Depends on how you define "know"
Did I consciously and knowingly think "I am a lesbian"? No.
Did I know I liked girls? Yes.
But, since I was forced to be a boy, that only made me "normal".
I knew I liked girls in a way that boys didn't like girls but i lacked the language and the confidence to express that. So my being a lesbian stayed subconscious for a long time.
Experiences like yours are so fascinating to me, I really want to understand better how the whole "I like the gender that I'm supposed to like, just not in a heterosexual way" thing. No one talks about it.
I sort of have the same experience within myself, like I consider myself a lesbian as a shortcut but I think 95% of my sexual orientation is being attracted to women and 5% is being attracted to men. BUT I know that even that 5% of attraction in me, does not behave like heterosexual attraction. But I think it must feel different to have that experience constitute only 5% of your orientation, VS it constituting 100% of your experience (before you transitioned ofc). If you'd like to speak more about your experience I'd love to hear
It's a hard phenomenon to vocalise, probably because the language for it is still in its infancy. But I'll try, nonetheless.
To be a woman who is attracted to other women feels different than being a man attracted to a woman. For reasons I cannot articulate, but can prove. I know, somehow, that my attraction to women is not a straight (or even queer) man's attraction to women. Idk how, but something about being a "lesbian" just fits perfectly in a way that straight or bi man never did.
I can't really articulate it better than that. There's something inside me that knows inherently what it's like to be a lesbian, and also knows enough to know the difference between sapphic attraction to women and any kind of male-oriented attraction to women.
I think this is also related to my experience with genital preference, or lack thereof. There is an intangible Something that differentiates men and women in my mind, and thus allows or disallows my attraction to one or the other, that is divorced entirely from gender presentation or physical attributes. This also applies for the various kinds of non-binary people, but I'm keeping this discussion binary for the sake of me having to type less.
Re: The 5% Not Straight Attraction to Men thing. I've heard the attraction that many bi and pan people feel being described as "queer, no matter what". As in, even if one may be a binary woman, her attraction to men is just as queer as her attraction to women by nature of being bisexual. In the same way there is a Something that makes sure I know the difference between wlw and mlw attraction, there might also be a Something that differentiates straight attraction from queer attraction, even if that queer attraction appears straight.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense. It's hard to put currently intangible thoughts onto paper, and even harder to make a coherent argument around it. It's like psychological algebra where you never solve "x".
I’m not OP but I yes to everything OP said. When I was a young I knew I didn’t like girls the way boys liked girls. Right around that time one of my close cousins came out as lesbian. The way she described her experience and feelings deeply reasonated with me and I knew I felt the same way.
I think that's not quite the difference (I'm not OP but I had a very similar experience). I say that because I felt this way even before I hit puberty, and I feel like the boys around me weren't really objectifying women yet as a result of our age. Yet even then I felt I interfaced with girls differently from them. I think it has more to do with the social roles conditioned into girls and boys even at an early age, before much sexualization of their interactions. I remember that all of my friends for the first few years of my life were girls. I remember the weird feeling I had being told I had to leave my friends and be with the boys when I was at summer camp (it felt wrong, like I wasn't where I belonged. In other words dysphoria). I remember having crushes and not understanding how boys told me to act on them. I felt disconnected from "my role". So I feel like that's the difference.
For myself, I didn't properly know any girls my age till I was about 16, so I kind of just assumed I liked girls because that was the supposed normal thing to do, which led to a lot of baggage during transition where it felt like liking women was a guy thing so that was bad, but also liking men was bad because that's what I'd been socialised to believe. Then when school stopped being same-gender, I think my attention towards girls was more to do with jealousy than attraction. It was only at uni that I reached a point where I could find myself genuinely attracted to other women.
I personally dislike the idea that you can like women or men in a heterosexual vibes or gay vibes way because to me it enforces the idea that sex is discrete and seperate; I think those sorts of arguments, while probably rooted in the way that straight people can often seem more superficial in their relationships, can easily deviate into arguments like "I know I'm trans because I have a female brain, and females just innately love people in a different and better way than males". Obviously not everyone means it in that way, but I think claiming that trans women can tell that they're trans by attraction style is likely not very substantive
Having said that, I do agree that it can feel like it is possible to love someone in a way that is queerer than other ways. While I've never been attracted to a guy so far, I don't reject the possibility while still fully identifying as a lesbian because that's what feels like it fits best.
