LGBT people: When did you know you fit into the "queer" spectrum?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My dad, who’s trans, tells me that she first learned she was trans, before she even met my mother in high school. But she fell in love with her, and wanted to have a family, so they got married, and were happy for awhile. (Things got rough the last few years, after Dad came out of the closet).

My sister is pansexual, and I think she first realized she liked girls when she started watching Xena: Warrior Princess on first-run television. Incidentally, my sister’s actually one of the most all-loving people I’ve ever met. She’s a friend to all living things. She’s the kind of person who will see an injured baby squirrel and take it to a wildlife rehabilitation center without a second thought. I’m very proud to be her older brother, and I kinda look up to her in many ways.

2

I’m not seeing a debate here. Moved to IMHO (from GD).

3

Oh, right. My bad.

4

In a deep sense, always knew. Realized at 13-14 that I wasn’t interested in the things my friends were getting interested in, though I played along to the extent of having a high school girlfriend and even coming to the verge of coitus with a particularly insistent grad school girlfriend. But as a couple of them later noted to mutual friends, or to me, I just wasn’t all that enthusiastic about making out.

My pubescent interest in sex was very general and vaguely self-centered, around my own genitals, or imagining those of my friends, rather than imagining girl parts. The idea of sex with my male friends wasn’t really present until college, but the idea of intense friendship and devotion to them was there long, long before.

5

I realized I was gay when I was in the 2nd grade, while I was reading an age-appropriate children’s book. This was in 1956-57 (if I got my math right). I knew that if anyone found out how I felt, I would be cast out from society and alone the rest of my life. I tried to deny it even to myself, at least until I became sexually active; I was too afraid to do anything sexual until I was on my own and earning my own living, which was when I was 21.

6

Queer spectrum? That’s something relatively recent. There surely wasn’t anything like a queer spectrum when I came out in my first year in college in 1963. There weren’t even other openly gay people, not hiding the fact that I was attracted to other guys.

I had my first gay fantasy at the age of five - actually a BDSM fantasy. Then, nothing till I hit puberty and raging hormones. But I kept all these feelings to myself until I became sexually active in college.

7

The “spectrum” idea hadn’t become widespread when I was becoming aware of myself (?13-14?). I knew I was attracted to my own sex but from the start, I had internalised the ‘but not that sort’ attitude, which took a long time to overcome.

8

I struggled a lot with it. At this point, I would say I’m probably asexual/demisexual, with what interest I do have directed at other women. For the sake of simplicity, though, if I’m not talking about it in depth, I just say I’m gay or queer.

That made it hard, though, because I didn’t have frequent strong, obvious sexual attraction to women. I knew I wasn’t interested in boys, but had a hard time telling how much of that was normal. Was I a late bloomer? I dated a few boys, but it was always awkward and forced. Was that because it awkward and forced for everyone at that age or was it just me? Did I find women more interesting because women are objectively more interesting or did other people not find that to be the case? Women tend to be pretty open about things like “girl crushes” or talking about how beautiful other girls are, so was my interest just that or something worth putting a label on?

And to complicate things and overshare a bit, I’ve always struggled to fit in and hated myself for it and this was just like… really? REALLY? Another way that I was going to be different? I couldn’t even be “normal” when I was grown up? It just seemed unfair and I was kind of angry about it. I just wanted a plain-vanilla under-the-radar mom/dad/kids family. I didn’t want to have another way of alienating and disappointing my family, another thing that would cause people to single me out, and yet another way I couldn’t relate to everyone else.

It wasn’t until I had a girlfriend- a complicated, screwed-up, beautiful, unhealthy relationship that was definitely a bad idea but also showed me that I was capable of falling in love- that I sort of came out to myself and to my friends.

And now, I’m old enough to be sure that it’s not just a late bloomer thing. I’ve dated a few women and liked them, but I’m just not very driven by sex or romance in the same way most people are. I don’t generally find it very interesting or relatable in music or movies. I’m generally okay with the idea of never getting married or having a serious long-term relationship, although it does sometimes make me feel like I’m missing out. And I still don’t really fit in anywhere for a lot of reasons and sexuality is still one of them.

