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bluesun @lemmy.world

Have you ever questioned your sexuality?

I’m a man. Only ever dated, been attracted to women. Recently I met this guy and I’m having weird feelings. I can’t quite tell if I’m attracted to him as a person or just like the way he treats me; nonetheless something makes me want to treat him differently than any other guys - the way I would a girl I suppose. My friends say I might be attracted to femininity in general regardless of gender and that’s why I feel this way, and the reason why it hasn’t surfaced until now is because I haven’t yet met a guy to tick those boxes. Wondering if anyone has been through something similar.

92 comments

  • I'm a 44 year old (mostly) straight guy who's at a point where I don't really know why any of that stuff really matters to people.

    I was a teenager in Britain in the '90s when it was ridiculously common to refer to something bad as "gay". So I grew up not homophobic as such, but having definitely equated being gay with negative connotations. But some 15 years ago I started to question my own attitudes, and, helped by a woman I was seeing at the time, I explored the idea of playing gay. I didn't actually do anything, but she thought the idea was as hot as hell.

    Fast forward to now, where I'm married to a different woman who also thinks that guys fucking is hot, and so do I. So it's something that's become an occasional part of our sex life, and it's great.

    Now, I'm not necessarily answering your question, because sex ≠ emotions. To me sex and emotions aren't really linked. One is something to be enjoyed, and the other is something to be shared with an intimate partner. But the point is, if you're a naturally open-minded person then your baseline for who and what you are will be constantly subject to change.

    Are you straight? Are you gay? Are you bi? Are you any of these things? Does it really matter?

    As to your point about being attracted to femininity: I definitely get that. Regardless of how someone identifies, if they're feminine I've got a soft spot for them.

  • I think anybody who says they haven't questioned their sexuality is likely to be lying. Then again, we're all biased by our lived experiences and I've spent a lot of time questioning things, so I could be projecting.

    At the end of the day I want to say to like who you like. What happens between consenting adults is nobody's business but theirs, and the sun isn't going to implode because you dig on a girly dude.

    Hell, you don't even need to put a label on your sexuality. Or your gender for that matter, although that's a whole different can of worms.

    Depending on where you are, you might be growing up alongside harmful anti-queer rhetoric. That kind of thing makes it very difficult for a lot of people to admit their sexuality with any degree of nuance. People living in fear will lie to their friends, family, and selves in order to hide their attractions. It's sad and harmful, and it also makes it difficult for some people to be open about sometimes liking a person that is outside what they believe society expects of them.

    You guys should get coffee or something. I wouldn't pass up on a chance to learn more about myself

  • Binary gender is such bullshit. Nobody is attracted to every man or every woman. It's totally normal to be attracted to people who fall into both buckets if that's your only way of categorizing people. Because that's not how attraction or sexuality work. It's so much richer and more nuanced than that.

  • Its like a math question. You need to show your working, even if you guess the right answer, or you don't get full marks for it.

  • A weird and wonderful part of the human experience is that we don't really get to choose what we like, we can only try to categorize what we experience.

    I think you should follow your heart and to hell with anyone who would judge you for it.

    • we don't really get to choose what we like, we can only try to categorize what we experience.

      I've never seen it said so succinctly before. I love this! Labels are for communication, not defining our behavior.

  • Romantic attraction and sexual attraction can often be different. It's just society says you can't have sex with people you aren't romantically involved with, and once you're romantically involved with someone, you can't have sex with others. That's totally unfair IMHO. You should be able to have a romantic relationship with someone and not expect sex and then be able to have sex with others who are interested in sex. This is why asexual people have a hard time with monogamy and have to pretend to be into sex because otherwise they can't have a relationship with someone they love.

  • Yes, quite a bit. I was struggling to find the right label. But at some point I switched to the mindset, that a label is a description, not a rule, and that i shouldn't have to worry who I do or don't like. Right now I'm in the "meh, I'm fine, thanks" camp, but it might change any time.

  • Everyone, and I think probably especially intellectual people, questions their sexuality (am I attracted to the opposite gender in some way?) and at least their gender expression (am I masculine / feminine enough?) to some extent. It's no different for a lot of people I think than imposter syndrome and can be tied to a lack of self confidence.

