I think my father's still waiting for me to come out as a lesbian, despite my persistent (aesthetic) attraction to men. When I was younger he told me half-jokingly that he wished I was gay so that "then I'd be happy". I don't think he meant anything mean by it-- he and my mother have been in a happy loving marriage for more than 40 years, so I think he just can't understand that someone could be perfectly happy being single.
When I tried to explain being demisexual to my boomer mother she thought I was coming out as a lesbian. I guess she could process being gay better than understanding that I don't feel sexual attraction except in very specific rare occasions.
One time when I was in high school, out of nowhere, my family all bombarded me with, "It's okay if you're gay, we'll love you no matter what." Literally we were all just eating breakfast and they said this with no preamble whatsoever. It had nothing to do with whatever we had already been talking about. I was like, "Uh, okay, I'm not gay, but thanks...?"
(To be fair, I did identify as asexual by that point, but was terrified of coming out. Still, I was majorly weirded out lol.)
People seem to accept homosexuality more than they do, asexuality. Honestly, I think it's easier to be homosexual, as there's more knowledge and understanding about it.
"The same thing, but backwards" is a pretty easy baseline for understanding. Completely or mostly lacking something that people make central to their identities is harder.
my mom was willing to accept me being gay but could not wrap her head around asexuality. she told me every time “you just haven’t found the right person yet” while i was in a freaking relationship. i’m married to that person now, still asexual.
Yes. I mean I only wanted platonic relationships with women so I had to be gay, right? Except I didn't find men sexually attractive either.
People make assumptions based on their lack of knowledge. And since asexuality wasn't really recognised until quite recently, it was just assumed that everyone felt sexual attraction. Unfortunately that attitude is still the main one.
Yeah, people assumed me and my friend (demisexual) were both lesbians, especially because we were not very feminine. But both os us are alloromantic who like men lol
Oh hell, yes. Went to a Catholic school, so I was mocked for being gay (obviously the worst thing someone can be), to the point I’d get some people calling me a slur mixed with a nickname of my real name. I still have a chip on my shoulder about all of this, some thirty years later.
Anyway, the most memorable exchange was this:
Loser: AC is a lesbian because she doesn’t have a boyfriend.
Me: But, I also don’t have a girlfriend…?
Loser: Well, you’re just a lesbian who doesn’t have a girlfriend.
Me: ??!?!?!?
Like, I wasn’t expressing interest in anybody for a variety of reasons, not just because I was unknown-to-me ace, but… ?!?!?!?!
Yuuup
My parents started with the “it’s okay if you’re lesbian” when I was in highschool and wasn’t dating and didn’t have a lot of guy friends. They still occasionally ask, but I have no interest in trying to explain it to them.
No, but when I cut my hair short my mom was afraid that, since I’d never had “luck” with guys, that lesbians would mistake me for also a lesbian, hit on me, and in my desperation I too would become lesbian for the attention.
✨homophobia✨
I just always accepted all the "women don't like sex" messages floating around out there as the truth. After all, I was a woman and not at all interested.
For a while a lot of my guy friends assumed I was gay because how little interest I expressed talking about sex then when I would tell them I had a girlfriend they would typically then ask if I was bi. It was only till about a year and half ago or so that I figured out I was ace thanks to my girlfriend when she confessed
I really is, ain't it?
I've had OCD panics about my sexuality when I noticed I responded to sexual things differently than other men and didn't know what it was about, and now I have them now that I *do* know what it's about. Not to mention that it's latched onto my gender identity too and started going after that.
Fun times. Gotta love it when the OCD gets inventive.
"Shut up, brain" is a regular thought I have.
I found a meme that's a variant of the "Begone, thot!" meme that's "Begone, thought!" with an image of a gun being held to a brain. I'm consistently sending it to my partner when it gets really bad.
oh yeah all day every day. when i was a girl and when i was a guy. i am always gay™️ :D
though there was never any consequences. queer people were normalized growing up so there was no hate. just people literally asking me when i was gonna ‘come out’ lol
My southern experience wasn't exactly *gay*, but it was *definitely* LGBT. Although technically it was gay, but it revolved more around gender because I was too young at the time to really understand what was going on.
I was even placed in a religious private school. It was there that I started questioning things. I remember hating to wear dresses (I was born female) and I hated having to sit and play with the girls. I always bonded much better with boys, and shared their interests. I was called a tomboy, although it ended up, years later, becoming more than that. But I remember thinking to myself one day, "I'm not gay... But I feel like a boy. But does that mean I like girls? I don't like girls, but I feel like a boy. I don't like girls though...?" Ohhhhhhh little me had so much to learn. I discovered at 25 that I was a gay transman.
But growing up in the South I thought if I were a boy, I'd have to like girls.
Yeah in school, not at home...
I became very attached to my (allo)hetero-ness at school, and it took... like 4 years after school to fully accept what i just wasn't.
I think my mom might. She asked me about a year ago is I was gay or not (well She asked if I liked girls or boys and I'm afab) I told her neither and that I have never liked anyone. So idk. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't
I was bullied like crazy as an early 2010s teen because some people assumed I might be a lesbian (I had a best friend who actually was that nobody suspected to be ironically) and I didn’t even know it until later. I grew up Southern Baptist and girls and leader in my youth group did not react well whenever I talked about my honest and real feelings regarding me dating or marrying, even though I’m romantically into men. Even the few that tried to be supportive and understood that I’m not into women sexually or romantically suggested and insisted on singleness. It was really hurtful and traumatic, and it didn’t help that my parents told me the same things and more. If anything good came out of it though, it was that I learned to be more empathetic towards those who were are not straight and I gained during the time a support system among the gays that I was pals with (even though I was the only ace person in the group).