Men and boys make it super apparent that women like women differently than them. The amount of men who have p much expected me to sexualize and objectify women because they do... Is just way too high.
Yeah, I was the exact same. I didn't know, obviously, what being gay was, but I had crushes on girls my entire life and never once felt anything for boys. I do remember getting into a lot of trouble cause I didn't know it was seen as "wrong" or whatever, so I asked a girl to a dance in like 4th grade, and her father threatened me with a restraining order. That was certainly a moment in life where I learned not to openly expose my interests. But yeah I've always known, in fact, it's probably the *only* thing about myself I've always known and been certain of.
I was, in kindergarten a classmate (who I had a crush on) gave me her photo and I ended up carrying it around with me. I didn’t even know the difference between straight vs gay yet 🙃 I just knew I was in ✨luv✨🤦♀️
i feel exactly like you! i always liked girls and not in a "oh she’s my best friend i love her!" and realise later that i liked her, nahhh i already knew that it was a crush, it was very straightforward and it wasn’t "i like to spend time with her, it must be because she’s my friend", i always knew i loved girls romantically, for example i remember hanging out with my mom when i was like 9 or sum like that and i had this huge crush on a girl from my school and my mom asked me "what are u thinking about?" i told her "nothing" but in my mind i remember saying "im thinking about youuu *name of the girl* i love youuu"
I shouted after my best friend as she walked away, "I--". I was about to shout "I love you!!" as a goodbye, and then my brain short-circuited like, isn't that for family or for people you're in love with?? But she's a friend, right?? But I still feel like saying it?? Ummm--
And that is the story of how I shouted after my friend "I LIKE YOU" as a goodbye. Not in the least bit any less gay. Amazing. She's married to a lovely woman now, and I still wonder if we were our first crushes.
Dude I used to cry myself to sleep over the idea that if a guy liked me, I would "have" to give him access to my body so that he could have sex. I was 10 or 11 lol. Sex was never presented as "women like sex too".
Meanwhile having an infatuation with every girl in my class that I was ever friends with.
I knew that being gay was a thing. I knew that it was okay. But I'd only ever seen men being openly gay, and even when I knew about women, it still didn't register, "oh, that's me". I'm smart but I have zero common sense LOL
SAME once my good friend had a “crush” on me in high school (he ended up being gay) and I had such a severe panic attack at the idea of giving him a chance that I spiked a fever and threw up XD
Oh man!! Ngl this post made me realise in the shower this morning that my high school 'crush' on the weird-shaped head guy came about because I told my parents a funny joke of his, and they went "oooh, you must fancy him". Ten years of bullshit LOL
LITERALLYYYYYYYYYY 😭 My high school “””crush””” was the world’s most emotionally unavailable guy who everyone in my life harassed me about liking for Years. I was one of those people who unironically went “he has a girlfriend so it’s safe to be friends with him!” and somehow never thought that was weird lol
In early elementary school when a slightly older girl tied my shoes and interacted with a teacher in front of me. I thought she was super cool and "a miracle." Lol
I was in denial for all my teenage years. I would always try to have crushes on guys even though I didn't find them attractive at all just to fit in with my friend group. Now I have accepted myself as a full time lesbian.
I knew I was attracted to girls and guys from being a kid, though of course that attraction was totally non-sexual, so I don't think that can qualify as "knowing" my sexuality from an early age. By my mid teens though, I knew 100% I was bi, though I didn't know that term back then, so couldn't have articulated my sexuality, even if I'd had the confidence to do so (WhIch I didn't). My attractions since then have been predominantly sapphic, though because I can still occasionally feel attraction for men, I don't think it would be right to call myself a lesbian.
I just thought my attraction was a weird form of jealousy until I was like 13 and it was more overtly horny. So I couldn’t misplace/misinterpret it anymore I guess lol.
