#I’m starting to question if I might be a bi lesbian myself and I’m really struck between being unsure if I even like men

[laikabu]

re: my thoughts on laios’s sexuality (long post ahead lol)

let me start this post with this. first, this contains a lot of references to the new adventurer’s bible world guide book released last february. i can read japanese, but i’m sure they’re translated somewhere. general spoiler warning in case. also… i am ESL, so sorry for any grammar errors

second, if you’re on the team that insists laios doesn’t care about humans enough to form relationships, either read the manga again or at the very least read this thread.

last, please don’t chime in with your acearo headcanons on this post. there’s already a majority of posts here that insist laios is acearo and that anything else is impossible. i don’t like it the same way i don’t like when someone declares they hc marcille as bisexual to a poster who reads her as lesbian. i already have enough people here who declare he’s ace on my own art. at least people on twitter of all places don’t do this sort of thing to me. nothing in this manga is canon, you can headcanon anything i won’t get mad if you hc him as bi or something. just. don’t be weird on my post.

okay. trust me, i love women, and i love the idea of making my favs women lovers but the idea of laios being gay really appeals to me because of his background. this isn’t fueled by yaoi since i don’t even ship the only m/m relationship i bring up here, i just think it adds a nice layer to his disconnect with his own humanity

i do think laios has a very abstract relationship with his sexuality for a multitude of reasons. he grew up in a very conservative backwater village. he has a hard time recognizing his own feelings towards others just as much as vice versa. i don’t really care for the “laios is a monsterfucker” agenda people are pushing but i do think he’d engage in sexual thoughts in his own weird way, i won’t deny his deviantart fetish shit

as an autistic person myself, i relate to how he’d prioritize his special interest over social interactions. after all, he was fixated on monster food so he’s distracted from dark thoughts. he’s not an actual glutton

he’s shy around women, but i don’t think it’s out of attraction. i just think it’s because he’s awkward and doesn’t want to be seen as a threat. there’s a couple of times when, out of armor, he deliberately tries to make himself look smaller and nonthreatening.

he didn’t show any interest towards ashivia (the hubby hunter girl marcille replaced) and just humored her because she wouldn’t leave him alone. his other party members thought he was giving her special treatment so he had to tell her he “doesnt want to give her special treatment anymore”(even though he never did), so she left

ashivia did her best to butter herself up to laios and he didn’t care, but laios thought shuro was his bestest friend in the whole world because he was too much of a pushover to reject him. ironically… what ashivia did to him parallels what he was doing to shuro

also… yeah sorry i keep bringing up that one comic of laios saying if he were falin he’d marry shuro and then begging him to take him back to his country, or that comic of laios wondering why he doesn’t like him(and then the first two questions he asks the magic mirror was what if he or shuro were women). i don’t even ship them! but it’s not a reach to assume that he likes men because of this, even if it’s kinda played like a joke(after all,a lot of people like chilshi even though their ‘shippy’ interaction was played as a joke)

of course, given the setting, i don’t think knows he’s gay, he wouldn’t have the vocabulary to label himself. i do want to dance around with the idea of him forcibly confronting his own sexuality after years of yaad pressuring him to produce heirs lol. laios might not be cishet but he’s a king so he rdgaf about that right now. i’m open to him having female consorts for political reasons, but i don’t think he’s into women, is all.

before anyone brings up his succubus… god forbid an author makes hetbait. a part of the plot twist was that not-marcille wasn’t the only succubus enticing laios, his other party members were copied too. she was the only one who approached him. also… succubi aren’t always inherently romantic. once it realized marcille didn’t work, it switched to appeal to his desire to be a monster.

[prototypesteve]

1994. A little story about my asexuality being misinterpreted (by a professional) as a disorder, and how that led to years of trouble.

Animation Description: An aromatic-asexual sense pride flag, onto which someone writes "So the thing is… I don't think I've ever had what my friends say would qualify as a real crush, and even after four years of college I still haven't started dating, but maybe the weirdest part is that I've never wanted to." Then, abruptly and violently black paint is spattered across the message and in white text someone superimposes the dismissive message "It's just low self esteem! – Expert opinion"

In 1994, I went to see a counsellor.

What happened was some friends and I were just talking about life. We were all in our early 20s, and so of course sex came up, and I confided that no, I hadn’t had it yet. In fact, I hadn’t even been on anything that would qualify as a date, yet.

I’ve always had good luck with friends. Instead of teasing me about it, one of them gave me the name of a counselling clinic, because they thought it might be worth checking that everything was okay, and there wasn’t something getting in the way. (It was the 1990s, and Generation X didn’t have taboos about getting help.) So I made an appointment.

I described what we’d now call textbook aromantic asexuality. I explained that I was 22, and hadn’t yet been in a relationship. I hadn’t even had anything like a crush. I hadn’t experimented; no kisses on a dare. I had pretty good friendships with guys and girls, but nothing closer than friendship. I felt “behind schedule,” especially because my friends all found it odd that I was still inexperienced.

The counsellor gently asked if I felt it was because I wasn’t allowed to be “experienced”. They noted that I referred to everything euphemistically. Experienced. Relationship. Spark. Feelings. Dating. I never said love, sex, aroused, boyfriend, or girlfriend. I never said romance. Was it because my parents had some strict taboos around seeing girls while I was just fresh out of college, when I should be focused on my career? (I’m half Japanese so that was plausible.) Was it because I felt I wasn’t allowed to love the people I felt attracted to, because I might have been gay or bisexual and hiding that? (Also a fair question, because, sadly, the 90s still weren’t a safe or fair time for my gay and lesbian friends—I didn’t know that I knew any bi or trans people at the time, although I’m sure I did.)

I thought about it. The honest answers were no. My family didn’t make me feel like dating was inappropriate or wasteful, and I just didn’t feel anything “special” for any of my guy friends (and I had guy friends who were comfortable telling me they were gay).

I went on. I explained that I felt happy. I didn’t see any obvious signs of depression or illness or anything. All I felt was a little embarrassed about being so far behind all my friends. Not dating, not “feeling the spark”, not having a “type,” and not having any thoughts on a future family all made me feel immature, and like maybe I had some kind of developmental thing going on. I knew what all those things were. I wasn’t some sheltered or repressed prude. I just wasn’t doing any of that stuff. Not even the perfectly innocent stuff like having a crush, or even really having a “type.”