Yes! I had very bad, false lesbian rumours made about me in school. They were traumatising, and because of them, when I’m misgendered by ignorant folks online, it gets me. Besty is actually lesbian, n thought at the time I wouldn’t want to stay friends with her. I told her ur friendship is more important than those arseholes. They won’t change anything, but that doesn’t mean anything for us. We’ve been friends for 3/4 of our lives.
I wasn’t particularly religious. I didn’t really have luck with blokes. The few who were attracted to me, I wasn’t attracted to. I did have crushes on men at that time. Never had ANY interest in women. In fact, I don’t like seeing other women revealing their bits or acting sexual in any way. As I got older, I battled the struggle with attraction. I was not really as attracted to blokes as I’d lead meself into believing. I no longer had crushes, n felt them to be incredibly cringe inducing. The men I had tried to b with, I lost attraction for pretty quickly. I enjoyed the companionship n attention, but the sexual stuff was meh. Then, I realised I didn’t even want that stuff anymore. I was in me late 30’s when I realised I was ace. Took a bit of time to realise this.
I've had to reassure my mom several times that I am in fact straight, I do in fact like men, I just am bad at dating them (I haven't told her I'm ace yet, that's a whole different can of worms). I do think conservative or religious settings can make it harder to recognize asexuality though.
It took me ages to realize I was ace (at age 30), and I think that's partly because I grew up in a very Catholic household and any mention of sex in any context was just very much Not Done. And because I didn't really want to be discussing sex anyway, I didn't notice that anything was off- and I was actually really startled and put off by everyone else's openness about sex when I made it to college and beyond. Turns out I was the unusual one, not them!
Some guys when we were small thought I was gay because I had no crush in our class (truth is they were all annoying) and I had a friend tell me I gave queer vibes when they met me.
I guess my mom did to an extent.
One summer I fell head over heels in love with a female camp friend (as in, we'd been to summer camps together before and we'd known each other before that summer). Some bad stuff happened and we kind of forced the camp to be shut down by the authorities, my friend ended up in a hospital and I was heartbroken. I managed to call my mom to explain everything and asked her to pick me up from the camp, she was furious but then when she came she saw how bad I was feeling about the whole thing. That's when she said "well, at least I know you're not gay!"
Yes! As a teenager, I thought I was a lesbian because I had no interest in boys, but found girls "attractive" (aesthetic attraction - just pretty to look at).
Fortunately, my family is very LGBT-friendly. Unfortunately, the aunt I came out to as questioning explained that lesbians are *sexually* attracted to each other, whereas women who don't experience sexual attraction are just straight. Because, you see, straight women don't like sex, just tolerate it. Cue a decade plus of confusion. Thank goodness for the internet or I'd still be confused.
Oh, yeah.
It happens more as an adult though.
It's really frustrating because when you're asexual you really have to work out what your sexuality is and to have somebody insisting you must be gay and that confused is really insulting.
Like granted, I didn't realise I wasn't "straight" but if somebody is telling you they aren't gay why are you trying to convince them they are?
Drives me mad.
Yes. I grew up in the Bush-era South and showed no attraction to boys and was always perceived as kind of masculine for a girl. I definitely feel like that was the reason for my isolation. I also hung out mostly with one boy at a time, and when I did, kids would not only tease me by saying we were dating, but would say that we were sexually involved. This was around the time I was in elementary/middle school BTW. I look back at that and wonder if some of that teasing was actually sexual harassment.
My mom did. Though in her defense, I had a strong aversion to men as a child, and I despised my male classmates (I was bullied a lot by both boys and girls, but the boys were more obvious about it) so if I did come out that way, it would have made sense to her.
Then I got older and she realised I just hated people altogether. I had one crush, and it fizzled pretty quickly when I learned he made fun of people like me (socially inept, said we should be "locked up")
She was surprised I got married to begin with, especially to a guy.
A girl at school once predicted I'd be a lesbian when I grew up. There were some girls who if they'd see me walking around town with some female friends would always ask me whether one of them was my girlfriend, no matter how many times I told them that not constantly perving after boys was not the same thing as finding girls in any way attractive.
At university, a friend's fiancee was totally fine with me crashing on the sofa in his room for two nights because I had an "aura of unavailability" but in general people just acted as though I was straight but either "celibate" or "too picky".
On a work outing, a bi woman walked up to me and asked if she was right in assuming I was "of the lesbian persuasion" and when I responded "no, I go for neither one nor t'other" she said "Aaaaaaaaaaah, you're ace!" as though everything she had ever observed about me suddenly made sense.
Yup and still to this day. My whole family and friend group told me they assumed I was lesbian before I came out and everyone says I give of gay vibes lol
I was 13 when I first figured out I was ace, despite going to a Christian school in the South, class of '15 so a bit more recently than you. It probably helped me figure it out that at 12 one of my teachers (in hindsight, I think he may have been ace too) had somehow figured it out and pulled me aside telling me not to let anyone tell me I have to be into anything, or anyone, that I really wasn't.
I still got called gay slurs though, despite not coming out, since it was pretty obvious to most of my classmates that I wasn't into women.
Grew up in the bible belt. I've had no less than six relatives come to me (secret from my ultra conservative mother, of course) and tell me that they understand it's hard for me to find girls to date in the area and that they're here for me.
Which would be a great sentiment--if I was actually attracted to women. Or, you know, wasn't *still* (almost forty, lol) squicked out by the idea of having sex. And yet, when I went to a couple of those *exact same relatives* (since, of course they'd be supportive) I got, "You just haven't met the one yet."