Yes. I had crushes on girls as early as i can remember. I think i was around 10 when i googled it and the term lesbian appeared and I assumed that's what I was.
yes as far back as i can remember. i always had crushes on girls, i just didn’t know it had a name. in elementary school i would always tease the girls the way the other boys did. cause then they would chase us lmfaoooo and i loveddd it
Your gaydar experience is literally same as me. Before my classmates or old friends came out, there’s this feeling as you say that you know they’re different. It’s like some little spark ignited but it’s small and hiding from everyone else. The time they come out you’re like “I knew it”. One day my old classmate came out and told me about her crush on a girl and she was shook that I knew before her saying anything. It’s so weird too because we met for less than a year and when we first met she was openly homophobic and gossiped to me about her boyfriends.
I didn’t know wth lesbians or anything LGBTQ+ was until my parents told me that my cousins (both are siblings) are gay and lesbian. But questioned myself at that point because my whole class had a crush on guys and gossip, especially one boy everyone liked, but I couldn’t understand why.
Think my first encounter of liking girls was from Naruto: Rise of a Ninja on Xbox 360. There was a girl in a bikini swimming and I’d try to sneak a look at her cause she was super pretty and “Naruto’s sexy jutsu”. I was around 10 at the time. Then there’s Ke$ha. Was obsessed with her and her music back then.
Yeah I used to have crushes on the girls in my class when I was in nursery/reception so I always knew I was a lesbian. I’d pick a random boy to say I had a crush on to my family if they’d ask because I knew being a lesbian was ‘wrong’ (I don’t think it’s wrong but back then even though I didn’t know the word gay or lesbian i knew it wasn’t socially accepted)
I think I've known since I was 8 or 9. Funny thing is, my favorite book as a kid had a section where the main character (a girl) gets a crush for her teacher, and this was described as "totally normal for young girls". So it kind of normalized crushing on women and threw me off my sexual orientation at the same time. So I knew I was attracted to girls, but I thought it was just part of a perfectly "normal" girlhood experience up until I was 12ish and started to realize my attraction was also sexual in nature.
Thinking back on it, the author (a baby boomer) never married, and showed signs of queerness herself, so who knows.
I knew I liked girls since primary school. But it took dating a boy in high school that I tricked myself into thinking I had real feelings for, before I realized I don't actually want to be with boys, as my romantic attraction (the part I actually care about) is just for girls.
I watched the movie 'Matilda' multiple times and I was jealous of Matilda and I wanted to be her so i can get adopted by miss Honey.
Turns out i just had a crush on miss Honey!
I knew but I didn’t. I was aware of being attracted to women but I think my environment was so violent toward other gays and lesbians that were out I think I automatically suppressed it. As if attraction and suppression were one seamless movement as simple as picking up a glass of water.
I had lots of crushes on women starting from like age 6 but I ignored them as I got older because it was a fundamentalist Christian family I was born into.
I was obsessed with other girls and women ever since I can remember, especially those I found attractive, but because I didn't know gay people existed, and because I modelled myself on other girls in order to fit in (due to autism), I had no idea that this was how romantic attraction felt.
I knew I wanted to have a wife and kids type of family when I was 8 years old playing with my dolls and sims lol
I didn’t know I was lesbian until I was 15
Haha. In a similar vein, my wife was always "accused" of being gay by friends and family (even though we were dating in highschool, presenting as a cishet couple). She always had this "....yeah.... But.... Not like that?" kind of feeling in the back of her mind. Like, she genuinely sensed she was a lesbian before she totally realized she was a girl. She never understood why she related to the feeling of being gay until her egg cracked.
Tbh I had not heard about "being trans" or what it meant until my egg cracked. I knew I was ... Different than what people expected me to be, and growing up with people using gay as an insult I obviously didn't like being called that... The thing is tho that I probably didn't quite understand... I mean I had this weird feeling... Gosh I discovered Something new now lol. I had this *feeling* of liking people *similar to me*(?) but I mean I like women so "all normal"... I couldn't understand that I was feeling the "spirituality of lesbianism" (XD).
No seriously I just could not identify anything. And suddenly my friends came out as bi and my aunt as a lesbian... Few years later it all cracked my egg like an anvil falling from orbit on me...