But it was 1994 and counsellors didn’t have asexual or aromantic on their list of things it might be. So the best the counsellor could guess was that I just didn’t feel good about myself. It must have been low self esteem. (The early 90s still reeked of the yuppie success-or-die greedhead era.) Their guess was that I might have felt my sexuality was something I didn’t feel I had earned the right to access yet, evidenced by my using euphemisms to describe love, romance, and sexuality.

They suggested I read “Feeling Good, the New Mood Therapy” by David Burns, and not worry, because some people are just late bloomers.

And I left there, redirected away from a truth that neither of us knew about. And it would be nearly thirty years before I “reopened the case”, and asked the same questions and got a better answer: Some people experience little to no sexual or romantic attraction. They aren’t necessarily repulsed by sex, or driven away by trauma. They might even have perfectly natural responses to sexual stimuli either alone or with others, but they just don’t feel “I want that, and I want it with this specific person, or this specific sort of person”. They call those people aromantic and/or asexual, based on a presumption that romantic and sexual attraction can sometimes be experienced independently.

I learned that in 2022.

I needed to know that in 1994.

I know I’ll gradually get over that. But yeah. I feel a lot of things about it. Some of them are bad things. But what I’m going to choose to feel about it is grateful that the person who needed answers in 1994 made it to my answers in 2022, and didn’t fall apart in 2022 when I found those answers.

I didn’t let that lost time break me. I didn’t let the mistakes I made crush me. I didn’t find anyone to blame. (That counsellor in 1994 wasn’t hiding anything from me. The world just didn’t talk about people off the Kinsey Scale.) I didn’t let it derail my faith. Asexuality isn’t a curse, and our confusion and fear about the gift of being different like this isn’t the Gift-Giver’s fault.

I’m just going to keep moving. With answers. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

[mogai-sunflowers]

most exclusionists have probably never had to ACTUALLY struggle to figure out their identity. like, i mean ACTUALLY struggle. not just being a little confused for a little while but figuring it out without much pain or hassle and after that point not really questioning again. and it fucking shows.

like oh i’m so sorry you spent a month slightly confused over your sexuality or gender, but then you figured it out and that was that. so now you think you’re the fucking end all be all of the queer experience and expect it to be that fucking easy for everyone. good for fucking you.

every night for four years, i was up agonizing over my sexuality. a lot of the times it was so painful i couldn’t breathe, just had to fucking keep going feeling like there was no end in sight to the NOT KNOWING. and some of y’all will truly never ever understand what that feels like but instead of acknowledging that you act like it should just be fucking easy for us.

5 years later, i’m not actually that much closer to figuring any of it out. but i’ve never been happier. you know what helped me get there? realizing that my worth is not dependent upon whether or not i have myself figured out, that i don’t need to have myself figured out in order to move forward with my life. and then, fucking THEN, gender came into the picture and sometimes i feel like i’m right back where i started.

last night, when i was outed to my mom, she was more accepting of my gender identity than most of the people in this “community”. my 60 year old mother who got confused when i said i thought i was a boy because “i thought you were asexual”, still managed to be more comforting and supportive of my journey with gender and sexuality, than any of the exclusionists who’ve come for me on here. my mother, who doesn’t know the difference between a trans man and a trans woman, still was able to tell me that my soul doesn’t change just because my gender might and that i have time to figure it out and don’t need to rush myself, whereas i’ve had hundreds of OTHER QUEER PEOPLE tell me to kill myself for being bi and a lesbian and a boy.

so fuck you. fuck you if you think that you know more about me than i do. fuck you if you think those years i spent in constant questioning agony, don’t matter because i just have to use the definition that makes everyone else comfortable. fuck your exclusionism, fuck your gatekeeping, fuck you forever.

[polyamorouspunk]

sleepover friday thing and im sorry if i've already sent you an ask about this, i have the worst memory in the world at the best of times. with that out of the way... how do i cope with my orientation doing a 180? my whole life, starting from when i was about 10, ive identified as a lesbian. i exclusively dated girls (or people who identified as girls at the time anyway) and non-binary people. i was only attracted to girls and non-binary people. when i thought about being married in the future, it was always to a woman or non-binary person.

then i met my soulmate and he was a man. i dont use the term lightly either -- im talking about love at first meeting, spending time together as often as possible, sharing secrets, the whole thing. i plan on getting a tattoo dedicated to him. i still called myself a lesbian, just with one exception, because he was the only man i ever loved. and then he went dormant and hasnt come back (hence the tattoo).

then i started noticing i sometimes got crushes on men but not very often. now it's a couple years later and it struck me the other day that i don't think i'm sexually attracted to women anymore. just men and non-binary people. and it really threw me for a loop. ive been a lesbian my whole life but now im not? i'm almost exclusively (sexually) xlm now. which is certainly hard to deal with since i'm dating someone who is woman-aligned.

this is really long im so sorry i didnt mean to ramble so much akskfkf but do you have any words of advice for someone whose identity flipped on its head and feels lost now

I doubt that I’m going to say anything revolutionary here, so I’m just going to talk.

Things change for everyone. Different things change for different people. I don’t want to discount the experiences of certain people like men who are attracted to cis women exclusively, women who are attracted to cis men specifically, men who are only attracted to men, women who only attracted to women, etc. When I say stuff like “sexuality is fluid” it’s in the same way you say “gender is fluid” knowing that for some people it 100% isn’t, but it CAN be.

Some people have a very hard time accepting that sexuality can be fluid. It’s been pointed out before that some people are all for playing around with your gender and calling yourself a woman as a cis man in drag or calling yourself a liquid because your gender is so fluid or going “none of the above” in those gender questions or any amount of things like that. But as soon as someone implies that sometimes you can be a lesbian and sometimes you can be a gay man and those things can coincide or change certain people get really up in arms.

Complicated sexualities and gender have been around longer than any of us, and certainly around longer than tumblr and the internet. Perhaps my own favorite example is talking about how bisexuals and lesbians used to fall under the same or at least a more similar label in Stone Butch Blues. Before the phenomenon of lesbian separatists.