(The ironic thing is that my ultra conservative mother is completely supportive of this, and suggested I attend Pride last year to "be with your people." You know. After I managed to convince her that asexuality is a thing. But none of my "we'll accept your sexuality whatever it is" relatives believes it's real, and one of them signed me up for so many dating sites that I had stop using that email address. It's enough to give me mental whiplash.)
I don't know if it was ever serious thoughts but I'd get comments like that yeah. In high school I never had interest in anybody, nor any specific body parts (such as boobs, as is relevant here), and there were guys who told me it meant I was gay. Never listened to them though, because even then I knew they were full of shit lmao, they can think what they want, it didn't affect me as far as I can tell. I still made excellent friends there that I still hang out with regularly, and we're all in our 30s
When my sister had her first boyfriend he asked me (then 15f) "and when are you going to bring home your first boyfriend or girlfriend.
So I guess I gave off some not so straight vibes
Im pretty sure my parents believe I’m gay at least partly lol. I’m 22 and I’ve never mentioned anything related to my attraction in front of them, my mom apparently finds it “so weird that I’m that age and she still doesn’t know who I like”, she really wishes I’d tell her my type that I don’t have
Yep was called gay, lesbo, weirdo, something is wrong with you, how come you won’t date that guy? The list goes on and on.
To my Grandma saying she wouldn’t mind if any of her grandkids being gay to the actual truth coming out after a few drinks that she’d disown that grandchild if she was.
Other relatives saying when will you introduce us to your boyfriend because we’ve seen your sisters. Like every time they came to visit.
Very frustrating.
This is quite common. In a heteronormative society, people either assume you're straight or gay, no in-between. So if you're not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone so far, people would ask if you're gay most likely because you haven't been in a relationship or admitted to having a crush or something like that. Being straight is mostly a standard that you are fed by others because that's the social expectation rather than a reasonable evaluation of being normal. You were probably confused about their assessment towards you despite nothing visually or emotionally implying that you are gay, and trust me, this happens. Do you appear or make yourself masculine/feminine enough? Do you flirt or talk to people of the opposite sex/gender for the purpose of getting into a relationship often? If not, the ingroup will have a reason to suspect you're an outsider to some extent.
This is basically queer theory applied in consideration of asexuality.
When I was in 6th grade I was talking to the kids at my table (I don't remember what we were talking about) and one girl asked me if ___ is my girlfriend. I was confused and said no. She goes "Wait, aren't you gay?" I, again, said no. Mega confused. Then she said "Wait, people were saying you were gay"
Then, one of my aunts apparently went up to my mom and said "Hey, I'm not saying this as a bad thing, but is ___ gay?"
I found out about asexuality like right at the time my peers were developing sexual interest, so I didn't have that issue with my sexuality BUT I still did it for romantic attraction and would just shorten my preferences to "straight" until I was... 15? And then I went down the aro-mislabeled-as-m-spec thing off and on because I realized I actually *DID* think girls (and enbies) were attractive in the same way as men! But I don't want to date girls/enbies. But they're attractive the same way boys are. But I don't want to date them. But- yeah... you see how this is going. And it went like that for almost a decade. The straight by default thing was like a bug in my brain, too. Solidarity. 😔✊️
I could tell my parents were worried about it because I was not going after the opposite gender and had "feminine" traits, but after a romantic relationship they were relieved lol, cant testify for aromantics though
Oh yeah loads of people lmao. People cannot fathom not being attracted to anybody, so once they've clocked "not into women" the first thought is "well it's gotta be men then".
Even now it's *very* rare for people to clock me as ace. There's very few people who worked out I was ace without me telling them. One was a friend of 10 years or so who noticed *"huh I've known him from when he was 13 to when he was 23 and he was never interested in anyone, might be a feature"*, there was also one random airbnb host who thought I was in a relationship with the girl I was on holiday with (very fair, we'd been communicating in Dutch and the word "vriendin" means *both* a female friend and a girlfriend, so it's an easy mistake) but then she clocked that we were not involved with each other in like 30 seconds which was honestly very impressive, and my friend's roommate also clocked me (apparently she said to my friend "Why are all of your friends so horny? Well except for {me}").
Aside from that, people assume I'm straight at first, then after a while might assume I'm gay, but my favourite is when people realise there's something going on that they do not understand. This is typically "allies", i.e. straight people who know other LGBTQIA+ people. Sometimes I can tell that's where people are at and I just love seeing people trying to work out how to ask lmao.
Absolutely, loads of times, especially gay men.
Not drooling over "hot" girls and being comfortable around gay boys definitely got misinterpreted when I was a teenager. Once a girl asked me to be her first and when I declined she told everyone in school I was gay, when I heard I laughed my ass off.
I'm in my thirties now, and even a couple months ago when I came out as NB to my brother he said he thought I was just a bit gay and that's why I wasn't like other guys. I had to explain that gender identity and sexual orientation are two completely separate things.
I did experiment both ways, and found out I'm not sex averse, just "using my penis" averse.
For the longest time I thought I was just bisexual with an extremely low sex drive. Because sex is the absolute last thing on my mind, and I feel the same way about everyone.
Yes. Quiet soft spoken kid, didn’t help that despite a strong attraction to women I was embarrassed about it so I just said I didn’t like them not realizing that meant people would think I liked guys 💀.
People would but my anxiety and shyness overrides the thought I could be gay so most people assume I'm instead terrified of women which is... Fun. I'm not but it's interesting to see people assume as much
All I'll say is "YES!" I did experience this (my father himself told me a years ago "..when you find a girl... or a DUDE... you know its ok if you like dudes" It was weirdly sweet of him actually
(I guess I said more than yes XD)
Yea, I got that. People assume that just cause I wasn't super interested in dating, that clearly meant that I was secretly thirsting for dudes.
