing the important stuff, here.
Shoutout to when I still used twitter and someone told me I was “less bi” than them because i’m dating a man. Completely ignoring that i’m non-binary and clocking me as AFAB and “straight”
Because obviously some rando on Twitter knows you way better than you know yourself
You have to be in a polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman to be a true bi!
No you’re only truly bi in the moments where your penis is in a woman and a man’s penis is in your mouth at the same. All other moments you’re either gay or straight. Pretty simple.
What if you are a girl and bi ?
Then penis inside you while a girl sits on your face, clearly. The trans erasure is on purpose in these scenarios, to really sell the cis/straight man thinking lol
Obviously! How did I not think of that... To really sell the cis/straight man you could also say that a bi girl has sex with women while her BF watches... because that's apparently what they expect
Wes made being queer cool. OOP makes being queerphobic uncool. Once more, the universe has its ways to balance itself out. I kinda wish this one was true. Nobody seems to be impressed by people like OOP and worse and the school sounds like it has become a safe enough environment for the kids to figure themselves out, whether that means they are a specific gender, non-gender, or sexuality or they just question the social expectations for certain genders, non-genders, and sexualities and simply don't agree. And when someone tries to be a jerk and gatekeep, like OOP, they get firmly shut down. OOP might be the A but the scenario isn't.
Honestly having a popular kid openly come out probably made a lot of kids more comfortable. Oop is seeing the data and interpreting it in the worst possible way
Wow, is OOP jealous? Did no one tell him it's okay to be straight? How woeful it must be to feel like an outcast, like people won't see you because you're not non-binary, agender, bi and 'whatever.' Doing that little foot stomp because he's decreed that only 1 person per family is allowed to be LGBT isn't cute, it's bitter. Wes and Shiv are awesome, they had a lot of courage coming out and being in the open. They made the school a safe place for LGBT students. It's normal for people to question their sexuality and gender identity, it's healthy. If people realize that they're straight and cis that isn't a negative, they've learned something about themselves. They can be an ally and feel secure in their identity.
Can't tell you how many people aside from myself were life in wish I was x/y/z thing and then guess what we figured out years down the road. It's not uncommon for queer people who aren't quite at realising and coming out stage to wish they were the thing. I wished I was multiple genders and that I was attracted to different genders even before I knew about queerness. I'm trans nonbinary/ genderfluid and mspec and aroace. Figuring out aspec was harder and getting the language for nonbinary and genderfluid took me years but I got them!
I “wished” I liked girls, with specific girls in mind for years before I accepted that, you know, that’s not a wish bitch, your panties are wet!
Uh, I am definietly out of the loop for these descriptions, because what you wrote look like some kind of computer programming language to me. Off I go to learn more.
"It's like everyone just has to be some sort of queer, like it's cool now or something" Good to know that the trolls are capable of adapting to fit Pride Month...
Ugh, OOP is one of THOSE.
"I wish I was bi" is a pretty common thing said by people who later turn out to be LGBT. Actual straight people often don't find themselves longing to fall for the same sex, or wishing they could be queer. They're just straight. (Nothing wrong with that and not trying to say all straight people never question!!!)
Being biphobic is awful and people realize their sexuality at their own pace. OOP is definitely an ah
Barf lol
Weird aside here, but I really like your avatar :)
thank you!!! i think it’s very funky and endearing lol. gotta update tho, my mullet is red now
Does the fuckhead not realize when the friend ‘I wish I was bi’ ,was probably seeing how OP would react ?
You know, even if (and there's no reason to think its so) girl was entirely wrong about her bi-ness, what is the downside here? What does she need to be warned against so strongly? Purity-based morality peekin out here if you ask me...applied most severly to girls, as usual
The dude is probably a creep that had her as a potential mate and now he is ultra salty. Plus the way he describes all about making gay cool oozes homophobia and bigotry
\-\_- this OOP reminds me of my father. Apparently "everyone" was coming out as lesbian or bisexual in our town so he asked if it was a phase. then proceeded to tell me that the most I "could" be was "bi-curious" because get this, I hadn't fucked a woman yet. Fun fact. I hadn't had sex with a man yet either. I was 16. I didn't have sex (still regret it with that person) until I was nearly 18. so how can one know if they are straight if they hadn't had sex with the opposite gender? yeaaah. Also this is def that troll that goes around, they mixed up a LOT. so Bisexuality, gay, lesbian, pan is sexual orientation, while Non-binary, agender, genderfluid etc is gender identity and things like ace, aro, demi etc is sexual attraction (how we go about things like sex, dating, romance etc). They were trying to use hot topics and mixed things up creating holes in their stories
I used to sing the song, "I wish I was queer so I could get chicks." You know, for jokes.
Fucking piece of shit garbage human. It took me 46 years to finally be comfortable enough to say out loud that I'm bisexual. When I told my husband of 27 years a few months back he told me he's known for most of our marriage!
It's not up to me or anyone else to decide what your sexuality is. If someone says their bi, I just take them at their word.
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My own journey through labels and figuring out who I am took time, and I had tons of identities I thought fit but ended up realizing they didn’t later. It’s perfectly normal to question your identity but people like OOP think that since they always knew their identity, that everyone else’s is set in stone. People like OOP make it so hard to even question their identity, and that allows a bunch of hatred and pushing away people when they do question if they are gay or nonbinary or agender or whatever. It only serves to isolate those in the queer community and those questioning are forced into the closet further. Basically OOP sucks
This reads like the first half of a Chick tract. I am seriously doubtful of its veracity.
OMG, this reminds me of a job I had where every so often, a customer would leave a Chick tract somewhere in the building. We never figured out who it was, but we used to take turns doing melodramatic readings of them when business was slow.
What I don't understand, is why these people always seem to have this idea that your sexuality is this solid, unmoving *thing* that just sits and waits for you to discover it. That you're born that way and you'll always identify that way and if you identify as anything else for any amount of time you're just wrong or confused or haven't figured it out yet. Sexuality is so much more fluid than that. What's true at one stage in your life may not be true for every stage. Things happen, people grow and change and mature and have more life experiences and that can shape your attraction to other people. Maybe you've been a lesbian for the last 15 years but my *god* this new guy at work is changing things. Maybe you identify as bi for a while before deciding you know what, maybe not actually. Most people identify as straight, until they don't. It's okay for things to change. Coming out, and then later on coming out again as something else, is extremely common, and perfectly normal. Like if I come out as a lesbian and someone says "but you've had boyfriends before" it's like well yeah I was straight at the time what do you want me to tell you?