SurrenderDorothy started this thread, concurrently running, and I thought it made sense to pose the same question to folks other than just gayfolk.
Here’s SurrenderDorothy’s questions in modified form, trying to preserve the spirit of the original questions but rephrased for the other audience:
I know for a lot of people, this is a stupid question. It was just obvious. It’s pretty simple. That isn’t the case for everyone, though. So for those who didn’t find it obvious, how did you know you were [the sexual identity that you currently claim, be it straight or some other alterantive to being gay]?
How did you know whether you were gay or in denial? How did you know if you were straight or something else other than gay or some subconscious part of you wanted attention? Or wanted to shock your mother? Or wanted to be different, or to be like people you admired? How did you know if your level of attraction to the sex & gender you are attracted to was more than would constitute “just appreciated” in the sense that when presumably straight girls talk about other women and their bodies and how hot they find them all the time? How did you know it wasn’t a reaction to bad experiences with gay people of your sex that made you wary of them and you’re mistaking wariness for disinterest? Or that you weren’t just going through a phase?
I had sexual fantasies about girls when I was maybe 4 or 5. I had my first girlfriend when I was 6. When I was a little older, and my friends thought that girls had cooties, I adored them. (The girls, not the guys.)
I knew when I realized that seeing an attractive female body, nude or not, gave me that special little mental tingle (and certain other, more physical, tingles), while seeing a male body did not.
I didn’t, in an entirely clear manner, for a long time. I knew I was attracted to females but I had no way of knowing if what I felt was the same as what straight guys felt. I knew I was a male but I had my doubts about whether that made me one of the guys and therefore a straight guy. I knew I was more like girls than I was like the other guys. I wasn’t sure what it all meant.
I wasn’t entirely sure. Everyone seemed to expect me to be and I did wonder if I was in denial. Maybe my attraction to females wasn’t the kind of attraction that led to sex and some other kind that I wasn’t paying attention would eventually lead to some great “aha” discovery about how my real sexual identity was going to involve being with males, even though I didn’t find male bodies sexy. I knew there was more to sex and sexuality than what you like to look at.
There was a little bit of “I am tired of people acting like they know all about me and how I am” and I did occasionally wonder if on some level I was just being contrary.
Umm, mostly because there was an almost kinky component of it, a seriously delighted kind of obsession with their crotchal areas and how they are shaped, and wanting to touch that. I didn’t tell anyone about it as a kid but as I got older and it was still there I figured that meant I wanted to have sex with them.
That was also a possibility I worried about, yeah. It was pushed on me a lot and there are predatory and invasive people among the gayfolk just as there are among other populations and yes there were some bad experiences and they did make me wary. Moreover, I was kind of secretly terrified that whether I liked it or not that being gay was somehow “what happens to guys like you”, that no relationship with a female could ever work, … that was creepy too and also made for a lot of wariness.
Phase? No. However and whatever the heck I was, it was an ongoing phenomenon stretching across years and years, nothing phaselike about it.
Huh. I don’t know. I remember having sexual feelings as far back as 4 or 5, but let me tell you, they were quashed fast. I remember my first real crush on a guy when I was 12. At the time I hadn’t even heard of lesbians or gays, so I don’t know if I ever even realized there was another way to be until much, much later.
ETA: Now that I think about it, I had a bit of a crush on a cousin, too. He was a second cousin, and many years older than me - but not that much. If I was 7 or 8, he was probably 20. I don’t remember much about that either though.
I’m kind of an extreme case in that I don’t find women attractive for the most part. So, the first time I “noticed” it was realizing that other people (men and women) perceive women as sexually attractive – I essentially was confused by the idea that women are attractive.
In other respects I was basically a tomboy. But I was like only boys are pretty .
When I acted like girls were gross when I was a tiny tot I actually harbored a dark and terrible secret: I liked them.
When I was a bit older and sneaking around to look at porn on my grandparents’ computer I once clicked on a link to a gay video, just to see if I liked it. I didn’t.
Apart from the whole “What else would I be?” thing, I think it was in fifth grade, when Denise Klink started to develop. Yikes! Had to keep my backpack in front of my crotch if she was around.
I had my sexual identity crisis in middle school. Until then, I hadn’t thought of anyone(boys or girls) in a sexual way. Four godawful years passed in which both the first and last thing on my mind was sex. I was aroused by anything, and gender didn’t matter. My guess is that I was so starved for attention and love(I know I had plenty, but it didn’t feel like it at the time) that I would have settled for anyone who was interested in me that way. Luckily for me, nobody was(And I don’t blame them. I smelled.)
But when I became a more social person in high school, I found I enjoyed looking at girls, talking with girls, occasionally flirting with them when I had the guts. Wheras I found nothing about the male body attractive at all, no matter how good-looking a guy was. Girls, it didn’t much matter to me what shape their body was, or how pretty they were as long as I liked their personality. And with guys, no matter how much I liked them personally or how in-shape or good-looking they were, I didn’t find myself attacted to them on that level.
But for a long time I thought back on how I felt about both boys and girls in middle school, and I had doubts about whether or not I was in denial or simply prejudiced against the idea of being bisexual. To settle it once and for all, I decided to look up the cover to a mucle mag and the cover to the latest Playboy and decide which I found more attractive on a physical level. I picked the playboy immediatly(It was the March 2006 one with Jessica Alba. Though I hear she got ***real *** pissed about being featured on it). After that, I decided to identify myself as heterosexual since as far as I could tell, that’s what I was.
Um, it didn’t take much to notice that I find naked women and sex with women attractive and I feel the opposite about those things with men. And being affectionate and romantic with a woman comes “naturally” to me but I could not feel that way toward a man.
I was attracted to pretty girls in kindergarten. Not really in a sexual way (I didn’t know what sex was) but I wanted to be around them and to be liked by them. In first grade girls would threaten to kiss me and I would pretend to run away but I secretly tried to let them catch me.
Oh, and I grew up in a pretty sheltered environment and by the time I was aware of the possibility of being gay I had basically come up with the conclusions above.
Since I’ve never actually had a romantic relationship of any sort, I can’t say for sure, but I sure do fantasise about doing naughty things with women! Fantasies about men are non-existent. I also enjoy pictures of naked women far more than those of naked men.
In grade one we played a game at recess where we chased girls. I liked chasing girls. I still would, if I wasn’t married.
In grade two I had a girlfriend, Melissa. I walked her home after school a few times and stayed for a while. I thought she was just unbelievably cute. She was blond and wore a red hat.
Because even when I was a little kid, I found the female form stimulating and exciting, the male not so. Looking through a Monkey Wards catalog (there was no internet porn in those days for all you young whippersnappers who are about to be puzzled), I would linger over the pages of women in lingerie and underwear. The pages of men in underwear interested me not at all. When I was about 5 I found a copy of some smut magazine or another, likely a Playboy, belonging to my grandfather. I thought I was going to pass out when I reached the first pictorial…
only boys are pretty