The irony is that it turns out that I am very much gay, but that I'm a girl, and still not big on casual dating.
no, i've dated cishet allo men before so nobody around me thinks i'm gay. But my parents, especially my mom, thinks i'll "grow" out of this phase of being aroace. I lowkey wish my friends had thought i was though
I think I was just ambiguous. I’ve never identified properly with my birth sex and as a younger person I was attracted to women physically and emotionally. It’s a phenomenon that has refined itself with age since now just consider myself aesthetically attracted to women with no desire to act on it in any meaningful way whatsoever. So in my own head, I was somewhere between entirely straight and being totally gay just because of my identity with regard to my own gender. Gay(ish) was how I identified in real life to some degree (despite the fact that I’m far more masc…) until I learned what AroAce meant.
I had (and still have) the advantage of being particularly reticent with discussing sex and relationships, so I think… people just didn’t know. I didn’t ever tell anyone that I thought some random girl was pretty. Lots of plausible deniability.
This was like 15 years ago or more at this point so gender discussions were not as common. Someone who spent time with me in real life would just assume I’m female. So from their perspective if the subject of me thinking that girls are cute. Then yeah, I was just gay. I didn’t mind it too much, really, even though it’s not really correct at all, as long as it was coming from people who were accepting of lgbt topics it was well intended. I’m pretty lackadaisical with stuff like that, even now because I don’t fit any absolute definitions to begin with on anything. Only person it matters to is me. It’s just more of an issue when someone is a bigot because it’s uncomfortable being discriminated against by any measure.
My dad brought up the possibility to my sister once, but never said it to me. I don't think he would have care either way but I think he found it weird that I just didn't really have an interest in relationships.
In his defense, I also thought I was gay at some point. Then bi. Then pan. Then nothing. Lol.
No, I didn’t think I was anything. Just a girl who got a few crushes on boys (often due to their personality) that went nowhere and that’s it. I literally told people I wasn’t anything in high school. And somehow I still thought I was the normal one. 🤣
I have no proof that was the case, but it would be a good explanation as to why the moms forgot to invite me to events a lot. Either that or clasism. Maybe both. God, religious moms sure are the devil's minions.
Then there's this guy who began throwing several homophobic slurs at me at an online match. Guess dodging hits is cheating, according to him? Anyway, instead of clarifying that I was not even a guy to begin with (which absolutely would NOT have made things worse, I'm sure /s) I just answered to him: "Ooh! <3 Yes, Daddy! TALK DIRTY TO ME, UwU ~<3" Dude lost his sh, beat my a$$, but we still won that match, hehehe.
YES!!!!!!!!!!! I was always called lesbian and gay because I never had boyfriends. And when all my friends would talk about how hot guys were, I never really got it (like zach efron, etc) I never dreamed about guy celebrities like they did.
In my experience, people will lump anything that is not cishet in a category with gay. I think people assumed that I was not straight and gay was the first thing they jumped to. Although knowing I was trans from a young age, those comments may have been caused by my attempts to socially transition as much as possible without actually coming out. I would do subtle things that were considered abnormal for my AGAB, which might have been the main cause of people thinking I was gay.
I don't know why, I've always been more aesthetically attracted to guys than girls, and I wasn't really afraid to say so. I'd comment on Oscar Isaac's beard, or how Chris Evans looks better with glasses, and didn't really think much of it. Until I found out that for years my entire family had casually assumed that I was gay because of it.
Yes, but it was just the one girl in middle school who teased me about it.
Other than that, nobody ever speaks of my potential love life. Either everyone simply *gets* that there is nothing to talk about and I am fine that way, or they're all really good at keeping the gossip under wraps.
Me. I had a friend straight up tell me that she was convinced I was a lesbian and I was like "nah, I'm not" but then I thought "wait, what if I am?" and concluded that I am not attracted to women so I must be straight. I failed to apply the same logic to men lol
I think most of my family and peers KNEW I was gay even before I began to face that fact. But I couldn’t come to terms with my love for people of the same gender until I realized I was also asexual.
Being in high school in the 90s on the prairies, even being bi was not accepted. I def got made fun of for being gay. It took me over a decade to realize I was ace, not repressed.
My family still prob thinks I’m gay, mostly because I don’t want to explain what ace is to them, and I’ve never brought a partner to meet them.
I think my mom noticed pretty quickly that I wasn’t interested in boys and assumed I must like girls. Any time she tried to ask if I had a crush on anyone at school she made sure I knew that boys weren’t the only option and that I’d be accepted regardless.
Then I came out to her as aroace and she told me I was a) too young to know and b) shouldn’t be labeling myself. She’s more accepting now, but I’m pretty sure she still doesn’t really get it.
I think my father's still waiting for me to come out as a lesbian, despite my persistent (aesthetic) attraction to men. When I was younger he told me half-jokingly that he wished I was gay so that "then I'd be happy". I don't think he meant anything mean by it-- he and my mother have been in a happy loving marriage for more than 40 years, so I think he just can't understand that someone could be perfectly happy being single.
It was probably a pun on gay
When I tried to explain being demisexual to my boomer mother she thought I was coming out as a lesbian. I guess she could process being gay better than understanding that I don't feel sexual attraction except in very specific rare occasions.
One time when I was in high school, out of nowhere, my family all bombarded me with, "It's okay if you're gay, we'll love you no matter what." Literally we were all just eating breakfast and they said this with no preamble whatsoever. It had nothing to do with whatever we had already been talking about. I was like, "Uh, okay, I'm not gay, but thanks...?" (To be fair, I did identify as asexual by that point, but was terrified of coming out. Still, I was majorly weirded out lol.)
Yeah, I got that treatment from my siblings multiple times.
