This has been going thru my head for some time. Can you honestly say you’re bi, gay, straight, or other without ever having sex? I ask because a person I used to know is convinced she’s a lesbian but she’s never had sex of any type, and I’m not sure what to think of that.
I’m confused. I’ve always thought that yeah, you can have feelings toward the same/other sex or no feelings at all, but how can you say you’re one, the other or both without having experienced anything?
I’m confused.
[Mods, if this is in the wrong place, please move. Wasn’t sure where this question would go, exactly.]
One can have a physical reaction to others without having to have sex with them, nor even masturbate to their image. A slight tingling 'bout the groin region and so on.
And I mean if you want to be pedantic, can anyone be certain of their sexuality even have they’ve had sex? You might have had 80 girlfriends in your life and been happily married to a woman for the last 30 years, never had the slightest reaction to a male in all that time, and then you see Brad Pitt for the first time and get an erection. It’s entirely possible that sexual preference is wholly fluid for the majority of us (at the moment of birth), but that there’s a lot of pressure and practical benefit to dating the opposite sex so we never even develop our ability to have interest in our own sex.
Ultimately, it’s best to not worry about it. If you like someone, like em. If you don’t, don’t.
Yes, you know towards whom you’re attracted quite early. Not need for actual sex. You’ll just notice whom you’re attracted to, fall in love with, lust for.
At least in most cases. I know there are late revelations, and this always puzzled me.
Ditto SageRat. I also propose that having sex is overrated specifically in regard to gaining clarity about the range of one’s orientation.
There will be jokes, I suppose, so I will finish the job by saying I even think having sex is overrated generally. The problem is that evolution cares how good you think sex is going to be, more than how good you think it was.
Is that all your own work Napier? because I am going to steal that and pass it off as my own pithy wisdom if that’s OK with you.
A lovely summary of evolutionary concepts in a sentence that manages to hint at being crap at sex, what’s not to like?
That’s what magazines and catalogs are for. I started noticing the women in the Sears catalogs when I was 11. Cheryl Tiegs was their spokesperson and had a line of Sears clothes. I liked Chery a lot.
The guys in their boxers bored me.
A 1966 Sears Catalog Cover featuring Cheryl Tiegs. Cheryl was every teen boys wet dream back then.
I’m having trouble taking the OP seriously. Unless you’ve had sex at a very early age, or were the victim of sexual abuse, don’t you have desires long before acting on them? I had my first same-sex fantasy at the age of 5, and by the time I reached puberty, was seemingly spending half my life fantasizing about other boys . . . and not even once did I fantasize about a girl. But I didn’t actually have sex until I was 18.
I can’t speak for straight people, but among gay people my experience is fairly common.
As a gay male, who’s never had sex with a woman, I’ve been asked “If you never had sex with a woman, how do you know you won’t like it.” I answer, “Have you had sex with someone of the same sex.” They answer “No,” and I say, “Well then how do YOU know YOU won’t like it.”
Funny it don’t work that way huh?
Seriously though, I knew when I was 4 years old I was gay.
The confusing thing is I would say most people are not like me. They are not strictly gay or strictly straight. I’ll say, I can see a woman and think, “She’s pretty,” but no woman is sexually attractive to me.
I think for most people there are degrees. Some are more attracted to men then woman or vice versa.
This is especially true of younger people. In my day, no man would ever had sex unless he was overwhelmingly attracted to men. Even if you had a small attraction, you’d run with it.
But now-a-days, kids are like “Well who cares.” Or “I’ll try it an see.” Since there is not the same stigma attached to being gay now as back when I was a kid, they will. I’ve known young people who experimented with being gay or being straight and the reaction is always very, “indifferent,” like “It was OK but not for me.”
I think I am strictly straight. Aside from never having fantasized about having with another male, I cannot get my mind around the idea. I am not a gay basher, just it is not for me. But for as long as I can remember, certainly going back to HS, I had sex fantasies with women. I still get that feeling when I see a beautiful, well constructed female. I didn’t need to have sex to know that.