Bisexual lesbians and pansexual gays and all those kinds of things, while perhaps POPULARIZED by social media, existed long before that. Why is the idea that trans people existed before tumblr not a novel idea but the fact that perhaps wlw were all lumped under the phrase “lesbian” because there were women with more complicated sexualities like might fit under the label “bi lesbian” today wild and unacceptable to some people?

The idea that you can call yourself a lesbian exclusively but have some exceptions or call yourself gay exclusively but have an exception or hell even call yourself straight but have an exception is not a new thing. I, personally, love straight cisgender male content creators who say shit like “I’m not gay but I would make out with that man”. Cracks me the fuck up. I want more of that shit. But suddenly if a lesbian says “I’m not straight but I would make out with that man” it’s like woah woah woah are you sure you’re REALLY a lesbian?

Plenty of people who are straight/gay/lesbian fully accept that you can ID as one of those things and still use that label if you have on exception or even a few. Some do not, and will say if your thoughts even stray from your assigned sex of attraction then you are not allowed to use that label.

There will people who will say you can’t call yourself a lesbian if you’ve had sex with a man before even if you didn’t enjoy it. Gold star lesbian mentality.

The idea of sexuality being fluid is sadly a controversial one, as is every facet of being “in the community”. But for many people it is.

I see it a lot like coming to terms that you are not in fact cisgender. You go your whole life believing, truly believing, that you are a cis girl perhaps, until suddenly one day you realize you are NOT. Maybe there weren’t “signs” that you were trans along the way. Maybe one day it just hit you like a ton of bricks. What do you do? How do you cope?

Well. How do you cope with any other thing that hits you like a ton of bricks? How do you cope with someone you thought loved you deciding to dump you and never speak to you again in a day? How do you cope with being fired from a job you felt so secure in and planned on being in for at least another decade? How do you cope with the unexpected death of a loved one?

Over time. You try not to stress it. You try and move through your days by keeping it in the back of your mind until time has dulled that immediate pain enough for you to reconsider. The pain isn’t going to go away. But it can become manageable. You cannot deal with things if you are screaming and crying and hyperventilating and throwing things. You need to wait until you’re not doing any of those things in order to deal with the issue at hand, for a vivid and extreme example.

What does it mean to you to be xlm? I call myself a bi lesbian. On this blog I call myself trans masc and mlm. On my main I’m a [girl] and a bi lesbian. To me that means I, Savanna, personally will have sex with people who have a vagina, as someone who also has a vagina. Be they trans men, trans women, cis women, nonbinary/other. I do not like the idea of having sex with an actual flesh and blood and cummy dick, HOWEVER I’m open enough to say “I haven’t really been in a position in my life right now where someone has wanted to jam their dick inside of me, so I haven’t really had to worry about that. If it comes to that point, I can’t say for sure that I’m going to be like ‘ew no a dick’ even though I do not like dicks. Depending on the person and the situation I might be willing to make an exception.” And hey. There are people I might be with who have a vagina that I might just be like hey you know what? I don’t want to have sex. For whatever reason.

Your partner is woman-aligned, so I’m sure in your mind that’s not something you’re aesthetically attracted to right now. But sexually might you be? Do you think you’re having another exception to your sexuality like you did before?

Try your best not to worry about it and try to come to any conclusions until you’ve given it some time. I’m not sure how long it’s been since you came to this realization, maybe it’s been a few days, maybe it’s been a few weeks. But take the time you need to not make an emotional response to it in regards to your current relationship. Do what you’re doing and talk to other people about it. When you’re ready, you should talk to your partner about it. Perhaps there’s accommodations and arrangements that can be made. I’ve said before even though I’m transmasc here like if a cishet guy wanted to date me only as his gf I would be willing to compromise on my gender expression for that most likely. My gender isn’t a huge deal to me. Things like that.

Take it slow and take your time. Don’t make any rash decisions. Talk it out. Don’t worry about feeling like you “made a mistake” or are “living a lie”. We wouldn’t tell someone who came out as trans things like that, so much as gender changes and/or is fluid so is sexuality.

[colorful-dragon97]

You guys don’t understand how much Jazzfordshire’s stories mean to me (or maybe you do)

(TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of h0mophobia)

I don’t usually get really sappy with writers and the stories they write but I just finished Jazzfordshire’s 70′s AU (part 2).  Istg that the first part of that AU is the story i read the most out of all the Supercorp fanfics I read (and considering SC fanfics is the only type of literature I consume, that’s saying a lot). I always found it comforting, but even if the first part is from Kara’s POV, the part that I connect with the most is Lena’s. She is a lesbian, she knows it, she feels what she feels but is painfully aware that she can’t freely express herself, she can’t open up to anyone bc they might insult her or treat her as a “something” instead of a “someone”.

I used to identify as a lesbian. For five years of my life, I was out to myself, but deadly afraid of living in the outside world. My friends knew and some of them were queer themselves, but I still felt that loneliness inside me.

Even though on this day and age I no longer identify as such, all those things that Lena feels in this story… is just so painfully relatable.

When I started thinking about this, I thought about other stories by this lovely author and realized that, in some of them, the relationship between Lena and Lillian is kinda the same to the one i had with my mother.

Lillian is not supportive of her daughter’s sexuality. But it’s not like she kicks her out or does something more “grotesque”, she is just described as distant… someone who, at the tiniest little show of Lena’s preference for women, she makes not-so-subtle comments about how NOT ok she’s with the fact that Lena is a lesbian. So as a result of that, Lena is deadly afraid of being “obviously” queer, out in the open.

And that, my friend, is EXACTLY what I needed to read when I was younger.

“Isn’t that counterproductive? If you are sad about your relationship with your sexuality, you shouldn’t read homophobic stuff… right?”

Good question, but while I do needed an “everything is going to be ok” type of story, I also needed a story that described that awkward and painful relationship between a mother and her queer daughter. That type of relationship where your mom is not supportive, but she is also not kicking you out or being physically ab*sive. This is because the only realities shown to me by the media at that time were parents being extremely supportive, awfully ab*sive or they will just kick you out. So, even though I used to feel awful with myself because of my mom’s unsupportive behavior, what used to make me feel significantly worse was the guilt of feeling depressed when I should be thankful that she responded this way bc “it could’ve been worse, she didn’t kick me out.”