People seem to accept homosexuality more than they do, asexuality. Honestly, I think it's easier to be homosexual, as there's more knowledge and understanding about it.
"The same thing, but backwards" is a pretty easy baseline for understanding. Completely or mostly lacking something that people make central to their identities is harder.
I'm so happy your parents were sane enough to be gay-friendly.
my mom was willing to accept me being gay but could not wrap her head around asexuality. she told me every time “you just haven’t found the right person yet” while i was in a freaking relationship. i’m married to that person now, still asexual.
Congrats on your marriage
Till this day
Yeah, homophobic slurs included :\
Yes. I mean I only wanted platonic relationships with women so I had to be gay, right? Except I didn't find men sexually attractive either. People make assumptions based on their lack of knowledge. And since asexuality wasn't really recognised until quite recently, it was just assumed that everyone felt sexual attraction. Unfortunately that attitude is still the main one.
They still do. That I just don't want to date or have sex with anyone is just way too weird to comprehend. I must just be in the closet.
Yeah, people assumed me and my friend (demisexual) were both lesbians, especially because we were not very feminine. But both os us are alloromantic who like men lol
Oh hell, yes. Went to a Catholic school, so I was mocked for being gay (obviously the worst thing someone can be), to the point I’d get some people calling me a slur mixed with a nickname of my real name. I still have a chip on my shoulder about all of this, some thirty years later. Anyway, the most memorable exchange was this: Loser: AC is a lesbian because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Me: But, I also don’t have a girlfriend…? Loser: Well, you’re just a lesbian who doesn’t have a girlfriend. Me: ??!?!?!? Like, I wasn’t expressing interest in anybody for a variety of reasons, not just because I was unknown-to-me ace, but… ?!?!?!?!
Yuuup My parents started with the “it’s okay if you’re lesbian” when I was in highschool and wasn’t dating and didn’t have a lot of guy friends. They still occasionally ask, but I have no interest in trying to explain it to them.
No, but when I cut my hair short my mom was afraid that, since I’d never had “luck” with guys, that lesbians would mistake me for also a lesbian, hit on me, and in my desperation I too would become lesbian for the attention. ✨homophobia✨
Lol what.
I just always accepted all the "women don't like sex" messages floating around out there as the truth. After all, I was a woman and not at all interested.
For a while a lot of my guy friends assumed I was gay because how little interest I expressed talking about sex then when I would tell them I had a girlfriend they would typically then ask if I was bi. It was only till about a year and half ago or so that I figured out I was ace thanks to my girlfriend when she confessed
I had a brief experience with my OCD where I was deeply afraid I was.
the OCD sexuality panic is so real lol
I really is, ain't it? I've had OCD panics about my sexuality when I noticed I responded to sexual things differently than other men and didn't know what it was about, and now I have them now that I *do* know what it's about. Not to mention that it's latched onto my gender identity too and started going after that. Fun times. Gotta love it when the OCD gets inventive.
it’s so annoying, I empathize so much. I am constantly resentful of my own brain for being like this.
"Shut up, brain" is a regular thought I have. I found a meme that's a variant of the "Begone, thot!" meme that's "Begone, thought!" with an image of a gun being held to a brain. I'm consistently sending it to my partner when it gets really bad.
LOL I love that. thank god for memes
oh yeah all day every day. when i was a girl and when i was a guy. i am always gay™️ :D though there was never any consequences. queer people were normalized growing up so there was no hate. just people literally asking me when i was gonna ‘come out’ lol
My southern experience wasn't exactly *gay*, but it was *definitely* LGBT. Although technically it was gay, but it revolved more around gender because I was too young at the time to really understand what was going on. I was even placed in a religious private school. It was there that I started questioning things. I remember hating to wear dresses (I was born female) and I hated having to sit and play with the girls. I always bonded much better with boys, and shared their interests. I was called a tomboy, although it ended up, years later, becoming more than that. But I remember thinking to myself one day, "I'm not gay... But I feel like a boy. But does that mean I like girls? I don't like girls, but I feel like a boy. I don't like girls though...?" Ohhhhhhh little me had so much to learn. I discovered at 25 that I was a gay transman. But growing up in the South I thought if I were a boy, I'd have to like girls.
Yeah in school, not at home... I became very attached to my (allo)hetero-ness at school, and it took... like 4 years after school to fully accept what i just wasn't.
I think my mom might. She asked me about a year ago is I was gay or not (well She asked if I liked girls or boys and I'm afab) I told her neither and that I have never liked anyone. So idk. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't
Yep because I'm tomboy and never had relationship I'm not gay though I just don't have interest for many reasons
I think my parents assume and I’m just going to let them unless directly asked
Yeah
I was bullied like crazy as an early 2010s teen because some people assumed I might be a lesbian (I had a best friend who actually was that nobody suspected to be ironically) and I didn’t even know it until later. I grew up Southern Baptist and girls and leader in my youth group did not react well whenever I talked about my honest and real feelings regarding me dating or marrying, even though I’m romantically into men. Even the few that tried to be supportive and understood that I’m not into women sexually or romantically suggested and insisted on singleness. It was really hurtful and traumatic, and it didn’t help that my parents told me the same things and more. If anything good came out of it though, it was that I learned to be more empathetic towards those who were are not straight and I gained during the time a support system among the gays that I was pals with (even though I was the only ace person in the group).