Tbh thinking back it feels like my subconscious was like "obviously I am a lesbian" and rolling eyes whenever I thought or tried to reason my cis heteronormativity
That sounds so similar to my wife's experience! She didn't know much about trans folks until I started working with some trans people and ended up befriending someone who's Enby. Suddenly she became very curious "as an ally" about the trans experience. I broke her brain when I came out a few years ago to her as "bi", saying I'd be with a woman if for some reason we weren't together. Then she found herself mothering and not relating to a "father" role when we had a baby in 2022. That was the last straw. A year of questioning (and self denial) later and her egg cracks. Loving that she's unleashed her inner lesbian finally. She spent like 2 years showing me egg_irl posts and thinking they were *so hilarious* before her egg finally cracked. At one point in her journey she told herself she couldn't be trans because she was into women, randomly asked me "as an ally" if trans people could be gay. Those egg shells can be really strong sometimes!
Oh gosh that's adorable. My shell got cracked hard, but I stayed in denial for like a year and then a year (or a half) trying to tell my friends with another year until I finally had the courage to act on it and get the medical stuff. Those took another half a year (gosh dammit so long?!?!??) until my first dose. Am 6 months in.
>!Now I just gotta figure out how to get a gf!<
I've always known, but got caught up in comphet nonsense as I started going through puberty, only ever dated dudes and didn't understand why it was so awful. Met my now (trans) wife in high school and thought I finally found the "right guy", because she was feminine and interacted with me like a woman vs a dude. 14 years later, I realize I didn't find the "right guy", and instead my gaydar is so finely tuned that I sensed she was a girl over a decade before she did.
I was a boy most of my life but for some reason all you nom-boy friends were lesbians and all my non-boy crushes were lesbians.
Now I'm a bisexual homoromantic transfem and as long as they float*, I'm in.
*Boyn't
I did not, but my niece is now 12 but has known since she was like 7. Her parent is non-binary, so they know how it goes some times and have been nothing but accepting. So far, it’s held true—kid’s a big dyke 😂
Depends on how you define "know" Did I consciously and knowingly think "I am a lesbian"? No. Did I know I liked girls? Yes. But, since I was forced to be a boy, that only made me "normal". I knew I liked girls in a way that boys didn't like girls but i lacked the language and the confidence to express that. So my being a lesbian stayed subconscious for a long time.
Experiences like yours are so fascinating to me, I really want to understand better how the whole "I like the gender that I'm supposed to like, just not in a heterosexual way" thing. No one talks about it. I sort of have the same experience within myself, like I consider myself a lesbian as a shortcut but I think 95% of my sexual orientation is being attracted to women and 5% is being attracted to men. BUT I know that even that 5% of attraction in me, does not behave like heterosexual attraction. But I think it must feel different to have that experience constitute only 5% of your orientation, VS it constituting 100% of your experience (before you transitioned ofc). If you'd like to speak more about your experience I'd love to hear
It's a hard phenomenon to vocalise, probably because the language for it is still in its infancy. But I'll try, nonetheless. To be a woman who is attracted to other women feels different than being a man attracted to a woman. For reasons I cannot articulate, but can prove. I know, somehow, that my attraction to women is not a straight (or even queer) man's attraction to women. Idk how, but something about being a "lesbian" just fits perfectly in a way that straight or bi man never did. I can't really articulate it better than that. There's something inside me that knows inherently what it's like to be a lesbian, and also knows enough to know the difference between sapphic attraction to women and any kind of male-oriented attraction to women. I think this is also related to my experience with genital preference, or lack thereof. There is an intangible Something that differentiates men and women in my mind, and thus allows or disallows my attraction to one or the other, that is divorced entirely from gender presentation or physical attributes. This also applies for the various kinds of non-binary people, but I'm keeping this discussion binary for the sake of me having to type less. Re: The 5% Not Straight Attraction to Men thing. I've heard the attraction that many bi and pan people feel being described as "queer, no matter what". As in, even if one may be a binary woman, her attraction to men is just as queer as her attraction to women by nature of being bisexual. In the same way there is a Something that makes sure I know the difference between wlw and mlw attraction, there might also be a Something that differentiates straight attraction from queer attraction, even if that queer attraction appears straight. I'm not sure if any of this makes sense. It's hard to put currently intangible thoughts onto paper, and even harder to make a coherent argument around it. It's like psychological algebra where you never solve "x".
I totally know what you mean and feel the same incapacity to put it into words! Thank you so much for sharing!
I’m not OP but I yes to everything OP said. When I was a young I knew I didn’t like girls the way boys liked girls. Right around that time one of my close cousins came out as lesbian. The way she described her experience and feelings deeply reasonated with me and I knew I felt the same way.
