bi or lesbian?

[cornpop]

hello. since i was 12 or so i’ve thought i was bisexual. it took me years of wrestling back and forth with that label to confidently call myself bi - i have always been 100% sure about my attraction for boys but there would be times when i would be sure about my attraction to girls, then question it, and flip flop back and forth - it took me a long time to figure it out. anyways, i’ve confidently called myself bi for a long time now. recently though, within the past half a year maybe, i’ve started to wonder if maybe i’m actually a lesbian. i haven’t had very much sexual experience with men or women, but when i picture myself having sex with a man, the thought of having a penis inside me grosses me out to be honest. i also cant picture myself being in a long term relationship with a man: i don’t think i would be happy even if it was the most perfect man to ever exist - i think him being a man would bother me. on the other hand, i can picture myself being with a woman both romantically and sexually - i can see myself being happy and comfortable in these situations. i can think of sexual situations i’ve been in with a man and remember feeling that i had to perform - i wasn’t in the moment, i was acting how i thought he would want me to act and was always very nervous leading up to it. but with girls i’ve kissed, i was enjoying it and wanted to do it again.

where i get confused and start to think “okay maybe i am actually bisexual” is because i’ve had crushes on boys in the past, and had a brief relationship with a boy back in early high school and was quite devastated honestly when we broke up. i also often find men attractive when i see pictures of celebrities or like a picture of a traditionally attractive man on social media or something. but i struggle to be able to tell the difference between if i can just recognize that he’s objectively a beautiful man or if i’m sexually attracted to him. also, during times that i watch porn, i typically watch heterosexual videos.

but then again, ive been doing a lot of work to deconstructed my male centredness and have been wondering if the “attraction” ive felt to men in the past has been a result of actually just wanting male attention. like when ive had crushes on boys i think a lot of the time it wasn’t cause i thought they were really cute, i think it might have been that they showed an interest in men and made me feel desired and like i could be the object of male attention and validation, which i used to (and tbh still do in some ways) have a deep desire for.

it’s also hard because i honestly haven’t had many crushes on girls i’ve known in person, even though i’ve had many on boys. i think i’m learning that my crushes appear differently for girls and boys though. when i think of how i felt in the past around boys i’ve liked, it’s a lot of insecurity, nervousness and anxiety (not butterflies like genuinely anxiety), but around girls i think i’m attracted to i feel fun and confident and more nervous in an excited and intrigued way.

this has been weighing very heavily on my mind because i’m proud of being a part of the queer community and i honestly just want to know what to call myself and how i can identify. i know a lot of people say that labels don’t matter, but i’m a person who likes to have a label that i feel represented by.

this was a super long post and had a fair about of tmi so i apologize for that - just been feeling very confused and wanting to have a proper understanding of my sexuality. thank you

[Heather]

May I offer you queer as an identity word so that you don’t have to struggle with this?

The beauty of “queer” is that you can be bisexual, be a lesbian, or even be both, really. Queer came after both those terms, and there’s a reason those can feel so restrictive, it’s because they existed before we really understood how fluid sexuality is and when our view of gender was still deeply binary.

We can talk more about other parts of this you brought up, but I wanted to suggest that to you first.

[cornpop]

I’ve thought about using queer as an identifier, and i feel like i have mixed feelings towards it. on one hand i do like how expansive it can be and that i could use it as a sort of umbrella term for my sexuality, but at the same time, i still just feel such a desire to call myself either a bisexual or a lesbian and have that more specific label. maybe i just need to work to let go of that desire.

[Heather]

I'm not someone who needs something that specific (and plus, as a nonbinary person, orientation terms that are specifically about only men and/or women also obviously don't include me, so they don't work for me no matter what), so I can't fully understand how you feel, but I do think it sounds like struggling to pick one of these is making more trouble for you than serving you.

You know, you also get to switch between them as they suit you if you really like these two. You absolutely can identify as lesbian one week and bisexual the next if that's the way you feel from week to week: there are no rules about how we use language to name our orientation just like there aren't to name what our spiritual or political beliefs are. You also can take some time and see what it feels like to call yourself one of these words for a while, then try the other on for a bit and see how that feels.

You also have the option of using something more general like queer on the whole, and then getting more specific when you are in a conversation with someone where specificity actually matters: it often really won't, and I also always like to remind people that one word is rarely going to work for our whole sexual identity, anyway. These terms are just meant for when we need shorthand: when we really want to talk about these things in a deeper way, we will always need way, way more than one word. So, it might be worth reminding yourself, too, that one word can't stand in for a conversation.

As well, sexual identity is something we tend to know more and more about over time, and with more and more life experience. No one has to have a sexual relationship to know who they are attracted to, but it generally does help to actually see and experience who we choose to pursue relationships and sexual connections with when we want to get a real handle on our orientation.