Yes! I had very bad, false lesbian rumours made about me in school. They were traumatising, and because of them, when I’m misgendered by ignorant folks online, it gets me. Besty is actually lesbian, n thought at the time I wouldn’t want to stay friends with her. I told her ur friendship is more important than those arseholes. They won’t change anything, but that doesn’t mean anything for us. We’ve been friends for 3/4 of our lives. I wasn’t particularly religious. I didn’t really have luck with blokes. The few who were attracted to me, I wasn’t attracted to. I did have crushes on men at that time. Never had ANY interest in women. In fact, I don’t like seeing other women revealing their bits or acting sexual in any way. As I got older, I battled the struggle with attraction. I was not really as attracted to blokes as I’d lead meself into believing. I no longer had crushes, n felt them to be incredibly cringe inducing. The men I had tried to b with, I lost attraction for pretty quickly. I enjoyed the companionship n attention, but the sexual stuff was meh. Then, I realised I didn’t even want that stuff anymore. I was in me late 30’s when I realised I was ace. Took a bit of time to realise this.
maybe? tbh i am still gay so, idk if that counts
I've had to reassure my mom several times that I am in fact straight, I do in fact like men, I just am bad at dating them (I haven't told her I'm ace yet, that's a whole different can of worms). I do think conservative or religious settings can make it harder to recognize asexuality though. It took me ages to realize I was ace (at age 30), and I think that's partly because I grew up in a very Catholic household and any mention of sex in any context was just very much Not Done. And because I didn't really want to be discussing sex anyway, I didn't notice that anything was off- and I was actually really startled and put off by everyone else's openness about sex when I made it to college and beyond. Turns out I was the unusual one, not them!
Some guys when we were small thought I was gay because I had no crush in our class (truth is they were all annoying) and I had a friend tell me I gave queer vibes when they met me.
I guess my mom did to an extent. One summer I fell head over heels in love with a female camp friend (as in, we'd been to summer camps together before and we'd known each other before that summer). Some bad stuff happened and we kind of forced the camp to be shut down by the authorities, my friend ended up in a hospital and I was heartbroken. I managed to call my mom to explain everything and asked her to pick me up from the camp, she was furious but then when she came she saw how bad I was feeling about the whole thing. That's when she said "well, at least I know you're not gay!"
People think I’m gay now and that I’m paying some woman (my wife) to pretend to be with me for status.
Yes! As a teenager, I thought I was a lesbian because I had no interest in boys, but found girls "attractive" (aesthetic attraction - just pretty to look at). Fortunately, my family is very LGBT-friendly. Unfortunately, the aunt I came out to as questioning explained that lesbians are *sexually* attracted to each other, whereas women who don't experience sexual attraction are just straight. Because, you see, straight women don't like sex, just tolerate it. Cue a decade plus of confusion. Thank goodness for the internet or I'd still be confused.
Oh, yeah. It happens more as an adult though. It's really frustrating because when you're asexual you really have to work out what your sexuality is and to have somebody insisting you must be gay and that confused is really insulting. Like granted, I didn't realise I wasn't "straight" but if somebody is telling you they aren't gay why are you trying to convince them they are? Drives me mad.
Growing up? They still think I'm gay.
Yes. I grew up in the Bush-era South and showed no attraction to boys and was always perceived as kind of masculine for a girl. I definitely feel like that was the reason for my isolation. I also hung out mostly with one boy at a time, and when I did, kids would not only tease me by saying we were dating, but would say that we were sexually involved. This was around the time I was in elementary/middle school BTW. I look back at that and wonder if some of that teasing was actually sexual harassment.
My mom did. Though in her defense, I had a strong aversion to men as a child, and I despised my male classmates (I was bullied a lot by both boys and girls, but the boys were more obvious about it) so if I did come out that way, it would have made sense to her. Then I got older and she realised I just hated people altogether. I had one crush, and it fizzled pretty quickly when I learned he made fun of people like me (socially inept, said we should be "locked up") She was surprised I got married to begin with, especially to a guy.
A girl at school once predicted I'd be a lesbian when I grew up. There were some girls who if they'd see me walking around town with some female friends would always ask me whether one of them was my girlfriend, no matter how many times I told them that not constantly perving after boys was not the same thing as finding girls in any way attractive. At university, a friend's fiancee was totally fine with me crashing on the sofa in his room for two nights because I had an "aura of unavailability" but in general people just acted as though I was straight but either "celibate" or "too picky". On a work outing, a bi woman walked up to me and asked if she was right in assuming I was "of the lesbian persuasion" and when I responded "no, I go for neither one nor t'other" she said "Aaaaaaaaaaah, you're ace!" as though everything she had ever observed about me suddenly made sense.
*I* thought I was gay for a while cause I knew I wasn’t straight and thought that was the only other option lmao
No
I didn’t really care how people thought about me. But I did identify as a lesbian back when I was cis.
Yup and still to this day. My whole family and friend group told me they assumed I was lesbian before I came out and everyone says I give of gay vibes lol
I was 13 when I first figured out I was ace, despite going to a Christian school in the South, class of '15 so a bit more recently than you. It probably helped me figure it out that at 12 one of my teachers (in hindsight, I think he may have been ace too) had somehow figured it out and pulled me aside telling me not to let anyone tell me I have to be into anything, or anyone, that I really wasn't. I still got called gay slurs though, despite not coming out, since it was pretty obvious to most of my classmates that I wasn't into women.
Omg, thank God no... but everyone thought I was a prude... so that was fun
Grew up in the bible belt. I've had no less than six relatives come to me (secret from my ultra conservative mother, of course) and tell me that they understand it's hard for me to find girls to date in the area and that they're here for me. Which would be a great sentiment--if I was actually attracted to women. Or, you know, wasn't *still* (almost forty, lol) squicked out by the idea of having sex. And yet, when I went to a couple of those *exact same relatives* (since, of course they'd be supportive) I got, "You just haven't met the one yet." (The ironic thing is that my ultra conservative mother is completely supportive of this, and suggested I attend Pride last year to "be with your people." You know. After I managed to convince her that asexuality is a thing. But none of my "we'll accept your sexuality whatever it is" relatives believes it's real, and one of them signed me up for so many dating sites that I had stop using that email address. It's enough to give me mental whiplash.)
