Blogging with my besties!
Prompt: Do you have any shame associated with your sexuality? Where does that shame stem from?
So, I think I used to have a lot of shame surrounding my sexuality? I've talked a lot about how I refused to admit my queerness because of howmy mom made me feel about what my queerness would mean to her. I knew I was queer when I was about twelve, I think, and I don't necessarily know what it was that was my "oh yeah, ok, so I'm a little gay, maybe?" moment? I can think of a few, like Debra Winger playing Emmet in the movie Made In Heaven, Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I knew. It wasn't a question, really, it was more a lack of understanding, because I had crushes on boys, too. Elijah Wood was my first age appropriate celebrity crush, after Mark Summers being my first male crush. But I had never been told about girls who like boys AND girls, nobody talked about being bi or queer when I was younger. I think the first person to ever mention bisexuality to me was Amber, and when she told me she kissed her friend Bambi I remember thinking to myself, "ooooooooh, that's a REAL thing?" but not feeling terribly secure in whateverslutty gay stuff was girding itself in my loins.
I did a lot...and I mean a LOT...of gay shit when I was younger. The first time I ever engaged in sex with a femme I was 16, and I was like, oh. Yeah, ok, this felt great, but I told myself that this was only for a hot story to tell boys. Boys like girls who like girls in a flirty way, or a tee hee we're so drunk way, right? I didn't know anything about being sexual fo myself, I couched my sexual interests in the things I thought boys would like, and because I didn't think I was supposed to like girls, I pushed away any desire to figure out what was hot to gils. And I am included in that. So much of my sexuaity was centered around making myself attractive to people I wanted to be attracted to me that I had no idea about my ACTUAL sexuality until my twenties.
I was with Dan, a historically crummy lay, when I started allowing myself to entertain the idea that maybe I was a lesbian. In fairness to me, I only thought I was a lesbian and not bi/queer/pan because Dan was such a monumentally shitty fuck that I assumed my lack of enjoyment over the span of years was because I actually wanted to munch box exclusively rather than thinking, "oh, maybe this guy just doesn't know how to fuck, and I am too afraid to tell him how to do it. That clearly wasn't it, but I hadn't ever allowed myelf to admit that alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll of the gay shit I did with femmes was because I wanted to. I was deeply ashamed of being interested in women, and I know for a long time I was scared of being a lesbian. Like if I weren't all in either way, something was wrong with me.
I don't know if this is something that's common with all people who are bisexual, but even now as a person who is very proudly out, I have this always looming sense of not belonging and imposter syndrome. ike I'm only playing at being queer, or I'm only playing at being straight, and I need tto make a choice or I'm doing something wrong. I wonder if the shame comes leess from the actual fact that I'm queer and I have no genital preference or gender preference, and more from the fact that think I had been trrained all of my life for every choice to be binary, and not conforming to that in one of the biggest ways of all.
Now, I am almost exclusively trying to find queer spaced to situate myself in because I long to be known as queer, but I sill feel like I am somehow performing incorrectly. I am ashamed of my queerness not because it exists, but because I am both erased by society and my communiy at large...for whatever reason,the queer community LOVES a binary and kind of ostracizes you if you don't pick a lane...but I am erased by society and by my own sexuality, because I happened to fall in love with a cis man. I do not appear queer enough, because my queerness is invisible unless I shout about it, so I shout about it as often as I can, but I still feel like an imposter in my own desires. Like if I could just manifest them correctly, I would be the right kind of bisexual. The right kind of queer.
I've gone from being ashamed of my sexuality because I'm bi from being ashamed of my sexuality because I can't seem to be bi corretly in ways that make my sexuality valid.
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