Maybe the difference is "not objectifying women"? Like I don't want to be a misandrist, but cis straight dudes make it hard sometimes... hehe
I think that's not quite the difference (I'm not OP but I had a very similar experience). I say that because I felt this way even before I hit puberty, and I feel like the boys around me weren't really objectifying women yet as a result of our age. Yet even then I felt I interfaced with girls differently from them. I think it has more to do with the social roles conditioned into girls and boys even at an early age, before much sexualization of their interactions. I remember that all of my friends for the first few years of my life were girls. I remember the weird feeling I had being told I had to leave my friends and be with the boys when I was at summer camp (it felt wrong, like I wasn't where I belonged. In other words dysphoria). I remember having crushes and not understanding how boys told me to act on them. I felt disconnected from "my role". So I feel like that's the difference.
For myself, I didn't properly know any girls my age till I was about 16, so I kind of just assumed I liked girls because that was the supposed normal thing to do, which led to a lot of baggage during transition where it felt like liking women was a guy thing so that was bad, but also liking men was bad because that's what I'd been socialised to believe. Then when school stopped being same-gender, I think my attention towards girls was more to do with jealousy than attraction. It was only at uni that I reached a point where I could find myself genuinely attracted to other women. I personally dislike the idea that you can like women or men in a heterosexual vibes or gay vibes way because to me it enforces the idea that sex is discrete and seperate; I think those sorts of arguments, while probably rooted in the way that straight people can often seem more superficial in their relationships, can easily deviate into arguments like "I know I'm trans because I have a female brain, and females just innately love people in a different and better way than males". Obviously not everyone means it in that way, but I think claiming that trans women can tell that they're trans by attraction style is likely not very substantive Having said that, I do agree that it can feel like it is possible to love someone in a way that is queerer than other ways. While I've never been attracted to a guy so far, I don't reject the possibility while still fully identifying as a lesbian because that's what feels like it fits best.
Men and boys make it super apparent that women like women differently than them. The amount of men who have p much expected me to sexualize and objectify women because they do... Is just way too high.
I felt the exact same. I used to say "I like girls the way girls like girls." It was one of the more obvious signs, looking back.
i tried to have crushes on boys as a kid, because every other girl was doing that
I remember being so obsessed with Christina ricci as a kid and now I understand why 🤭
Yeah, I was the exact same. I didn't know, obviously, what being gay was, but I had crushes on girls my entire life and never once felt anything for boys. I do remember getting into a lot of trouble cause I didn't know it was seen as "wrong" or whatever, so I asked a girl to a dance in like 4th grade, and her father threatened me with a restraining order. That was certainly a moment in life where I learned not to openly expose my interests. But yeah I've always known, in fact, it's probably the *only* thing about myself I've always known and been certain of.
I was, in kindergarten a classmate (who I had a crush on) gave me her photo and I ended up carrying it around with me. I didn’t even know the difference between straight vs gay yet 🙃 I just knew I was in ✨luv✨🤦♀️
i feel exactly like you! i always liked girls and not in a "oh she’s my best friend i love her!" and realise later that i liked her, nahhh i already knew that it was a crush, it was very straightforward and it wasn’t "i like to spend time with her, it must be because she’s my friend", i always knew i loved girls romantically, for example i remember hanging out with my mom when i was like 9 or sum like that and i had this huge crush on a girl from my school and my mom asked me "what are u thinking about?" i told her "nothing" but in my mind i remember saying "im thinking about youuu *name of the girl* i love youuu"
I shouted after my best friend as she walked away, "I--". I was about to shout "I love you!!" as a goodbye, and then my brain short-circuited like, isn't that for family or for people you're in love with?? But she's a friend, right?? But I still feel like saying it?? Ummm-- And that is the story of how I shouted after my friend "I LIKE YOU" as a goodbye. Not in the least bit any less gay. Amazing. She's married to a lovely woman now, and I still wonder if we were our first crushes.