    Everyone is also capable of fantasizing about, basically, whatever, and enjoying it, without the fantasy or enjoyment having to mean anything about how they feel about themselves or how others will feel about them.

    Also, sexual preference, as kinks and fetishes, develop and change in men at least until some surprising age, like, into your 50s. Like you could live your entire life identifying and living as a one thing and by fifty-five be identifying as something else. I think, and I'm not sure yet, be that's just life. Most people who don't live in a safe space bubble and don't leave their home town or school aged friend group have to reinvent themselves multiple times in life.

    Also also, sexual pleasure and gratification is a full body and mind experience and it's possible that different partners stimulate and gratify different parts of that experience, even different encounters with the same partners. And none of that has to be carried around with you as if it changes anything about who you are or how you should be treated.

    And lastly, it's fine to treat this person and anyone else in a positive and fun way for both of you. It could be that this person expresses themselves femininely and so your instinct is to be a little different, whether that's with more compassion and tenderness and even flirty, and I would say confusion is probably a very healthy and intelligent, internal reflex to something like this that is new to you.

    And finally, anyone that says the Roman Empire collapsed because of all the fucking without making babies is a right cunt. If society collapses because of who any of us are fucking then... it was coming either way.

    Edit to make sure someone catches that joke, which may be one of the best I've written.

  • You’re gonna get sampling bias from the responses here. I guess you should ask why you care about asking this question. If you always liked apples but all of a sudden there’s a type of orange you like, would you question why you like this orange, or would you just accept that you like this type of orange, or maybe you like both apples and oranges. If you both you like each other, and want something then that’s all that should matter.

  • I can somewhat relate. To quote Maddy Morphosis, I am a gender-non-conforming straight cis male, which to me means my sexual preferences and gender role are somewhat fixed in how I present myself, but I find myself attracted to femininity way more than masculinity when it comes to the people I sorround myself with. That means my sexual partners, friends, and people I keep close are all more affeminate or closer to femininity. In practice this results in my preferring to hang out with LGTBQI+ people more than masculine people, and I happily pick up some of that femininity for my own behavior

  • I have a sort of extreme opinion, but I don't believe anyone is 100% straight or 100% gay. (But I don't believe people should call themselves bi just because they're 99% straight or 99% gay.) I just think there are way too many people in the world to definitively say you'd never fall for someone of a certain gender.

    I am bisexual. But that's a bit of an oversimplification. I'm definitely attracted to femininity regardless of gender expression ("femboys") and find masculine women attractive ("tomboys"), but it's rare that I find masculine men attractive. My attraction to men in general is pretty rare and usually more like demisexuality. But it feels like such an insane mouthful to say that I'm gynessexual but buromantic because even then that's still not really giving the whole picture. So I just say I'm bi.

    I found out I was bi in my mid/late 20s, I don't really remember when. Looking back on some of my friendships with boys in highschool I wonder if some of them I actually was romantically attracted to. As a kid I had a very difficult time knowing when I had a crush on someone, so there is precedent for me having crushes on boys in highschool and not realizing.

    I'll close with this. There's nothing wrong with being "heteroflexible". I used to call myself that before I started calling myself bi. There's nothing wrong with being straight and calling yourself straight and liking a guy. (Insofar as long as you aren't lying about it.) Sexualities are just labels to help us better communicate our preferences in an easy way. Don't let the words define your attractions. Let yourself decide what you're interested in and then worry about what label to use later. 💜

  • You're allowed to have romantic feelings to people you're not sexually attracted to! Been through something similar on my journey, what I thought was attraction was envy and had the oops I'm trans moment, and turns out I'm kinda not sexually attracted to people's bodies. Still attracted to people, but for who they are and how they act rather than for what they look like. This really helped me figure out my attraction to men, because obviously I felt different about them than women and didn't have the feelings about them physically (gender envy in disguise) but still had feelings for them, without that physical attraction. Ended up hooking up with some guys and liked it/them. Certainly not suggesting this is the case with you, just... Attraction, romantic and sexual, are complicated things, and it's ok to not have it all figured out. Just try to keep an open mind for yourself, it's a lot easier to question yourself and reflect when all answers are acceptable, you know?

92 comments