As the title says.
I knew throughout late middle school/early high school that there was something up, mainly because of classes like sex ed. I was always thinking, "Why would anyone want to do that?" I was chatting with my best friend one day a short time before I turned fifteen and joined YWS about something random, and she just flat out asked me if I was asexual. I didn't know the term, so she explained it, and finally I had a name for what I was and was able to look it up and know I wasn't the only one. Some people might think she was being a bit forward, but I thank her for reassuring me that there was nothing wrong.
I'm still questioning what my romantic orientation may be, but at least when another student asks me if I'm dating my male friend, or a guy actually makes an approach, I don't feel wrong that I'm not attracted to them.
What about you?
How and when did you find your label, or are you still questioning?
23 posts in this topic.
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I've gone through sooo many labels and I'm still not sure about any of them. It's a bit frustrating for me, because I'm someone who really likes the reassurance of a label and being able to identify myself with clearly defined terms.
With sexuality I realised I liked girls when I was 16, and in between various levels of denial identified myself as bisexual, lesbian, and pansexual (although I'd misunderstood the term at the time). I kept going between those labels for ages.
Then I realised that I'm not actually a girl (which at least meant I could cross lesbian off the sexualities list
). With gender I identified as gender fluid first, and then I think genderqueer, and kind of settled on non-binary because it was the most general term and so gave me the most room to move. Recently I've been trying out labels like demiboy and non-binary boy. I'm actually really liking non-binary boy at the moment.
Back to sexualities, I've recently become reasonably sure that I'm asexual, and like Kay I've found that really reassuring because before I just forced myself to pretend like I was interested in stuff I wasn't.
Then as for romantic orientation, I guess I'm panromantic? I feel like I potentially could fall in love with people of any gender, although at the moment I've been interested almost exclusively in other non-binary people. I wonder if that counts as homoromantic... xD
[if anyone wants a breakdown of what all these labels mean I'm happy to explain them!
ooh, also, idea: this page should make a glossary of terms for people to refer to! maybe as a discussion thread, with the first post being updated every time people comment with new terms that should be added?] -
Hmmm, I don't know really know when I found out I was attracted to guys and girls, and I'm still not sure what exaclty my sexuality is. But, if someone was to ask me I would say that I am bisexual.
And, I sort of just came to that with a bit of thought.
I mean, for me a label is something I don't worry to much about, because sexuality is fluid, and who I am attracted to changes and I don't want to define myself, or have others define myself by my sexuality and the my label. -
Yes, I agree with @Pigeon about the glossary.
Didn't see that before. -
The first time I had any hint that I wasn't straight was when I was in sixth grade. I had a crush on the girl who sat in front of me in math class, and I was absolutely terrified about it because I was super homophobic back then. Constantly, I was just like, "I'm not a lesbian, I'm not a lesbian, I'm not a lesbian..." Turned out I wasn't a lesbian, I was a boy
I describe myself as pansexual, and maybe agender, maybe a boy? I have no clue. But I like male pronouns. -
Recently? What do you call it if you're biologically male, see yourself as female, and like guys?
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I think that would make you a straight trans woman! (but only if those are terms that you like for yourself)
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If it's something people can understand, it works for me.
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Do you prefer female pronouns?
/does not want to misgender you D: -
I'm new to all this. But yes, female pronouns would be good.
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Well, lets see. I have to say that I always knew that I liked girls as well as boys. I was a tom boy and I still consider myself to be one and just always felt more masculine than my friends.
It was not until I started college that I began to really think that maybe I was bi-sexual. I got married and had two beautiful children and my husband and I shared a girlfriend. When he passed away April of last year, I can say that I would have been a wreck without her in my life.
Now it is only the two of us, but we both still consider ourselves to be bi-sexual. -
My label discovery story involves looking up what being a lesbian meant after breaking up with my ex because it seemed pretty obvious we'd felt differently about the relationship and I didn't miss a relationship but a friendship.
Asexual was thankfully on the list of sexual orientations in Wikipedia at the time. It stuck.
The rest of the identity terms have come from tumblr. Funnily enough, I realized I was demiromantic without realizing I was aromantic. I had thought the very strong feelings I had towards a multitude of people were "crushes" but, no, they were squishes. Then I developed an ACTUAL crush on somebody and that was more a "... what is this" moment.
Then I realized I was demisexual over the same person. Similar "what" moment.
Gender was a weird one and I keep fluctuating. I went from androgynous to agender and back, because I didn't feel like I had the look for androgynous but I certainly do not feel like I am neither gender. -
I'm still kinda trying to find something that fits, but I guess that's hard when I'm not 100% sure who I am haha. Came out as bisexual in high school, after realizing yes, that was a legit thing and no, I wasn't a terrible person for having those feelings. I still think that fits pretty well, until my feelings prove otherwise.
As for gender... Haven't quite figured that one out yet. I mean, I'm fairly comfortable with the label of woman and she/her/hers, but like... I'm not sure that tells the whole story. I think I started questioning after several dreams where I was obviously male. And I woke up oddly satisfied with that. I've always been somewhat of a tomboy, but this was different. It was actually being a male, versus being a more masculine girl. And it actually felt pretty good.
