Years and team? GMU here, 1999-2001 or so.
I figured it out four years ago this November and have been telling people since.
Discovering my sexuality and coming out happened over a period of years. There was that familiar sense of “difference” in my childhood, of course. Didn’t know what it was then, but it is one of those things that I look back and say, “Oh Yes! That’s why I missed my school buddy so much and got terribly depressed at the beginning of the summer.” That type of thing. Then came the schoolboy crushes in jr high and high school, and with them, confusion and denial. Bigtime denial. But at 17 I just could not deny my hormones. I went to Philly and found an all male porno theater. For a couple of years, that theater and local adult bookstores were my sexual outlet. Coming out was a different thing though.
I think the process of coming out is a very slow one. The first person we come out to is ourselves. I can remember the first time I said out loud, “I am gay”. It was a very dramatic moment for me. The next person I came out to was actually my first boyfriend. Both of us were very closeted at the time. Eventually he left me for his female college sweetheart. It was an amicable break-up actually. I was chafing to come out anyway. I was tired of hiding. It was too emotionally draining.
At this time, I was renting a bedroom from a friend of mine. She had a gay son and was very accepting. She knew, but didnt mention it. Anyway, she decided to work with a local agency that placed mentally challenged individuals in private homes for care. This individual’s name was Marilyn. She had been severely abused when she was very young. At first she was sweet and willing to learn and adapt to our household. I worked with her on several things, including learning how to get to and from her day work/care place, a few blocks away. It was a fun and loving environment and I thought nothing of the pecks on the cheek and hugs she gave me. Then things got worse. She developed a huge crush on me and even become obsessed with me. Her behavior became much more physically aggressive. She was reprimanded. She retaliated by telling her caseworker that we were having sex. Big trouble!
The caseworker came to my workplace, and told me about the accusations. I had enough. I came out to her. I came out to my friends and family soon after that. The last person I came out to was my Mom. That was the most difficult. She loves me though and is very accepting now. It took some adjustment, but mostly on my part. The reaction I got the most was “Yeah? I knew.” I have been open and honest about my sexuality ever since. It is too tiring to lie about such a thing anymore.
I honestly don’t remember ever having any kind of sexual feelings growing up. I wasn’t attracted to any girls or boys when I was in public school. I suppose I thought of myself as “default straight;” I couldn’t be gay because I wasn’t attracted to girls at all, but I wasn’t much into guys either. I had more important things to worry about, like trying not to freak out during class. Also, all the kids in school were pretty unattractive. Okay, so I’m supposed to choose between redneck boys and hillbilly girls? I’ll take asexuality, thanks.
Sometime during college I started having some sexual feelings, and realized pretty early on that I was attracted to both guys and girls. It wasn’t a huge deal to me, I’d sort of always known even if I’d never been really sure, and my family isn’t religious (though they are damn uptight) so I didn’t feel any Catholic guilt about it. I also thought that since I was more attracted to guys than girls, that it wasn’t too important to tell anyone. Also, I didn’t want anyone to think that I was just pretending to be bisexual because it’s “cool” to be a bisexual girl. (Even though nothing I do is ever considered cool.)
I’ve recently come to the conclusion, like Miller, that I’m probably more 50/50 bi than 80/20 or some such thing, and I’d really like to get involved with a girl, but since I’m in a relationship I don’t feel as though I can act on my desires (even though my boyfriend has hinted that he’d be cool with such a thing). There’s also the fact that I have no idea of how I should come on to a girl (like, I’m even more clueless than when it comes to flirting with guys, and I’m pretty clueless about that, I’ve only ever had one boyfriend and he came on to me), and what if I do that and she’s not even gay/bi? It’s so hard to tell, unless I went for one of the stereotypical butch lesbians. I don’t want to get beat up or anything. I’m uncomfortable at bars and parties, so I don’t have that as a venue for scoping out hot chicks.
I’m also not into a lot of “gay” things, and while I know that the vast majority of gay/bi people aren’t into things like musical theater and women’s basketball, those are the kinds of things the gay club at my college sponsored. Most of those kids were really into being gay, too, like their sexuality was the only thing of importance in their life. They were all walking stereotypes. I don’t want to be like that, but I’ve never been exposed to any “normal” gay people. Then again, I’m not exposed to people that much period.
I haven’t come out to anyone except my boyfriend, though I did mention something about the Kinsey scale to my mom and how I’d be something like a two or three on it, although I don’t think she understood what I meant. My parents are so uptight about sex period that I don’t think they’d take it very well, if I were to tell them. I mean, hell, they were upset enough when I came home with a boy.