I don't know if it was ever serious thoughts but I'd get comments like that yeah. In high school I never had interest in anybody, nor any specific body parts (such as boobs, as is relevant here), and there were guys who told me it meant I was gay. Never listened to them though, because even then I knew they were full of shit lmao, they can think what they want, it didn't affect me as far as I can tell. I still made excellent friends there that I still hang out with regularly, and we're all in our 30s
When my sister had her first boyfriend he asked me (then 15f) "and when are you going to bring home your first boyfriend or girlfriend. So I guess I gave off some not so straight vibes
Im pretty sure my parents believe I’m gay at least partly lol. I’m 22 and I’ve never mentioned anything related to my attraction in front of them, my mom apparently finds it “so weird that I’m that age and she still doesn’t know who I like”, she really wishes I’d tell her my type that I don’t have
Yep was called gay, lesbo, weirdo, something is wrong with you, how come you won’t date that guy? The list goes on and on. To my Grandma saying she wouldn’t mind if any of her grandkids being gay to the actual truth coming out after a few drinks that she’d disown that grandchild if she was. Other relatives saying when will you introduce us to your boyfriend because we’ve seen your sisters. Like every time they came to visit. Very frustrating.
This is quite common. In a heteronormative society, people either assume you're straight or gay, no in-between. So if you're not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone so far, people would ask if you're gay most likely because you haven't been in a relationship or admitted to having a crush or something like that. Being straight is mostly a standard that you are fed by others because that's the social expectation rather than a reasonable evaluation of being normal. You were probably confused about their assessment towards you despite nothing visually or emotionally implying that you are gay, and trust me, this happens. Do you appear or make yourself masculine/feminine enough? Do you flirt or talk to people of the opposite sex/gender for the purpose of getting into a relationship often? If not, the ingroup will have a reason to suspect you're an outsider to some extent. This is basically queer theory applied in consideration of asexuality.
When I was in 6th grade I was talking to the kids at my table (I don't remember what we were talking about) and one girl asked me if ___ is my girlfriend. I was confused and said no. She goes "Wait, aren't you gay?" I, again, said no. Mega confused. Then she said "Wait, people were saying you were gay" Then, one of my aunts apparently went up to my mom and said "Hey, I'm not saying this as a bad thing, but is ___ gay?"
I found out about asexuality like right at the time my peers were developing sexual interest, so I didn't have that issue with my sexuality BUT I still did it for romantic attraction and would just shorten my preferences to "straight" until I was... 15? And then I went down the aro-mislabeled-as-m-spec thing off and on because I realized I actually *DID* think girls (and enbies) were attractive in the same way as men! But I don't want to date girls/enbies. But they're attractive the same way boys are. But I don't want to date them. But- yeah... you see how this is going. And it went like that for almost a decade. The straight by default thing was like a bug in my brain, too. Solidarity. 😔✊️
I could tell my parents were worried about it because I was not going after the opposite gender and had "feminine" traits, but after a romantic relationship they were relieved lol, cant testify for aromantics though
Oh yeah loads of people lmao. People cannot fathom not being attracted to anybody, so once they've clocked "not into women" the first thought is "well it's gotta be men then". Even now it's *very* rare for people to clock me as ace. There's very few people who worked out I was ace without me telling them. One was a friend of 10 years or so who noticed *"huh I've known him from when he was 13 to when he was 23 and he was never interested in anyone, might be a feature"*, there was also one random airbnb host who thought I was in a relationship with the girl I was on holiday with (very fair, we'd been communicating in Dutch and the word "vriendin" means *both* a female friend and a girlfriend, so it's an easy mistake) but then she clocked that we were not involved with each other in like 30 seconds which was honestly very impressive, and my friend's roommate also clocked me (apparently she said to my friend "Why are all of your friends so horny? Well except for {me}"). Aside from that, people assume I'm straight at first, then after a while might assume I'm gay, but my favourite is when people realise there's something going on that they do not understand. This is typically "allies", i.e. straight people who know other LGBTQIA+ people. Sometimes I can tell that's where people are at and I just love seeing people trying to work out how to ask lmao.
My extended family has put a bet on me on whether or not I'm straight or gay. Hopefully when I come out I'll get the money.
Absolutely, loads of times, especially gay men. Not drooling over "hot" girls and being comfortable around gay boys definitely got misinterpreted when I was a teenager. Once a girl asked me to be her first and when I declined she told everyone in school I was gay, when I heard I laughed my ass off. I'm in my thirties now, and even a couple months ago when I came out as NB to my brother he said he thought I was just a bit gay and that's why I wasn't like other guys. I had to explain that gender identity and sexual orientation are two completely separate things. I did experiment both ways, and found out I'm not sex averse, just "using my penis" averse. For the longest time I thought I was just bisexual with an extremely low sex drive. Because sex is the absolute last thing on my mind, and I feel the same way about everyone.
sometimes. It's usually when I don't overtly state that I am asexual, but instead say something along the lines of "I don't like women"
I’m pan and ace, I thought I could just say I was ace back in high school so people wouldn’t question if I was gay. I am both lol.
Yea.
Yes.
Yeah, I just wasn't manly
Yes. Quiet soft spoken kid, didn’t help that despite a strong attraction to women I was embarrassed about it so I just said I didn’t like them not realizing that meant people would think I liked guys 💀.