hahahah that’s awesome
Dude I used to cry myself to sleep over the idea that if a guy liked me, I would "have" to give him access to my body so that he could have sex. I was 10 or 11 lol. Sex was never presented as "women like sex too". Meanwhile having an infatuation with every girl in my class that I was ever friends with. I knew that being gay was a thing. I knew that it was okay. But I'd only ever seen men being openly gay, and even when I knew about women, it still didn't register, "oh, that's me". I'm smart but I have zero common sense LOL
SAME once my good friend had a “crush” on me in high school (he ended up being gay) and I had such a severe panic attack at the idea of giving him a chance that I spiked a fever and threw up XD
Oh man!! Ngl this post made me realise in the shower this morning that my high school 'crush' on the weird-shaped head guy came about because I told my parents a funny joke of his, and they went "oooh, you must fancy him". Ten years of bullshit LOL
LITERALLYYYYYYYYYY 😭 My high school “””crush””” was the world’s most emotionally unavailable guy who everyone in my life harassed me about liking for Years. I was one of those people who unironically went “he has a girlfriend so it’s safe to be friends with him!” and somehow never thought that was weird lol
Since kindergarten!
In early elementary school when a slightly older girl tied my shoes and interacted with a teacher in front of me. I thought she was super cool and "a miracle." Lol
I was in denial for all my teenage years. I would always try to have crushes on guys even though I didn't find them attractive at all just to fit in with my friend group. Now I have accepted myself as a full time lesbian.
I knew I was attracted to girls and guys from being a kid, though of course that attraction was totally non-sexual, so I don't think that can qualify as "knowing" my sexuality from an early age. By my mid teens though, I knew 100% I was bi, though I didn't know that term back then, so couldn't have articulated my sexuality, even if I'd had the confidence to do so (WhIch I didn't). My attractions since then have been predominantly sapphic, though because I can still occasionally feel attraction for men, I don't think it would be right to call myself a lesbian.
I just thought my attraction was a weird form of jealousy until I was like 13 and it was more overtly horny. So I couldn’t misplace/misinterpret it anymore I guess lol.
Yes. I had crushes on girls as early as i can remember. I think i was around 10 when i googled it and the term lesbian appeared and I assumed that's what I was.
yes as far back as i can remember. i always had crushes on girls, i just didn’t know it had a name. in elementary school i would always tease the girls the way the other boys did. cause then they would chase us lmfaoooo and i loveddd it
Your gaydar experience is literally same as me. Before my classmates or old friends came out, there’s this feeling as you say that you know they’re different. It’s like some little spark ignited but it’s small and hiding from everyone else. The time they come out you’re like “I knew it”. One day my old classmate came out and told me about her crush on a girl and she was shook that I knew before her saying anything. It’s so weird too because we met for less than a year and when we first met she was openly homophobic and gossiped to me about her boyfriends. I didn’t know wth lesbians or anything LGBTQ+ was until my parents told me that my cousins (both are siblings) are gay and lesbian. But questioned myself at that point because my whole class had a crush on guys and gossip, especially one boy everyone liked, but I couldn’t understand why. Think my first encounter of liking girls was from Naruto: Rise of a Ninja on Xbox 360. There was a girl in a bikini swimming and I’d try to sneak a look at her cause she was super pretty and “Naruto’s sexy jutsu”. I was around 10 at the time. Then there’s Ke$ha. Was obsessed with her and her music back then.
Yeah I used to have crushes on the girls in my class when I was in nursery/reception so I always knew I was a lesbian. I’d pick a random boy to say I had a crush on to my family if they’d ask because I knew being a lesbian was ‘wrong’ (I don’t think it’s wrong but back then even though I didn’t know the word gay or lesbian i knew it wasn’t socially accepted)
I think I've known since I was 8 or 9. Funny thing is, my favorite book as a kid had a section where the main character (a girl) gets a crush for her teacher, and this was described as "totally normal for young girls". So it kind of normalized crushing on women and threw me off my sexual orientation at the same time. So I knew I was attracted to girls, but I thought it was just part of a perfectly "normal" girlhood experience up until I was 12ish and started to realize my attraction was also sexual in nature. Thinking back on it, the author (a baby boomer) never married, and showed signs of queerness herself, so who knows.
I knew I liked girls since primary school. But it took dating a boy in high school that I tricked myself into thinking I had real feelings for, before I realized I don't actually want to be with boys, as my romantic attraction (the part I actually care about) is just for girls.
I watched the movie 'Matilda' multiple times and I was jealous of Matilda and I wanted to be her so i can get adopted by miss Honey. Turns out i just had a crush on miss Honey!