I’m still trying to figure that out, other than the whole joking flirty nature, and my best suggestion is to just transpose stuff for how it would go on a guy. Beyond that I can’t tell you, though; doing some mental transposition I just got the image of … something I wish I’d thought up in the privacy of my own room.
[sub]Why I tell you people these things I will never know.[/sub]
I realized that I was bisexual when I was about fifteen. I had developed at that time an insane crush on a female friend of mine. I confessed it to her and she surprised me by responding in kind. She was bisexual too but had known it, in her words, forever. We had a secret sexual relationship for a few months. To my family and the friends we didn’t have in common, we were friends; to her family and our mutual friends, we were a couple. I came out to various friends over the course of a few years. Only one member of my family knows, as far as I know. I told the cousin that I am closest in age to. Despite the background of that side of the family (they went from drinkin’, druggin’, hell-raisers to very strict Pentecostals while my dad and his siblings were growing up), she is completely accepting of me. The only thing is that when I told her–we were both a few months from our sixteenth birthdays–she was somewhat surprised as I was what you might call “boy crazy.” (Do people even still say that?) I told her I still was.
I haven’t told my parents. I’m not quite sure what my mom would say, but I know most of her relatives would likely be disgusted. My dad would be horrified and would instantly drag me off for re-programming, intensive prayer, what have you. For a while he thought I was gay (perhaps the constant chatter about what boy I thought was cute stopped for more than a minute) and would lecture me about how I was destined for hell if I “decided to be a queer.”
I am out to many people but not family. I vacillate between thinking that they don’t really need to know, since I’ll probably end up Spinster with Many Cats, and wanting to out myself to everyone. I have never been all that brave a person. If it somehow came out that they already knew, I would almost be relieved.
My experience is a whole lot like that of TeaElle, except that I knew I was really, really attracted to some women/girls by the time I was 15 or 16. I never really put a name to it, though - even now I’m not sure “bisexual” is a label I apply to myself. I had a couple of very intense emotional relationships with girls in high school, and one intense physical relationship with a woman, but I ended up falling in love with and marrying a man by the time I was 20. We’re pretty monogamous, so it’s really been a moot point for a long time. I’m not sure I could put a percentage on it; I notice both men and women sexually (if you asked me whether I’d consider sleeping with someone I’ve met if the situation were right, I could almost always tell you without having to think it over), but I’m only truly attracted to certain individuals. Sometimes they’re men and sometimes they’re women. Since I tend to be attracted to people who seem to be attracted to me, that means there do tend to be more men than women, but I’m fairly picky about either sex.
I was always honest with my husband about how I felt, but I didn’t tell friends when I was younger. As I got older, I became more and more open about who and what I feel I am with most of my friends, so by the time I was 30 almost all of them knew. I’m very vocal about gay rights issues, but I must admit I’ve taken the safe road with people like the parents of my kids’ friends and with my family. With family, it’s not so much that I’m not willing to let them know that I’m not straight, but I know that they would immediately begin to worry about the state of my marriage, and I’d rather not get them started. With the parents of my kids’ friends, however, I must say that I’m not honest because I do worry that my children would end up being ostracized, and I do often feel guilty that I have the dubious luxury of being able to present an essentially false front.
That’s pretty much how it was for me, and from the other guys I’ve talked to about it, they had similar experiences. One friend said that he always felt like he had a big scarlet “F” on his forehead. I always imagined it as a big neon sign floating over my head saying “HOMO” and an arrow pointing down.
One of the first people I told, we started talking about that very thing. I said something like, “All this time it’s been such a huge deal to me because I thought everybody suspected something! I can’t believe I had everyone fooled all this time.” The best response I got was, “Uh, it’s not exactly that you had us all fooled. It’s that we really didn’t care enough about it one way or the other to think about it.” I wish it could be such a non-issue for everyone, especially for people who are still in the closet. It really doesn’t have to be such a big deal.
Well, I first had a thought that I might be bi when I was in high school, when one of my friends came out of the closet, but was willing to deny it to myself and the world, until I was making out with my first boyfriend this summer and was like, gee, kissing you is nice, but I think I’d rather kiss girls. Didn’t tell him, though, as I didn’t want to hurt him. Broke up for other reasons, shortly thereafter.