(That last paragraph was me describing how I felt back in the day. Jazz, as far as I’ve read of her repertoire, doesn’t dwell on the deeper effect that THAT kind of relationship has on you as the queer daughter.)

So, I really needed my feelings to be validated by anyone or anything. And I also needed to see that I deserve to be supported and comforted whenever I felt a sad about my mother’s behavior.

That support and comfort is seen on the way Kara interacts with Lena. In some fanfics like the Ice Skating AU, Lena has a pretty big storyline regarding her sexuality. Every time she feels like she is showing a bit too much gayness or hears the voice of Lilian in her mind shaming her, Kara is like “it’s ok, I’m right here and I love you”.

She is not telling her to get over it, she is not telling her how to fix it, she is just accompanying her through it.

And that is another thing i needed, that is exactly what i craved as a teenager. I needed someone there… just there… to hug me through it.

But the matter of the fact is that I’m finding this stories years later and while my relationship w my mom is basically the same, my sexuality and self perception have changed. I’m now a bi guy.

But now reading these stories, feels like it’s healing my inner child. Feels like a hug for the 14 y/o me that was so effing sad and so effing alone.

@jazzfordshire ‘s stories are dear to my heart and are helping the little teen in me, feel seen and comforted.

So, in case you are reading this, thank you so much. Your stories are beautiful and I hope you continue writing ❤️

[lillified]

Hello! I hope you don't mind this, but I've been trying to better understand He/Him lesbianism, but google isn't very helpful and I've heard a lot of explanations and I wanted to hear your side of it since your Megatron seems to align with that? Your explanations tend to make more sense to my neurodivergent brain 😅

-Bi lady trying to better understand the peeps around her ❤

I mean, I’m probably not the best person to explain this and you’re probably better off asking someone who is one, since everybody’s reasoning and experience is different. I’ll try to give a basic overview to get you started, but I really can’t claim to speak to everyone, if even very many, people’s experience:

The basic principle is that pronouns are social arbitrage and are indicative of how other people in society perceive you, but they are limited to describe the scope of gender experience. you may not be a man, but still identify strongly with masculinity and “benefit” from some of the social consequences of presenting and performing masculinity—or, in many cases, the rigid expectation of femininity is just way too narrow and suppressive. The tragic fact is there really isn’t a lot of precedent or understanding for women who aren’t feminine or perform feminine roles, and those expectations are so ingrained that they infect the core of people’s expectations of womanhood. I’ve heard butches describe that sometimes it’s just easier to use masculine identifiers because it helps people understand, which is something I’ve experienced to a lesser degree (even now as I’ve become less ambivalent with my gender I still frequently call myself “guy” and “man” and similar things).

All that being said, presenting socially as masculine doesn’t necessarily change who you are, or how you experience the world. Butchness is very performative and masculine, but deep down most butches have a connection to women and femininity that is extremely strong. Womanhood is an isolating and often dangerous experience, and, historically, lesbianism isn’t JUST about relationships, but the effort of women to find protection and support from sexism, oppression and violence within themselves. Being butch, even to the point that you “pass” and don’t experience as much targeting for being feminine, doesn’t erase your connection and experience with the feminine, and with womanhood. Whether you are cis or trans, your experience of the world and your treatment at the hands of other people has, and probably will always be, affected by that overarching social expectation, and often detriment, of womanhood.

Being butch is a personal celebration of the fluidity of one’s gender and the performance of masculinity, but just because it rejects the appearance of the feminine, that doesn’t mean it dislikes or “rejects” femininity. This is something I’ve struggled to reconcile for myself, but it feels demonstrably true. Your physicality, appearance, and social role may appear masculine, but manhood is more than just short hair and pants, just like womanhood is more than long hair and dresses. They’re simple blanket statements intended to describe a range of human experience that is extremely vast, both socially and biologically. Your pronouns can describe you to strangers and peers, but they don’t always represent your experience and reality, and that’s where you get he/him lesbians, who are masculine in performance, but feel a connection and allegiance to womanhood that is far deeper than someone who identifies as a man might.

that being said in Megatron’s case (can’t believe we got here from a transformers question), while I use he/him pronouns for him, they aren’t his only ones, nor are they even the ones I’d say he’d choose. I see him as ambivalent, and a performer; he presents a very exaggerated, masculine persona to hold power and communicate strength, so masculinity is something others see and expect from him. In a situation where power games weren’t mandatory, I could honestly see him preferring other pronouns. I guess that does kind of tie in with what I described, lol.

Anyway, I hope this helped, at least a little bit! I got kinda rambly there, apologies. I feel like the nightmare scenario of guy whose interests include gender study nonsense and transformers. once again, I am just one person and I’m definitely not the best qualified, so please seek out other material if you’re confused, and remember that everybody’s relationship with gender is completely different!

[thoughtsafter3am]

Hi Melissa, not sure if you've talked about this before and I simply missed it (very likely), so apologies if this is being repetitive: What exactly is your field of study and the topic of your dissertation, if you're comfortable sharing? I'm asking because I'm currently (very slowly) starting research for my master's thesis in Rhetoric & German Lit and my plan so far is to look into the depiction of bisexuality in Modern German literature and your recent article on Heartstopper in the Journal of Bisexuality (which I didn't know existed until now, so thank you!) seems to be VERY interesting in regards to ideas and methods from English literature I might be able to apply. Thank you for sharing! Do you happen to know of any sources specifically on bisexuality in novels, off the top of your head? (I still have to work through the references list of your article and the article in depth, only skimmed so far, if there's something in there.) Sorry if that was a bit all over the place, in any way: Sending good throughts, as random internet strangers do, and hoping you're having a good day/night! :) Rona

What am I studying? Truly the question of the century. 😂 Technically my Ph.D. will be in higher education administration but I really study college student development theory and more specifically the role of media in identity construction. But, I’ve also found myself doing a fair amount of media studies research too as a result of where my research intersects with disciplines outside of education. I’ve definitely embraced calling my research and outputs interdisciplinary.

