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when i id’ed as pan(12-17) i thought that i didnt really like ppl knowing that i liked men or liked/was dating a man bc i grew up on tumblr where being gay was cool and cishets were lame but as it turned out i didnt actually like men (tw csa mention (not graphic) in thread below)
i had crushes on every boy i spoke to and i would imagine them securely mostly and some of them were actually attractive but the ones that weren’t i convinced myself they were. the thing i enjoyed imagining most? them betraying me in some way and me breaking up with them
when i liked a girl i thought of her sexually yes but not prevalently. mostly it was stuff like library dates, grocery shopping, raising kids, growing old. i didn’t flit from liking one girl to another at the drop of a hat. when i liked a girl it was exclusively, pervasively her.
the difference was that the boys i liked were all stand ins, idealized projections onto interchangeable people to serve as outlets for a hypersexuality resulting from early childhood trauma and exposure to sexual content/behavior, i rarely thought about them otherwise
and with the girls i liked my hypersexuality was still there but my romantic feelings for them were present and overwhelming even in the absence of sexual thought
i think, that living in a highly sexualized household as young child aware to the fact that my mother had multiple (abusive) male sexual partners around me that she referred to as “friends” but also referred to women that were not sexual partners as “friends”...
... but at the same time being told that sex was only for a man and a woman who were in love, i could not develop the ability to distinguish between platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships with males because they had all been intertwined together...
...and because i witnessed abuse from these intertwined relationships that were supposed to be good, i romanticized experiencing this abuse, and for a majority of my life felt unsafe around men yet associated them directly with sexuality because that was all i had been exposed to
and then when i got around 7-8 any mention by others of me romantically connected with boys was humiliating and distressing even though i actually felt attraction because through viewing and experiencing trauma it felt equal to forced submission, a loss of my autonomy
with women, i had the chance to learn to distinguish between platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships bc i hadnt been exposed to that dynamic with women, so i developed normally with a clear distinction between each relationship
i do think this raises the question as to whether my sexuality is nature vs nurture but i don’t really care because identifying myself as sexually available to men very obviously made me uncomfortable and for me being a lesbian and lesbian culture is not only not distressing...
but it’s actively affirming, as compared to identifying as pan/bi where it felt wrong but the best i could do, because i didn’t know why it felt wrong
‘queer’ was better bc it was ambiguous and implied an attraction to women while not necessarily implying an attraction to men, i could be inclusive w/o defining the limits of that inclusivity, and when ppl asked who i was attracted to i said “whatever” and never “men/women/nb”
additionally when i was asked that when i identified as pan/bi, i found it much more palatable to say “all genders” rather than “men/women/nb”, which would explicitly claim attraction to men as compared to implicitly.
but when i had exposure to lot of lesbians present in my social media, whether as mutuals interacting or as a nonparticipating follower, i idolized them. the lesbians felt like the cool kids, the heathers of sexual identity. unbothered, golden, but unattainable, never mine
i didn’t know why i was obsessed with lesbians, but i knew that i wanted to be one very badly and i couldn’t, because i’d gone on a date with a boy last week and wanted to go on another one even though we’d already stopped talking.
that was my problem, i figured out. these goddamn boys keeping me from being the ultimate dyke. i knew i wanted to be a lesbian but i was scared that if i even wore the name i would still want to go on that date, and everyone, especially the lesbians, would think i were a fool.
but my queer label already felt dead, no longer mine to wear, and ‘lesbian’ was the sword in the stone, if the stone was blatantly shaped like my face and engraved with my name, so i said to myself, quietly, alone, “i am a lesbian.” and i said it again. and again. and again.
it felt like pop rocks, sweet and electrifying, an unfamiliar placing of syllables on the tongue but ones that made me want to dance. i thought about the boy, did i still like him? no, of course not! i was a lesbian.
still, i kept it to myself, scared that those feelings would return when i wasn’t paying attention. later i found the comphet doc by chance, and i had the total revelation above. when i ran into a boy i’d been involved with earlier, i noticed my heart didnt flutter like before.
when i realized the term lesbian was mine to keep, nothing had ever been so empowering. i had to mention it to everyone; i still do. in such a short time, it’s become the biggest part of my identity and my most integral community. it’s made me so much more confident.
and yes, there are still boys i’d make out with— but that’s it! and it’s only because kissing is fun and i like it and i’m touch starved. but i’m still a lesbian! and i love girls! and nb ppl! and boobies! and butches! and femmes! but let me mention butches again! i just. girls
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