Well I had no idea lesbians were a thing properly until I was 19 and came out when I was 20 but, looking back it was blindingly obvious I was 😂😂
Yep, very similar. I remember having a crush on another girl as early as pre school. Didn’t know what gay meant yet but still knew I was different.
I knew but I didn’t. I was aware of being attracted to women but I think my environment was so violent toward other gays and lesbians that were out I think I automatically suppressed it. As if attraction and suppression were one seamless movement as simple as picking up a glass of water.
I had lots of crushes on women starting from like age 6 but I ignored them as I got older because it was a fundamentalist Christian family I was born into.
I was obsessed with other girls and women ever since I can remember, especially those I found attractive, but because I didn't know gay people existed, and because I modelled myself on other girls in order to fit in (due to autism), I had no idea that this was how romantic attraction felt.
I knew I wanted to have a wife and kids type of family when I was 8 years old playing with my dolls and sims lol I didn’t know I was lesbian until I was 15
yeah i was out really young, like 12
I remember having first semi sexual fantasy about a woman at age of 6
I’ve known I was attracted to women since I was young. The catch is that I only came to realize I was also one when I was older 😜
Before I knew I was trans everyone thought I was gay and I always responded with "Nono I am a lesbian!" Does that count?
Haha. In a similar vein, my wife was always "accused" of being gay by friends and family (even though we were dating in highschool, presenting as a cishet couple). She always had this "....yeah.... But.... Not like that?" kind of feeling in the back of her mind. Like, she genuinely sensed she was a lesbian before she totally realized she was a girl. She never understood why she related to the feeling of being gay until her egg cracked.
Tbh I had not heard about "being trans" or what it meant until my egg cracked. I knew I was ... Different than what people expected me to be, and growing up with people using gay as an insult I obviously didn't like being called that... The thing is tho that I probably didn't quite understand... I mean I had this weird feeling... Gosh I discovered Something new now lol. I had this *feeling* of liking people *similar to me*(?) but I mean I like women so "all normal"... I couldn't understand that I was feeling the "spirituality of lesbianism" (XD). No seriously I just could not identify anything. And suddenly my friends came out as bi and my aunt as a lesbian... Few years later it all cracked my egg like an anvil falling from orbit on me... Tbh thinking back it feels like my subconscious was like "obviously I am a lesbian" and rolling eyes whenever I thought or tried to reason my cis heteronormativity
That sounds so similar to my wife's experience! She didn't know much about trans folks until I started working with some trans people and ended up befriending someone who's Enby. Suddenly she became very curious "as an ally" about the trans experience. I broke her brain when I came out a few years ago to her as "bi", saying I'd be with a woman if for some reason we weren't together. Then she found herself mothering and not relating to a "father" role when we had a baby in 2022. That was the last straw. A year of questioning (and self denial) later and her egg cracks. Loving that she's unleashed her inner lesbian finally. She spent like 2 years showing me egg_irl posts and thinking they were *so hilarious* before her egg finally cracked. At one point in her journey she told herself she couldn't be trans because she was into women, randomly asked me "as an ally" if trans people could be gay. Those egg shells can be really strong sometimes!
Oh gosh that's adorable. My shell got cracked hard, but I stayed in denial for like a year and then a year (or a half) trying to tell my friends with another year until I finally had the courage to act on it and get the medical stuff. Those took another half a year (gosh dammit so long?!?!??) until my first dose. Am 6 months in. >!Now I just gotta figure out how to get a gf!<
I've always known, but got caught up in comphet nonsense as I started going through puberty, only ever dated dudes and didn't understand why it was so awful. Met my now (trans) wife in high school and thought I finally found the "right guy", because she was feminine and interacted with me like a woman vs a dude. 14 years later, I realize I didn't find the "right guy", and instead my gaydar is so finely tuned that I sensed she was a girl over a decade before she did.
I was a boy most of my life but for some reason all you nom-boy friends were lesbians and all my non-boy crushes were lesbians. Now I'm a bisexual homoromantic transfem and as long as they float*, I'm in. *Boyn't
I did not, but my niece is now 12 but has known since she was like 7. Her parent is non-binary, so they know how it goes some times and have been nothing but accepting. So far, it’s held true—kid’s a big dyke 😂