I love talking about my dissertation topic so I’m happy to share. 😊 I am exploring how bisexual+ emerging adults (18-24 years old) use fiction-based parasocial relationships in identity construction processes. So really looking at how media representation helps people understand who they are and construct their identity.

As far as sources go, there are not a bunch on bisexual representation in novels specifically. These two look at bisexuality+ in YA novels:

Coletta, J. (2018). The missing B word: Compulsory binarization and bisexual representation in children’s literature. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 10(1), 85-108. https://doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2018.0004

Kneen, B. (2015). Neither very bi not particularly sexual: The essence of the bisexual in young adult literature. Children’s literature in education, 46, 359-377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-014-9237-8

I know I cited those two in my article. I was looking at representation in books specifically for another project but I found myself needing to move broader and look at general media representation. The Journal of Bisexuality (a favorite journal of mine as well) has a good amount of articles on media depictions of bisexuality over time. Most of them are movies and TV, but it’s a good starting point and it helps articulate how your research fills this gap: the lack of book-specific explorations of bisexual representation.

For representation in novels, think about looking in education journals. These are some but I know there are more out there about queer representation in novels:

Crisp, T., & Knezek, S. M. (2010). “I just don’t see myself here”: Challenging conversations about LGBTQ adolescent literature. English Journal, 99(3), 76-79.

Jimenéz, L. M. (2015). Representations in award-winning LGBTQ young adult literature from 2000–2013. The Journal of Lesbian Studies, 19(4), 406-422. http://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2015.1057795

What I’ve found is that we have to be a little creative when researching bisexuality, especially when completing our literature reviews. Noting what’s there in terms of broader queer representation and then using that to justify why our research is important is a way to incorporate existing lit even if it’s not bisexual-specific.

Wishing you best of luck on your research! Let me know if there’s anything I can do. 😊

[farmerlesbian]

I have been questioning my sexuality for a long time, and having some feedback from queer people would be so helpful. So thank u

Well, I had known I like girls since I was like 14-15, I mean, it was really obvious and before figuring out I was educated in the topic an a total ally obsessed with the lgbt+ community, but yeah, I feel in love with a girl and started using bisexual as my label, because I had been also attracted to boys before,

I was like comfortable with that for a while, but, big point here I haven’t had anything with a girl at all, I knew I liked them but I had never had an experience, so years when by, and, at that time (18-19)I thought I was asexual because, I didn’t feel sexual atracción for anyone, and I was genially scared of it, but like this fellings where always more towards men.

Let’s keep in mind that I still had a crush for this girl, but like nothing ever happened so I tried to move on, and hang out with a guy I meet at school, but I remember like never felling comfortable with him, I felt really weird, I couldn’t explain it, but I ended ending up things with him because of how weird it felt.

Some time later, at a party I met a beautiful girl, and well long story shot we felt in love, and I literally made everything with her like in a week, it was, amazing, like just by kissing her, I was dying, I had never felt as good as I felt when I was with her

But well life happened so we broke up, and some time later I started hanging out with another girl, nothing serious happened, but like Omg, I can’t even describe how attracted I was to her, so that’s when I realized I might no be asexual or even Demi, cause the tension and attraction were there before having feelings for her.

As u might expect things didn’t worked out, so we stopped hanging out. To this point I was still kind of comfortable with calling me bi, but I had started questioning if I really liked men, cause I have never felt what I felt with the girls I meet, with guys.

Time passed , and I didn’t have anything serious, but at party’s sometimes I kissed boys, and I really didn’t wanted, it felt really weird, like so uncomfortable for me, and most of the time I would only kiss one if I was kind of drunk, and I felt so wrong afterwards, so I tried with girls and I liked so much, even when sometimes there where people I didn’t knew

But yeah, I kind of came to the conclusion that I’m really attracted to women, in a sexual and emotional way, and I really don’t know if I could ever had that with a boy, I had never felt genuine connection with one, in those ways, I do find some attractive, I could see one and say like he’s good looking, i could kiss him, but that’s all, nothing else would happened,

Sooo, I don’t really know if I’m a lesbian, and I’m scared of using the label, even when I feel more comfortable with it, because of the, what if, even when I’m not interested and don’t genuinely think it could happened, or see myself with a boy

And the thing that everyone thinks , that because I like masculine women, I’m looking for a “men”, when the reality is that I just really like women expressing their masculinity and the looks of it, me myself are kind of masculine too so yeah

Long story for something that might be obvious but I would really like to hear some thoughts

ahhh sorry for the delay on this! i had right away talked about it with the wife and planned out what i was gonna say and then never actually went and wrote it out.

you don't need it, but if it makes you feel better, you have our permission to call yourself a lesbian. to be a lesbian. if i'm reading everything right, you are super into girls and feel very uninterested in boys, yes? that certainly sounds to me like you're a lesbian!

you say you're scared of using the label but don't say what it is you're afraid of. ask yourself what you're afraid of, and is it real, is the danger real? how significant is it, like is it even a big deal? and do you want to push past and ignore your fear and call yourself a lesbian? why not try it out and see how it feels

and in regards to being into masc women - me too! mascs and butches and studs and tomboys are not men.

[anchoeritic]

I have a little question rq and only answer if ur comfortable, but how does one know if they're gay or bi? Like i thought I was straight but I don't see men the same way I do women, I can stare at a girl all day but some men don't irk me that way. I find it sm easier to connect w women emotionally, meanwhile men just stress me out. I tried talking to one of my lesbian friends but she was like "if ur gay u just know" like thx that's so helpful babe...

I just need help, I've been confused for yearsss and I've been neglecting my sexuality for so long but I want to be able to put a label on it if someone here could explain it maybe.

honestly, i still haven’t really found out my sexuality quite yet actually. i’ve been confused/lost from the age of when i started to develop genuine romantic feelings towards others and it hasn’t really changed.

i also somewhat relate to you. i connect with women more emotionally and overall, i just feel more drawn towards them. as for men, the attraction doesn’t apply for all, y’know? i’m like no help but talking to more people doesn’t hurt.

but another thing is; you don’t need to label yourself to a certain sexuality to feel complete. like i’ve been unlabelled for god knows how long and i have yet to completely understand the full meaning of my preferences and such. but i’m not going to categorize myself under a certain sexuality just because i’m confused.

take as much time as you need, there’s definitely no pressure to label yourself.

learn more about yourself first. experiment if your partner has consented, be open, talk about it. do as you feel comfortable, discuss amongst others who might be going down the same route and are also stuck at the red light. you aren’t the only one, sweetheart. i promise.

