So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gender?

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

Sometimes, I look at a girl, and feel a kind of static in my fingers. Afterwards, I just can't stop staring at her. I can't rationalize my attraction at all. It's just a feeling.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

Long ago. Kinda had a weird fetish when I was roughly 9 or 10 towards girls, which shifted to guys a few years later. The fetish for some odd reason built the foundation for my full on sexual attraction towards guys. Their smell, their builds (athletic/muscular).... can go on and on LOL.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I sort of liked girls, but that was the result of having my friends talking about them all the time. I found out in seventh grade that I was attracted to men when I couldn't stop staring at this boy in the senior class. I had crushes on boys, but I shrugged them off because my family also spoke out against homosexuality.

Anyhow, the boy was everything I wanted in a man! He was muscular, sort of soft, played football, tall, broadshouldered, smelled good, and was just overall HANDSOME! He hugged me once from behind, and I cannot tell you how great that day was. I would love to go on, but I'd get too carried away.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

Orientation for me was easy. I just tried everything on for size while fantasizing and stuck with what worked. I figured the bedroom by myself was a safe place to figure that out.

Gender should have been easy. Every friend I had until I was 10 pretty much was a girl, and I was the only boy they could get to play house with them. I loved choir. NOT that this is an exclusively girly thing, it was just my thing. And I cried way easier than the other boys and until I got way older. Later on I learned how a guy is supposed to cross his legs and not talk with his hands and all sorts of other stuff in high school. Lots of people thought I was gay at first. I just had that vibe to me I guess. But that vibe went away as I got better and better at being a dude. Even before I fully hit puberty though I'd find excuses to dress up when my parents were away. And I'd have dreams where I was a woman and everyone knew. I'd wake up sad that they were over.

But I had a pretty bad environment at home, and of course high school you can't be different at all, so I kinda caved into being normal and just figured it was no big deal since I liked girls. I also had a straight friend that did drag for Rocky Horror so I figured it was just something people did and didn't talk about. So time went on, I met a wonderful woman and fell hopelessly in love with her. I let her know about my dressing up, which was all I'd admit to myself. She was okay with it and later I proposed.

When I knew for a fact? Pretty much always. When I finally admitted it to myself? This is gonna sound really really corny. But in X-Men 1st Class, Magneto gives a speech to Mystique, about... I wanna find it now.

I know it's just a line from a movie, but that line changed my life. Over the next few years I started asking myself a lot of questions. Was this just a sex thing for me? How would it feel if I left the house dressed up? Or just in front of one other person? How much would surgery cost? Would I even need to get it if I just wanted to pass and live as a woman? Etc. It was a gradual thing. But the moment it all changed was that line.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I don't even know when I realised I found guys as well as girls attractive....it felt natural so I never paid attention until it got rough lol which was around 10th grade when I started paying attention to these feelings. Senior year was when I crossed out all except bisexuality and accepted myself, best day ever lol. The headaches have stopped

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

Skipping past the specific experiences that led to it and just sort of summarizing the conversation I had with myself one evening:

Fact: I have never in 21 yrs of life felt even the slightest sexual interest in a female.

Fact: I've now had sexual contact with two different guys on various occasions. I had a good time each time.

Fact: While the first guy always hit on me and I took him up on the offer, with the second guy I very deliberately initiated the chain of events that led to our getting together. This would seem to go beyond the level of simple curiosity or 'experimenting'.

Options: I can either continue to play mind games with myself that I'm just letting things happen or 'just experimenting' or I can admit that, based on all the evidence, I'm gay.

Fact: I'm really not into mind games, especially ones I'm playing with myself.

Conclusion: Ok, I guess that means I'm gay.

Next thought: I'm hungry. I wonder what I should do for dinner?

All told, I believe it took less than an hour for me to go through this whole process and decide to move forward with my life as a gay man.

Todd

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I guess it might be different for you. For me, only certain things "trip my trigger" when I'm fantasizing. I'm not saying sex fantasies are everything. But they're a pretty good litmus test if that's what you're looking for. Romance and everything else is just my opinion something that's real but so abstract and subjective that defining or looking it at a different way is enough to change what it means to you. In other words, you're not gonna be able to put a lot of that into words or concepts you can measure. It's stuff you need to experience firsthand.

It's just a lot of little experiences that build on each other, and after you've had them you look at them all together and sometimes feel comfortable saying that you love this person or are attracted to that person. It's all trees; the forest label is always something you apply after.

By the way thanks for making this thread It's really great reading everyone's experiences.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I saw Pippa Middleton at the 2011 Royal Wedding and realised I was attracted to girls. Seriously...

Spoiler

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

Attraction is an animalistic or primal urge, there is little self awareness of it if it's real attraction.

You seem to be processing attraction in your left hemisphere lol.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

lol. l wonder if there could be something to it. l don't think you're doing it consciously necessarily. Or on purpose.

Maybe some people who are asexual or have trouble understanding attraction process those feelings in a different area of the brain.

Other neurological differences have been linked to processing things like language and emotions in a different area than most people do.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

For me, it was the fact that when I masturbate, in the porn I watch and in the fantasies I have 100% of them involved men. Something like .1% of the fantasies involved women (none of the porn ever did), and the woman was never the focus of my fantasy. So statistically speaking, it's probably that I'm attracted to guys.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

No I get where you're coming from totally. I'm that way too. I don't feel like I really understand something unless I can sit down with pen and paper and go, okay, so this this and this are true therefore this. You're looking to make some kind of pen-and-paper model like that, right? Something that could predict whether someone would be gay or transgendered given things, or maybe if they were gay or transgendered something that would let you know some of the reasons why. Like a math equation.

And I think it'd be awesome if you could. Maybe you can, I dunno. But I think with most of us we don't try to figure out a one-size-fits-all answer. What I'm saying is, you're asking "what makes a human being attracted to people, or feel like one gender or another". What most people ask is "ohmygodohmygod what the hell is this I'm checking out my math teacher". I mean maybe not everyone's freaked out by it but the point is it's a really personal thing. You're trying to figure it out for everyone. Most people just kinda settle for an answer that works for them.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I never dated a girl nor thought of dating one, it always felt uncomfortable to me
and even when i started watching porn (str8 porn) it was always the men i got attracted to

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I would look at girls and get the whole 'falling in love' feelings! My heart would pound, my pupils would dilate and I would get shivers up my spine. Or this could mean I had the flu

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I came across a video of a hot guy dancing on youtube and all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I never once had a crush on a girl. I definetly had one on the guy in the video!

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I just have an attraction to certain women, I've never felt deeply connected to any of the men in my life, and have never wanted to have a connection like that with men. If I notice a hot woman, I tend to stare, get all nervous and my heart will pound, everything. If I see a hot guy, nothing. I notice when others are attractive, but when I'm close to other women, there's a connection I feel with some of them.

 

Re: So, how did you figure out what you're interested into with regards to sexes/gend

I get these gross butterfly feelings in my stomach or tons and tons of anxiety around cute girls while a good-looking lad doesn't do that to me too much. And yeah, I can definitely feel a connection with women, while I don't feel like that with guys.