Also. I want to point out that I’m aware of some of the internalized homophobia in all this- thinking of things as “normal” or “abnormal” and so on. I don’t really think of other people in those terms. This was just about my own sense of belonging and who I thought I would be.

9

I suspected I was bi as soon as I was made aware of the concept in some sex-ed book I found in the library. I really liked girls, but I liked some boys too. Probably 14 or 15 at the time?

I knew for sure in first year Uni, when my first adult sexual experience with a woman was followed two weeks later by my first with a man, and I liked both. That would have been at 18.

10

Oh man, this.

When I was 11 a boy called me a lesbian on the street, and the friend I was with at the time said to me something like “it’s OK, you can be a lesbian, there’s nothing wrong with it,” which was very woke for the 1980s. But that actually made it worse - I’d been called a lesbian loads of times before, but so were loads of girls - it was just an insult, really. This girl really thought I was gay!

So I fought it for ten years. I had boyfriends, dressed in a girly way (still do, weather-dependant), etc. But every so often it would come up that maybe I liked girls, or at least liked girls as well as boys, and I’d fight against the idea because I wanted this one aspect of my life to be normal.

I walked round and round the tables at the LGBTSoc groups at fresher’s fair at uni but never found the courage to actually go and sign up. Went to the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in secret, on my own. Basically I was hoping someone would come up to me and break the ice, see me as one of their own and invite me in to the group, rather than me having to be the one to ask for permission to join - but of course, that’s not how it works.

It didn’t help that I was attracted to men, sort of, although some of it was situational heterosexuality (people often talk about situational homosexuality in boarding schools and prisons, but it can happen the other way round).

And one of the first out lesbians I met in person, aged 17/18 - while dating a man who would now be called genderqueer - was so aggressive about “you MUST like sex with women!” that my teenage self said nuh-uh, I’m not doing what you tell me!

So basically it was gradual, the realisation that it’s only women that matter to me, sexually and romantically. Men can do it for me a bit, but it’s basically like masturbation using someone else’s body. And romantically… no, there was always something missing. I could never picture growing old with them, even if we were perfectly suited in every way, and got on really well.

Then I fell in love… with a woman who I’m pretty sure genuinely is straight, she just presents as gay. We had an oddly intense friendship. I could picture growing old with her. And it was too big a feeling to continue denying, so I came out to myself.

The first time I had sex with a woman (a different woman), which wasn’t even all that great, was still eye-opening. Oh, so that’s what they’re talking about!

Came out to most of my friends a few months later, and have been totally comfortable with my sexuality ever since.

I have occasionally thought about redefining as bi, because it’s not like I’m a Kinsey 6, but I think it would be misleading, and after 20+ years dealing with homophobia as the result of being in same-sex female relationships, I am not going to give up the term lesbian.

11

12 was when I read about it and thought, yup, but had I had the concept earlier I would have identified earlier.

12

I’ve probably “known” I was bi for a long time, but I didn’t honestly accept until last year at the rip old age of 33. Growing up in the 90’s a lot of media basically said that bisexual men didn’t exist. If you were attracted to men, you were gay. I knew I wasn’t gay, so I must be straight. It wasn’t until recent when bisexuality became more accepted and I learned about the “bi-cycle” that I realized it.

And this is now the first time that I came out “publicly”.

13

Bravo! :+1:t4:

14

Welcome to the club!

15

16

Welcome to the rainbow, Bort!

17

well in my case it was a series of incidents as due to being molested when i was young things like this:

When I was 12 I had a babysitter/friend who liked dressing me up as her out-of-town cousin make-up and jewelry included (mom always wondered why I had a pair of pink and purple unicorn earrings in a box on my dresses lol) …I was at her house and she was invited to a party and they didn’t mind if I went … and it was pretty fun … although I had a few screwdrivers we ended up playing spin the bottle and I made out with her and the boy she liked off and on for the rest of the night … who actually didn’t try anything more much to her chagrin

what didn’t make sense to a lof of people even though I was mollested by a male when I was very young I liked boys too …