[aro-culture-is]

genuine question:

so i identify as an ace lesbian, and have for a while. but before that i would always flip flop between bi and lesbian, until i realized i am not at all interested in guys. but what has been difficult lately is romantic attraction towards girls, you see i have a major crush on my best friend. but she’s straight so i’m trying to get myself to make these feelings,,, well wither and die. i’m trying to get myself to like other girls but i just can’t. i’m starting to think i might be demiromantic asexual lesbian.

i want a romantic relationship but i don’t need one, i see myself as the quirky wine aunt that lives alone and i’m happy. i definitely don’t need a partner but if i wanted one it’d probably be my best friend. i know i’m a terrible friend, i already feel bad that i like her. i’m trying to get rid of them but i just can’t. i’ve known her since i was 8 and i’m 19 now, and i’ve probably had a crush since 13.

am i demiromantic?

this ask is from early June, and i'm sorry i'm only just getting to this.

while I can definitely see the feelings you've described as that of a demiromantic asexual lesbian, i think the most important part of a label is if you feel like it helps to connect you with community, resources, and/or understanding. if any of that feels good - welcome to the aro-spec community :)

the second half of your ask, however, brings up something that i think is much more important to talk about right away:

feelings are morally neutral. you are not bad for having feelings. the important distinction is action. you are not "bad" or "a terrible friend" for having romantic feelings towards her. that's a feeling. if you were trying to actively disrespect her stated boundaries, that's an action that causes harm, and we'd have a whole different conversation here.

i am aware of the predatory lesbian stereotype, and i think you'd really benefit from checking out wlw circles and asking for advice about overcoming what i believe counts as internalized homophobia. i want to emphasize that it is not in some way bad or predatory to have a long-standing crush on someone so long as you respect their boundaries.

[redheadbigshoes]

Hi! I have a legit question: Do you think someone's sexual orientation can change during their lifetime?? (And just so I'm clear, I don't mean "conversion therapy" or an “off/on switch” or anything like that!)

When I was a teenager, I thought I was bi: crushed on boys, but mostly fantasized about intimacy with girls. But years later, after a head over heels/gave me stomachaches I was so nervous/I wanted to be her everything crush on a female coworker lol, I slowly came to terms with my lesbian identity. I remember feeling lots of imposter syndrome because I didn't feel I was gay since birth like so many stories I'd heard from other gays/lesbians. Bisexuality was even more frowned upon back then, and I remember really NOT wanting to be bi. But I waited for the "other shoe to drop" on crushing on a bunch of guys which, aside from a couple "comphet crushes" (a married guy who was "nice" to me, and a male coworker who paid attention to me that all the other women in the office thought was hot) never really happened. I sure started crushing hard on women though! Lol. And after a breakup with my only boyfriend, I remember craving a relationship with a woman at the time.

Now I'm older and legit feel like I can't stand the idea of being with a man. My long term partner is a woman, but even if we ever broke up, I see myself seeking only women or other sapphics. Sure, I find a few men (mostly on TV, from a specific demographic) attractive, but I don't feel anything when I see them in the wild, even the good looking ones. I'm only questioning myself after now seeing all the updated discourse on lesbianism, and want to make sure I'm properly communicating and naming my identity.

I feel like I went from “secretly bi" to "publicly identifying as straight but suppressing my physical attraction to women” to “lesbian” without looking back. It could’ve been comphet, I’m not entirely sure. Do you think it’s possible for sexual orientation to shift like this though? I think Ricky Martin said something about genuinely having loved the women he used to date, but he stands firmly in his gay identity today.... I can somewhat relate. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts!

Hi! I think 99% of the time people’s sexuality doesn’t change, what happens is that most of the time people are bisexual but their preference can change and make them think they’re either homosexual or straight. Bisexuality can be a fluid identity, a lot of bisexuals can change their gender preferences over time, but I feel like those preferences just change, not that they actually stop being attracted to a certain gender. This also goes to aro/ace people (imo), their amount of sexual/romantic attraction might change over time but they’re still in the aspec.

Also when it comes to gays and lesbians who used to identify as bi before they figured out their identity, it’s not that they once were actually bi, they just took more time to figure out their lack of attraction to the opposite gender. This also goes to the opposite situation: someone who used to identify as gay/lesbian but later started identifying as bi. I honestly think they were always bi but they just had a heavy gender preference that made them think they weren’t.

I’ve seen some people bring up a situation where there was abuse and trauma involved and that trauma made them stop being attracted to a certain gender or made them be attracted to a certain gender. I’ve never been through anything like that, and though maybe that person’s sexuality could’ve actually changed, I think what happened is that after that trauma they suppressed their feelings towards a certain gender, and maybe those suppressed feelings made them realize their attraction to another gender (that attraction was always there but never really explored).

Idk exactly what Ricky Martin said, but maybe that love for the woman he used to date isn’t sexual and romantic, there’s other kinds of love that do not involve sexuality. Maybe he just really cares about that woman and he loves her platonically, but was never sexually and romantically attracted to her.

[emma-thejourney]

Diary Entry #1: Oof

Long-story short, I accidentally sent my boyfriend a Tik tok about coming out as a lesbian to your long term bf. While I did watch that Tik tok, and I AM questioning by sexuality, I literally don’t even remember sending that to him. Like I legit did not send that to him— it could have been on accident from water falling on my phone or a glitch but either way it’s a problem that’s been brought up now that I have to face. I’m mad because I wanted to bring this topic up on my own terms but the universe just did not have that in store for me.

It sucks because I really still am figuring out my sexuality so I just have a lot of turmoil happening in my brain. I am starting to realize that I might be on the ace spectrum. I even made a list where I wrote objective facts about my sexuality and a lot of it does seem to lean toward ace. I’ve always ID’d and bi so I thought I was just a lesbian but I don’t think that is the case. Sex with anyone irl that is not a fantasy in my head just stresses me out. I will probably have to take a break with my bf (I don’t want a break up I don’t think) to give myself time alone to figure things out. I hope things can work out between us though because I care about him a lot. I hope I find the right path for myself soon.