So what do I do with that? I'm not sure. It hasn't been a huge issue for me, because I can pass as cishet. And female is definitely part of my identity, so I don't really deal with misgendering. One of these days I'm sure I'll get curious and look for something to describe me. Genderfluid, genderqueer... Something like that. Luckily, my parents gave me the androgynous name Sam. Short for Samantha, of course, but I rarely introduce myself as such and don't quite identify with it.
Tl;dr Hi, my name is Sam and I'm just plain queer. -
I'm still finding my 'label'. I've gone through bisexual, pansexual, demi-sexual, eh.
I think I'll just stick with saying I'm bot hetero, and then. -
In sixth grade, I finally started to realize that gay people (which was the only lgbtq+ term I knew at the time) weren't gross and evil and only being with each other to try to make people uncomfortable. (I'm not sure where my homophobic state of mind came from, but I'm pretty darn sure that it was put into my subconscious as a child sometime years ago, back when I went to a church with many homophobic/transphobic/etc. people.)
It was in that grade that I got a free graphic novel from the school library where some side characters were gay. After returning to class from the library, I sat down across from my friend who said something about "bisexual." She was just talking about how she wanted to learn more about the LGBTQIAP+ community and discover some new terms, just in case she came across some queer people in the future.
I can't remember if I looked up the word bisexual after that or what, but I knew from then that being gay most definitely wasn't abnormal and that there were other sexualities and orientations as well.
Then one day I started to think about when I was three and four and wanted to marry a girl I was sort-of friends with and wanting to kiss her. (I'm AFAB, by the way.) At the time, I had thought it was just a little girl's admiration of an older girl, but in sixth grade I began to realize that I might have been gay. However, I had had crushes on boys at school before, so I surely wasn't gay then as a sixth grader, right? No. I don't think any of those crushes were actual crushes. They were just made out to be by the straight girls in my class and heterosexual society all around me. (It's possible some were types of attraction, after all, sexuality is fluid.)
In seventh grade, I heard an odd term: LGBTQ. We were in the school library, and a diverse books challenge had been introduced, where one of the categories was LGBTQ. No one else questioned the acronym, but I asked and the librarian spouted off a list of terms, which I then secretly looked up on my tablet in my room when my family wasn't home, opening up my world to new identities and communities, terms and definitions, and new ways to describe myself.
That same year, I got a crush on a girl. I began secretly looking up all sorts of LGBTQIAP+ things. Enter identity number one: lesbian. Then, after that crush had faded, as crushes do, I got a crush on another girl. This one was more severe, and I almost asked her to go to a school dance party with me. (I chickened out last second.) After a while, that crush fell apart because I realized that I hadn't really fallen in love with the real person in front of me, just the idea of her I had in my head. I fell hard from that.
Later, we had a sex ed unit in health and I found myself not wanting any of what we were learning about. I thought and thought and pried into my head once again, searching the internet's trustworthy websites for answers. I found out about the different types of attraction and realized that I feel little to none of sexual/physical attraction and only feel aesthetic, emotional, and romantic attraction. Enter identity number two: asexual - or maybe greysexual. Demisexual? (I wasn't sure which one of those I was, but I'm currently leaning away from demisexual and more toward ace and grey ace.)
The next year, (at the start of this current school year,) I was thinking about coming out to my extremely religious best friend who doesn't really understand social issues and who I had gotten homophobic vibes from. I really didn't want to, but it was terrible hiding something so big from her. But before I decided if I really wanted to come out or not, I looked at the Trevor Project's coming out handbook and found myself staring at something beautiful, watercolor charts of gender identity, gender expression, and different types of attraction. I skimmed over the gender stuff, positive that I was a cis girl.
After viewing the Trevor Project's stuff, I made a plan for what to say. I would tell her I was ace, nothing else, and I would do it at a nature/bike trail area on a bike ride, where I felt safe. First, we stopped on the way and she told me a secret she had, about liking a boy. This made me feel discouraged, since this was the exact opposite of my secret. But we continued on and stopped at this beautiful spot in the dappled shade of some trees on the side of a path. I told her the ace part, and she was so accepting and it was so perfect that I told her the lesbian part, and it got even better.
Deeper into the school year and many queer YA/middle grade novels read later, my gender identity, which I had always been so sure about came into question. A short while after coming out to my friend, I went back to the Trevor Project page and stared at all of the charts. With gender identity entering the equation, I thought back to them. I did a lot of soul-searching, wondering about what my personal style and choice of wardrobe meant, pondered over sexism and feminism, and thought hard about gender identity and expression and pronouns.
More recently, some words popped up. A set of pronouns I had only very scarcely seen. She/they. I hadn't been feeling very comfortable in my she/her-ness, but these pronouns felt right. She/her and they/them interchangeably? Yes! I wrote some random stuff about myself with those pronouns and realized that these pronouns were me. Then I started to search for terms, and identities number three and four appeared: genderfluid and genderqueer. The amounts of feminine, masculine, androgynous, genderless, and everything else I feel change every day. Genderfluid was the word for me, and genderqueer just felt right. I'd still use all girl things, but with some nonbinary/genderqueer stuff mixed in, with the occasional boy stuff for when I feel masculine.
Lately I've been looking at the term demigirl, and I think that also matches me, so I may be donning it soon.
(P.S. sorry for this being so long and the many typos I'm sure there is.)
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