The main problem I have with the idea that you just know is how many homosexual and bisexual individuals don’t know until after they’ve experimented. Or else what would be the point of experimenting?
I have a friend who is going through the experimental stage right now. Despite being attracted to women all his life, he got drunk on a trip to vegas, and he now thinks he’s gay. At best he could be bi. But with the number of people who temporarily go gay in prison, I’m really not sure our idea of sexuality is even accurate. For all I know, straight people can, in certain circumstances, enjoy sex with the same sex.
I think that fits better than the idea that 70% of all people are actually bi.
I think the key point in the question is “can YOU be sure.”
I think different people require different levels of proof depending on their experiences.
In my case, I was hopelessly attracted to butch lesbians for a long time, so I thought I might be attracted to the butch part, and thus be gay. Later, I discovered I was attracted to the lesbian part, and my mind was geared to find girls that had no interest in me (i.e. playing hard to get) were more attractive.
I first noticed being attracted to boys in kindergarten, yet didn’t have sex until after high school. In all that time, I never questioned whether I might be a lesbian, and haven’t since, even though I’ve never had sex with a woman (no that one time doesn’t count, it was a threesome!). It’s quite possible to know and be secure with your sexual orientation long before ever having had sex.
But it is also possible to just not be sure. And maybe you’ve got a low sex drive or are anorgasmic or whatever. It is possible to not know for sure or to have something happen that makes you confused for a bit… So I go with “it’s on a spectrum and those who are the most sure (either way) are in a different place(emotionally, spiritually*, psychologically) than people who are not sure.”
I had a lesbian strongly come on to me in college. She looked just like Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh). And she confused the hell out of me. It’s not that I wasn’t attracted to my boyfriend; it’s that she raised all kinds of questions in my head: did I send out some kind of lesbian vibe that I was unaware of? If so, what was it? Would this happen again? What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to embarrass her(or god forbid cause a scene), but I also was horribly embarrassed by it. I had never come across anything like that before-especially in Biology lab, which is where it occurred. We had a (very) few openly gay boys in my HS–well, none really publicly out, but it was strongly suspected and they were tolerated just fine, but absolutely no lesbians; not even a hint or rumor.
Keep in mind this was 1980–long before the kind of sex experimentation that goes on today was prevalent or accepted. My BF was long distance and I had not yet made any good friends on campus (this was like the second week of school). Who was I going to talk to about it? It was freaky. I got over it, but it made me wonder. I will never know what made her come up to me, put her arms around me and kiss me on the lips while feeling me up in lab, in front of others, and calling me “Blondie” like it was some kind of nickname.**
I share this just to show that IMO, yes, while you can be sure of your sexuality prior to being sexually active, sometimes it’s not so clear cut. Maybe the not so clear will become bisexual, maybe not. Who knows?
*and by this I don’t mean some kind of spiritual crisis. I only mean that when you are not certain of X, you may well question Y, Z and everything else. IMO, God doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight. He is also not concerned in the slightest with your virginity, but that’s another thread.
**You know what? It just occurred to me that she might have been mentally ill in some way. That is truly bizarre behavior. :smack: It has nothing to do with her being a lesbian (if she even was one). I think I will ask an RN I work with (who is a lesbian) about it. God, how stupid am I, to have wondered about it all these years. I mean, I’m not up at night about it, but I still remember it–and not in a “ooh, I wish I had explored that…” way.
I had a woman I’d never met before come up to me at a dance club once and start kissing me. I kissed her back just because I was so startled by it and didn’t know how to react. It was very strange. I got away from her and sort of latched onto a nearby guy so she wouldn’t come back.
I’m stealing that too, Napier. If I write it into a song I’ll give you co-writing credit.
I’ve known I was straight ever since I was 6 years old and thought the little blonde girl next door was really cute and how I’d really like to see her pussy. And that was several years before I had actual sex.