07/09/2023

1:13 AM

[foreverinthepagesofhistory]

How did you know that you were bisexual? Ofc You don't have to answer it if you dont want to.

Hello anon!

So I honestly always knew. Whenever I was watching a tv show, I always got obsessed with the characters who are girls. And I mean this was at any age and with literally any show. I always hyperfixated on them and became like obsessed with them to the point of like craziness. As a kid, I never knew that this was a sign of liking the same sex and I always thought that this was just normal (not that being queer isn’t normal, I just wasn’t educated as a kid). Then when I started to watch more grown up shows that portrayed two girls in a relationship, I realized that girls were allowed to like girls and all of the pieces started to fit. The whole reason that I loved and admired these female characters was because I actually had mini crushes on them myself. At first I thought I was BI since the stereotypes of a girl in the 21st century was that she “had” to like boys (totally unrealistic, I was just a kid who didn’t know anything), but then I realized that boys weren’t hot and they were stupid and they just didn’t make me feel something. I have this dieting memory of when I was a kid and the (popular) girls were asking each other who their crushes were and they were all so confident about their answers and they could talk for hours about their crushes and then they asked me (I wasn’t popular so I was trying to fit in) so I just said I have no crushes and they were like “come on of course you do, everyone has crushes” and I just said some random guy in my class. They rest of the day I just felt like this wasn’t right and that I just couldn’t name a single boy that I liked. These feelings had carried on for the rest of my life. Since my Lesbian/Bisexual awakening, I have discreetly (I have not come out to my real life) identified myself as Lesbian…..but I’m starting to question that slightly. So a couple of nights ago I had this dream of two characters from this show called Agent Carter, their names are Peggy and Daniel (Sousa), and I recently just finished the episode where they actually like kissed and really accepted the love they had for each other after all of these years and my dream was that they were like in danger and after like being scared and separated they just kissed. I love intimate dreams like that but I don’t know if it has changed me. I feel like some small part of me “likes boys” but I don’t know if that’s just the part of me that likes that certain ship. I’m still trying to figure out things since I have never really “liked” a boy in my life (there might be one but idk) and I have liked hundreds of girls so I’m the meantime I just identify as Lesbian/Bisexual.

Thank you all for listening to this big rant and I’m so glad you asked because I’ve been meaning to tell someone haha! Thank you!

[lgbtpenguin]

My personal experience trying to figure out my sexuality and gender:

*had never thought about it*

*starts thinking way too much ab female best friend*

- Mmm... I think I MIGHT not be straight

- Yeah I don't think I am

- Then what am I?

- Idk I'll just go with the vibe

- But what if I'm a lesbian?

- I think I like women

- But I've also liked men before

- Then I can't be a lesbian

- Maybe I'm bi

- But I don't feel like I am

- I gess I'm not

*Starts watching and reading A BUNCH of LGBTQIA+ content*

- WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OPTIONS????

*Starts to question not only sexuality but also gender*

- Maybe I AM a lesbian and I was just forcing myself to like men

- Yeah that could be it

*Starts liking a girl a lot and thinking about her all the time*

*Forgets about men*

- YESS I THINK I'M A LESBIAN

- I'm not completely sure I'm a woman tho

- I kinda like the term demifluid

- Is that me tho?

- I could be a non-binary lesbian

- Well idk

*Starting to get comfortable with the term lesbian (gender is still unknown)*

*Starts liking a dude*

- Well shit.

- I wouldn't like to see his penis tho

- Maybe a biromantic lesbian?

- Yeah maybe

- But I kinda like masculine bodies

- Maybe I just reject the idea of men because I'm resentful with them

- But I still don't like penises at all

- Do I even like pussy?

- What if I'm ace?

- I like masturbating and often find ppl hot tho

- Am I even non-binary or am I just forcing myself to abandon the term woman because I cut my hair short?

- Idk, but I think bi-lesbian is just fine for now

- I'm starting to feel that my name doesn't really fit my identity

- But again, am I non-binary or is it just an internalized idea that I can't be a woman if my hair is short?

*Looks for more options*

*Can't find anything*

- I'm starting to like this boy a little bit too much

*Starts overthinking why on earth would he pay so much attention to me*

- I WAS F*CKING FINE WITH MY OWN BODY AND IDWNTITY AND HE HAD TO RUIN IT

*Starts getting very uncomfortable with their own body and experiences dismorphia for about a week (I know dismorphia is a long-term week that can't be cured just like that, but I really can't find a better word to describe how I felt)*

*Stops liking that boy with such intensity, dismorphia stops and self steem starts to go up again*

- Wtf is going on with me

*Afraid to tell my psychologist about any of this since I feel she'd judge me if I did*

- I think I would like to change my name

- But WHAT NAME CAN I CHOOSE???

- I'd like smth gender-neutral

- Or smth a little more femenine?

- Gender neutral

- Or...

- I really like the name Ive or Ivy

- But it feels kinda weird to think about myself with that name

- I feel that people would treat me differently...?

- Also Ive isn't a valid option since I live in Latin America and

1. I don't want to get bullied for choosing a name in english

2. I'm pretty sure many would pronounce it wrongly

- I DON'T F*CKING LIKE NAMES IN SPANISH. ENGLISH IS SO MUCH BETTER.

- WHY COULDN'T I LIVE ON A PLACE WITH ENGLISH AS IT FIRST LANGUAGE?????

- I wanna move to a english-speaking country

- But I'm too young

- Ok names in spanish

- ...

- I don't have anything (if you can think of something please help)

- Fuck.

- Ok so... Am I even nonbinary? Demifluid? Woman? Man? (I don’t think so but I’m not sure of anything at this point) Agender? Something else?

- I think non-binary and woman are the ones closer to what I am, but maybe I’m wrong honestly

And this is where I am now. I’ve watched a million different videos and read different websites and posts on tumblr that talk about sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity, gender expression and so many more things. I’m so confused and have been for so long that it’s overwhelming. I keep changing my perception about stuff depending on the day and that is SO STRESSING. I have thought that I might be abrosexual but I’m not really sure it fits me. I’ve also thought I might be genderfluid but, as I said before, it is kinda hard for me to see myself as someone that either is or feels atracted to men.