The first person I told was one of my friends, whose response was “I can’t wait to go clubbing with you in San Francisco.” I nearly died of laughter. My close friends all know and don’t really care either way, I haven’t told my parents. My dad would be like, that’s nice dear, now help me with dinner. My mother would probably disown me, but that wouldn’t be so bad, as she’s close to doing it anyway for reasons that have nothing to do with my sexuality. I just haven’t got around to telling them.
Had my first sexual fantasy at age 5.
Put 2 and 2 together around age 13.
First had sex my first semester in college, the night before my calculus final.
The next 17 years are a blur.
Finally accepted myself at age 35.
I went through all of the standard stuff. I had feelings towards boys since I was pretty young, but I always brushed them off. I rememberone magazine ad that was in the TV guide when I was a kid. I wanted just to sit and stare at it. NOt because I was attracted to him, but just because he “looked cool”. It made sense at the time, and continued to for the next eight or nine years. All through elementary school and high school I was firmly in the closet. Not just with everybody eles, but even with myself.
I had homosexual fantasys involving dang near all of my male friends, but I never thought twice about it. I didn’t think that it was gay, and I didn’t feel guilty about it at all. But I was straight. In fact I only remember one time when I thought taht I might be gay. I was walking down my high school hall (I was in Grade Eleven or Twelve). It turned into a borderline panic attack. I wasn’t unpopular in high school. In order to be unpopular, some one would have to know who I was. I was a wallflower. No close friends, just kind of drifted around. Didn’ help that I was way over weight, and looked like alimp of uncooked dough. I had zero self esteem. Dealing with being gay would have killed me. I don’t hesistate to say if I had come out, I would have killed myself. Which is weird, because I was never “taught” that being gay was wrong, outside ofwhat one hears in the halls of your average high school.
Looking back, I’m schocked that I never realized. I was deeply, deeply in love with my friend from elementary untill we drifted apart in high school. I can remember in elementrat school walking around the playground while all of the boys played soccer with my umbrella on my shoulder, and my wrist limper than a wet noodle ala Peggy Bundy from married with children fame.
My “closest” friend in high school was a very conservagtive christian, and a huge homophobe. Just the mere mention of “fags” and he would shudder in disgust. We were never close, but when you have no friends and are intensly introverted, you take what you can get. Looking back, I think that he was pretty far into the closet, judging by his behaviour. For him, I wish the best.
A confounding factor during this time was the fact that i was attracted to women. I always wanted a girlfriend. Rather, I wanted to be loved, believing that if I could find some one else who loved me, I could love myself. Yeah, wrong on that one. Big time.
By the time I hit my second year of University, I was ready to come out as Bi. At least to myself. I still like women, and I still wanted a girlfriend, but I was ready the entertain the thought of men. It took me another year to realize that no matter how beautiful I thought some women were, I still didn’t want to have sex with them. Cock was my thing. This all came to a head (heh) during a performance of the Vagina Monolouges I was attending with My friend Carli, her friend, and my bi friend Rob (who I had come out to early as bi). I had weird feelings for Carli, and I still do, but that is neither here nor there. So there you go. The Vagina Monolouges will turn you gay. I have proof.
During all of this coming out, I started to feel more nad more like I was finding out who I was. I’m out to most of my friends. My close friends know, and others who are less clsoe may or may not, I haven’t said, but mostly because I don’t feel the need to come out to everybody I meet. If it come up, then no biggie. I haven’t told my parents. i’ll do that when I meet somebody, abd it becomes germaine. I’m not too afraid of them disowning me. I live on my own, but in the same town as them, so there is some closeness. I think the big thing is that I just don’t want to talk about sex or things related to sex with my parents. Just too weird and embarassing. Its a hang up, but its mine hang up. I’ll deal with it in time.
But even after coming out as gay, some thing just felt a bit off. I’m now trying to come to terms with the fact that I may be transgendered. I’m not sure how to feel about that or what to do, but it’s something I’m working through. Frankly, it rather confusing. But this coud be my third time coming out . Dang. You would think that I would have gotten this out of my system all at once.
And for the record, I started coming out at 19 or so, and I’m now 23, so I figure I don’t nessecarily have to have everything figured out right yet.
Dang. I didn’t realize I wrote that much. See what happens when you let me talk about myself. 
I’ve finally settled on being “not heterosexual”. I’m not sure what, exactly, I am still.
First put a name to it when I was 12 - I clearly remember being horrified when I suddenly realized I was ‘bisexual’.