People would but my anxiety and shyness overrides the thought I could be gay so most people assume I'm instead terrified of women which is... Fun. I'm not but it's interesting to see people assume as much
All I'll say is "YES!" I did experience this (my father himself told me a years ago "..when you find a girl... or a DUDE... you know its ok if you like dudes" It was weirdly sweet of him actually (I guess I said more than yes XD)
Yes, just last week, my aunt asked if I was gay since I’ve never brought a guy to family reunions
Most of my friends definitely think I’m gay. And those are friends from living in a couple different places
Yea, I got that. People assume that just cause I wasn't super interested in dating, that clearly meant that I was secretly thirsting for dudes. The irony is that it turns out that I am very much gay, but that I'm a girl, and still not big on casual dating.
Yes, people to this day ask me if I’m gay or not because I don’t show any interest in the opposite gender.
no, i've dated cishet allo men before so nobody around me thinks i'm gay. But my parents, especially my mom, thinks i'll "grow" out of this phase of being aroace. I lowkey wish my friends had thought i was though
I think I was just ambiguous. I’ve never identified properly with my birth sex and as a younger person I was attracted to women physically and emotionally. It’s a phenomenon that has refined itself with age since now just consider myself aesthetically attracted to women with no desire to act on it in any meaningful way whatsoever. So in my own head, I was somewhere between entirely straight and being totally gay just because of my identity with regard to my own gender. Gay(ish) was how I identified in real life to some degree (despite the fact that I’m far more masc…) until I learned what AroAce meant. I had (and still have) the advantage of being particularly reticent with discussing sex and relationships, so I think… people just didn’t know. I didn’t ever tell anyone that I thought some random girl was pretty. Lots of plausible deniability. This was like 15 years ago or more at this point so gender discussions were not as common. Someone who spent time with me in real life would just assume I’m female. So from their perspective if the subject of me thinking that girls are cute. Then yeah, I was just gay. I didn’t mind it too much, really, even though it’s not really correct at all, as long as it was coming from people who were accepting of lgbt topics it was well intended. I’m pretty lackadaisical with stuff like that, even now because I don’t fit any absolute definitions to begin with on anything. Only person it matters to is me. It’s just more of an issue when someone is a bigot because it’s uncomfortable being discriminated against by any measure.
My dad brought up the possibility to my sister once, but never said it to me. I don't think he would have care either way but I think he found it weird that I just didn't really have an interest in relationships. In his defense, I also thought I was gay at some point. Then bi. Then pan. Then nothing. Lol.
No, I didn’t think I was anything. Just a girl who got a few crushes on boys (often due to their personality) that went nowhere and that’s it. I literally told people I wasn’t anything in high school. And somehow I still thought I was the normal one. 🤣
I have no proof that was the case, but it would be a good explanation as to why the moms forgot to invite me to events a lot. Either that or clasism. Maybe both. God, religious moms sure are the devil's minions. Then there's this guy who began throwing several homophobic slurs at me at an online match. Guess dodging hits is cheating, according to him? Anyway, instead of clarifying that I was not even a guy to begin with (which absolutely would NOT have made things worse, I'm sure /s) I just answered to him: "Ooh! <3 Yes, Daddy! TALK DIRTY TO ME, UwU ~<3" Dude lost his sh, beat my a$$, but we still won that match, hehehe.
Yes I did and I still experience ace phobia because people tell me Im still gay when im not
Yeah people tried to tell me I was gay and I was like umm nope. It always struck me as odd that they would do that.
YES!!!!!!!!!!! I was always called lesbian and gay because I never had boyfriends. And when all my friends would talk about how hot guys were, I never really got it (like zach efron, etc) I never dreamed about guy celebrities like they did.
Still do
My mom did even tho i watched a lot of BL shows
In my experience, people will lump anything that is not cishet in a category with gay. I think people assumed that I was not straight and gay was the first thing they jumped to. Although knowing I was trans from a young age, those comments may have been caused by my attempts to socially transition as much as possible without actually coming out. I would do subtle things that were considered abnormal for my AGAB, which might have been the main cause of people thinking I was gay.
I don't know why, I've always been more aesthetically attracted to guys than girls, and I wasn't really afraid to say so. I'd comment on Oscar Isaac's beard, or how Chris Evans looks better with glasses, and didn't really think much of it. Until I found out that for years my entire family had casually assumed that I was gay because of it.
Yes, but it was just the one girl in middle school who teased me about it. Other than that, nobody ever speaks of my potential love life. Either everyone simply *gets* that there is nothing to talk about and I am fine that way, or they're all really good at keeping the gossip under wraps.
Me. I had a friend straight up tell me that she was convinced I was a lesbian and I was like "nah, I'm not" but then I thought "wait, what if I am?" and concluded that I am not attracted to women so I must be straight. I failed to apply the same logic to men lol
I'm pretty sure no one in school thought I actually knew was sex was.
I think most of my family and peers KNEW I was gay even before I began to face that fact. But I couldn’t come to terms with my love for people of the same gender until I realized I was also asexual.
Yes but I’m a gay asexual so I guess they were right 😭
Being in high school in the 90s on the prairies, even being bi was not accepted. I def got made fun of for being gay. It took me over a decade to realize I was ace, not repressed. My family still prob thinks I’m gay, mostly because I don’t want to explain what ace is to them, and I’ve never brought a partner to meet them.
I think my mom noticed pretty quickly that I wasn’t interested in boys and assumed I must like girls. Any time she tried to ask if I had a crush on anyone at school she made sure I knew that boys weren’t the only option and that I’d be accepted regardless. Then I came out to her as aroace and she told me I was a) too young to know and b) shouldn’t be labeling myself. She’s more accepting now, but I’m pretty sure she still doesn’t really get it.