I know that I’m closer to figure myself out than what I was at the start though, and that helps me keep going. This is what I’ve got till now:

Gender: Unknown (nonbinary is the one I feel more related to in a kind of way)

Gender expression: More masculine/androgynous (but that might also be because I don’t like how more “femenine” clothes look on me or I just don’t feel comfortable in them)

Sexual orientation: Lesbian(?

Romantic orientation: Biromantic(?

Idk, If anyone can give me any kind of help to deal with this, I’ll take it.

Also, I hope this can help someone who is in a similar situation, and if you are one of those people, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I am here to talk with you if you need to.

Update: I REALLY am into this boy and he's got me SO confused.

I think I might actually be bi... just with a bunch of internalized biphobia and fear of men (which i gotta get over)

[jenny-dreadful]

if i can ask a personal question how do you know if you’re bi-aspec (or aspec in general)? i keep spiraling about what if im just a lesbian and thats why i havent had sex or maybe im too introverted. im in my late 20’s so i feel like if i honestly wanted to i would have by now but i almost feel like i HAVE to just be repressed instead and stuff like the lesbian masterdoc has made it way worse :/ i always hear people say like oh go with your gut but thats not good advice for a nervous person and idek if i know what attraction feels like period, is it nervousness? intrusive thoughts? aesthetics? ugh!

lots of pieces to this question! i’m gonna do my best to handle u. pardon the text wall

FIRST: How do I (“how does one”?) know I’m aspec? I can only speak for my own experience, but for me the important pieces were 1) Finding out “some people just don’t experience sexual attraction” was even an option and 2) Realizing/being told that when other people make reference to, like, wanting to fuck a hot stranger, they do actually mean it and it’s not just a crass, jokey exaggeration.

People are cute as hell! I really enjoy checking cute people out! But I’ve never once scoped a hottie and thought/felt “OOOH I’d like my business to get up in their business, physically-speaking,” you know? It’s crazy to me that anyone would. It’s crazy to me to know that most people have not only actually had, like, actual irl physiological responses just to the presence of an appealing person, but that that’s, like, a pretty normal part of life for most people. Like, HUH? Y’all cannot be actually getting blushy n wet n shit…y’all cannot have ACTUALLY needed to hide boners through your whole teens*…please say sike…

It’s not that I’m seeing hot people and going through, like, a thought process of deciding it’d be unsafe or immoral to fuck em and therefore ultimately I don’t want to, or that they’re out of my league, or that I’ve decided I’m uninterested in casual sex in a social sense (although things like that may also apply)—it’s really just. N/A. These concepts just aren’t linked for me.**

So my thought is: To answer “Why haven’t I had sex? Am I ace or am I just introverted?” try assessing: Are you actually, actively attracted to people, but not pursuing that attraction due to shyness? Or maybe: Do you assume on some level that palpable attraction/arousal is something that kicks in Later, If You’re Getting Into It With Somebody, and you’ve just personally failed to get far enough to unlock those feelings? Because that one’s not it, actually—people who aren’t ace Feel Attraction whether they’ve done anything about it or not

As far as the other points of confusion you’ve mentioned, I really can’t nail them down for you, but what I CAN say is that I personally find the questions of “Am I just repressed?” and “Maybe I’m a lesbian and scared to accept it?” to be supremely unhelpful. In this context, they both hinge completely on the idea of ‘Someone suggested I might be lying to myself because I’m not ready to accept [x], and it’s impossible to definitively refute bc the phenomenon described is one where, literally by definition, I would not know I was doing that.’ Genuinely, I think you gotta consciously set those questions aside—you can return to them whenever, if you want, when you have a better handle on your central question.

*Not ENTIRELY literal and black-and-white like this for all aces. Personally I’ve also always been v low-libido, so the “Is this attraction or am I just free-floating nonspecifically horny?” was pretty fuckin easy for me to answer. It might take a little more work for you though, I don’t know your life story

**(This is where we get a little more personal, so be cool, but: When I’m using more specific labels [“bi aspec” usually covers me just fine], I’m demisexual, which for me is like. It’s not that I’m “sexually attracted” to anybody so much as it is that beyond a certain point/type of personal closeness, romanticism etc., sex starts to seem appealingly cozy, I guess? When that applies, I’m still not getting Super Hype about it in the way allos do. I’m not feeling particularly Urged to do anything. I’m still not proactively physically responsive. Just kind of opens it up as an option wrt things that sound kinda nice). I mention this only because, I dunno, if you’re questioning, it’s important to acknowledge that asexuality has a lot of different shapes to it—for very few people is it a total absolute in every dimension.

So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t know if anything in there is helpful to you, but I hope so, and good luck ✨

[bravelydoesit]

Im pretty much just realising that I’m a lesbian. I’m 25, and i thought I was bi for a long time (for YEARS I thought all women fancied other women even a little bit? I thought it was normal to enjoy kissing women significantly more because their lips are naturally softer? Screaming at my younger self rn) but it’s becoming quickly and undeniably clear that I am attracted to women and not men as I have believed for the entirety of my teenage and adult life thus far. I have completely misunderstood the meaning of sexual attraction my whole life because it is something I do not have for men. I think they were just the default and I never really questioned that I might not actually ever fancy them I just did what I thought I should be doing. This is wild to me.

I haven’t really told anyone, my head is spinning and I’m kind of struggling to understand how I denied/and or was completely unaware of this side of myself for so long. Even though a lot of my friends are queer, I am terrified of my other friends and family’s reactions, of my ex partners reactions (I don’t even know why I even give a shit). It just feels like this entirely new world that I know nothing about and I’m years behind everyone else and I’m so scared to start existing as who I actually am for the first time. But I’m excited. And fuck I really fucking fancy women. Like FUCKKKKKK. I feel like a teenage boy. Except I’m also paralysingly afraid of objectifying or making anyone feel uncomfortable. I also feel like I have a heart again. Like that wizard of oz character (did he get his heart back I can’t remember) How have I not figured this all out earlier????! I just needed to tell someone so here you go, internet