Insert a few years of denial. At 16 I came out to a friend who was openly queer. He’s the only person who knows (IRL).
There are more days when not when I truly think I’d give up just about anything to be straight. I’m still (obviously) struggling with it. My family doesn’t know, nor will they ever.
(I’m one of those people who’s perfectly content to stay closeted to those I know in real life, and just ‘pass’ as completely and totally straight). Coming out to one person didn’t make me feel any better, really.
Wow! We have more in common than just jelly!
I’ve always been attracted to both genders (“Sexual preference?” “Yes, I’d prefer it!”) - just depends on who I think is most attractive . I’ve never had an issue with liking girls, but I’ve actually often wished I were “gayer”; it would be less complicated. Lesbians, at least in San Diego, seem to prefer someone unambiguously gay. And lesbians are what I like, usually the butcher, the better. Anyway, I always had very romantic friendships with my best (girl)friends, slept with lots and lots of everybody, had a couple of serious boyfriends, but my longest relationships have been with women. I always say I “came out” when I was 25 - but that’s just when I started going to bars and met my first very serious girlfriend. I’ve been with my current girlfriend for about 6 or 7 years, but we’re breaking up 
. I’m 39.
Eve, I had no idea! ::clinks glass toasting a fellow Uber-Femme::
Oh, yeah, to answer the OP: I’ve never had any negative reactions from anyone (that I know of) from telling them I’m gay. I was so odd within my extended family that by the time I came out, nobody was surprised by anything about me anymore. (They’re not here; they’re in Delaware). I was more upset about finding myself attracted to a guy after my relationship with my first girlfriend. That was awful. I do think bisexual is harder to deal with these days than either gay or straight. But transgenders have it worst of all, IMO.
I remember the thread where Eve came out, entitled, naturally, “All About Eve.” I also remember that someone snidely referred to her as “that transexual who writes.”
I didn’t know Miller and TeaElle were bi, though I knew both were really queer-positive.
Like everyone else, I have always known that my instincts were not in sync with what i was told they were supposed to be. My earliest sexual feelings arose when i watched pro wrestling on TV–I couldn’t take my eyes off the muscles. Being a bright kid I figured out that I had caught “gay.” I wanted to get rid of it because I was told that gay men wanted to wear dresses and act like girls, and I was an athletic, rugged boy who wanted nothing to do with “those sick queers.”
When I was 14, I developed a mad crush on a guy who worked in my mom’s office… He was 21, blond, muscular, and gorgeous. We started hanging oiut together, and my mom thouhght that was fine that I had an older male model to spend time with since I had no father. Brad invited me to his dorm room to spend the night, and that was my ahem first time.
Still I was able to tell myself that Brad and I were just friends and that what we did wans’t “queer” because we were both masculine, regular guys. In college I joined an evangelical Christian group in the hope that if I prayed and went to church, God would clean me of those urges. That just intensified my self-loathing as I would go to Louisville on the weekends to hook up at gay bars, then go back to college and sing hymns at the Christian chapel meetings. What sort of gets me now is that I now realize how hot I was when I was younger and that I had had shots at guys in school but was too chicken to take advantage of the opportunities. At the time I felt like an ugly duckling that nobody would ever, ever love.
After college, I kept doing the Christian thing, even working for A Christian Ministry in the National Parks, who sent me to Yellowstone and Death Valley to lead church services for park employees. I couldn’t reconcile who I was with my idea of who I was supposed to be.
When I was 23, I got busted in New Orleans for having sex with a guy in his car in the Quarter. The cop didn’t arrest us, but he made fun of me for wearing a Jesus t-shirt while having gay sex. That just made me realize what a hypocrite I was being, so I decided that if I was stuck with being gay, then I’d better just accept it.
I sill had a lot of internalized homophobia that took me years to deal with. I first told my sister, but asked her not to tell anyone else. She immediately told my mother, one of the many reasons I don’t speak to my sister. My mom freaked out at first, but later she came to terms with it and now she’s very proud of her gay son.
Now I’m out, proud, and partnered for the last three years.
Right now, (I’m a freshman in college), and Henderson State University
My coming out process seems relatively easy, at least from this end (naturally at the time, it seemed like OMG the w0rst c0m1ng 0ut EVAR!!!11one).
I never was very sexually attracted to anyone as a kid, apart from the usual fooling around. (Once some kids and I were playing truth or dare, and someone asked me who I would ‘get homo with’ in my class if I had to pick, and I basically picked the one who bothered me the least.)
I had crushes on three girls during my grade school career, but they were always very chivalrous/adoring/asexual-type crushes. (Nowadays, I have the same kinds of feelings for my fag hags. ^_^)
From listening to the news, I knew that gay was what Svend Robinson was and that some people didn’t seem to like him because of that, and from the various all-about-puberty books I also knew that homosexuality (whatever that was) was natural, and that some people have homosexual fantasies, and so forth; my mom seems to recall me supporting same-sex marriage at that age. But I didn’t have much of a concept of it – much like I didn’t have much of a concept of anything involving interpersonal relationships. I remember wondering about what it would mean to be gay (to the extent I understood it). (This is all in middle school before I moved to Montreal at 13.)
Two odd incidents stand out in my mind during that age; once I was driven to ask my best friend if he thought he was gay; he said ‘no,’ and then asked me, and I said ‘maybe.’ Another time some kids were teasing me in the locker room, and asked me if I was gay, and I said, ‘How do I know until I try both kinds and figure out which one I like better?’ All of which suggests one of two things: either 1) complete confusion, or 2) some kind of subliminal inkling.
Anyway, I then hit puberty. I had first seen straight porn at a comparatively young age, when I was heavily into BBSes, but it never interested me too much. However, when we got the internet and I first stumbled on to gay porn, I was intrigued and scared. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I didn’t know I was gay. My brother caught me with some, so he knew I was gay before I did.
Finally, when I was 15, we were at my grandfather’s for Christmas, and I was sleeping in the basement guest room. I had a dream in which I rescued a guy at my school from bullies, and he gave me a hug. I wrote in my journal, “I didn’t mind” - but it was a little more intense than that, and finally it clicked: I liked guys, I was gay.
Well, I thought, all I have to do is keep it under my hat for another four months until high school ends and I’ll be home free. Four months.
This lasted about six weeks. At this time I was having a lot of problems and conflict with my dad. One day I was desperately trying to think this over, when he came and started lecturing me about something else. Finally I snapped, brushed him off with whatever excuse I could think of, and ran and wrote in my journal: “I am not of the marrying sort.”
Now this journal was one we had to keep for my English teacher, Ms. Biggs – a radical feminist in a stuffy all-boys private school. We had the choice to let her read it and make comments or, if it was too personal, just have her mark that we did it. I was desperate to tell anyone, and I figured she would keep my confidence, so I screwed up my courage and asked her to read it, but not to give it back at lunch any more in case someone grabbed it and read it. Bless her heart, she was extremely accepting and reassuring, and I wrote to her several more times about the same issue.
A few weeks later I came out to my mom, who had no problem except for the usual “I’m so worried about how the world will treat you,” which after all is her job. I ended up staying in the closet otherwise until the end of high school, although I did write some perfectly terrible porn about three hot guys at school. I took a girl to the prom, a very nice young lady whose mother insisted she be back at midnight (“No problem, ma’am”).
Finally, a few weeks after graduating, I went over to the house of a guy who had always put up with me at school. We got high (my first time) and I came out to him (also the first time). He was accepting and we chatted about it for a while.
Around the time I started cegep, I also got on an e-mail list for gay youth, which is where I met andygirl. At cegep, not knowing what else to do, I auditioned for a part in the school play. One of the people running the auditions was a very stereotypical square-bottomed dyke named Randi, who was wearing a rainbow maple leaf pin. My heart leapt up, and seeing her the next day I asked her if I could talk to her. (The first gay person I ever met! Ah, memories…)
She pointed me in the direction of one of the school counsellors, the amazing Lesley, who in turn pointed me to the gay group at school and to Project 10. GAY PEOPLE! I had a blast. I met Hamish, who taught me huge quantities of stuff, and I came out to my dad (who took a little while to sort things out).
In 1998 I lost my virginity, came out at school, started going out to clubs, had three boyfriends (including my first true love), helped run a gay youth social group that ran all over the city, came out to my extended family, and took over running the gay group at school.
And now I am able to be with you today. 
I’ll make mine short and sweet:
Who I Am - 24 year old lesbian.
When I Knew - Always.
When I Came Out - I was never really “in.” [A very long, complicated story that’s really quite dull.]
My name and “queer-positive” in the same sentence really made my day. (Really, Hamish, thank you.) I try hard. I really do. I hope that if I’m ever seen being anything else on these boards that some of you here will kick my virtual butt over it, too.