Ask Lemmy

Always remember that sexuality is not "I was born this way" sexuality changes throughout everyone's life. Just like ones gender.

It's a spectrum of many things and many ways from no sexual feelings to all sexual feelings towards any or no genders.

There is no binary there is no definite answer. It's whatever you feel. And that's completely ok.

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.

Who cares? If you like him, and he likes you, go have some fun. If you like it with him, do it again with him. If you like it in general, do it again with other guys as well.

If you don't like it, don't do it again, wt least until the next time you feel curious

Don't let weirdo's dictate.thst you can't have fun with being curious, don't feel the need to label everything

Btw, questioning things is usually a healthy thing to do. And sexually or attraction is complex. For some people it's also (or more) about personality and less about body features. Or it's multiple factors. You can be attracted to more than one gender. It's a wide bandwidth. And there's a lot of different things out there. You do you.

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

Yes. And it sucked. And it still sucks.

Within the last few year, I've finally realized I've been asexual my whole life. I've had sex before, but I struggled to care about it or enjoy it. It was always inconvenient, messy, went on too long, etc. I had enjoyed spending time with my partners, but I hated sex, and that's been a huge part of all my relationships.

And, yes, I've had "good sex" before. Just like someone who hates pie can have the best pie ever, it's still pie!

I've sworn off relationships until I can figure it out, but god knows that every romantic relationship will require sex to let my partner know that I care about them and their needs. I'm sick of compromising. Why the fuck should I need to compromise on something that I don't want or like? Plus, because I'm not into it, I'm sure my partner would want someone who puts in enthusiastic effort to the endeavor.

Don't tell me that I'll find someone. It's not comforting, and I'm still grappling with the reality of it. I'd like a partner, but it's just not feasible for someone like me.

I'm still mad that I'm like this.

Same thing happened to me.

We connected more emotionally than normal friends.

Guy was interested but I let him know that before we did anything physical I might not be ok and it wasn't anything to do with him. Did not want to hurt his feelings.

We eventually had a rom com ass first date. Ending in kissing. For me it just felt the same as girls. Always been indifferent sexually but like you said feminine men check boxes.

Enjoy! It was a formative time for me as a person that made me realize your life can change when the right circumstances come along. No longer with them but glad for the time period.

Adults fuck whatever they want.

"Sexual identity" is for children who need to get out more.

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.

Yes I've seen Jason Mamoa.

I think gayness is a spectrum. Likewise, I think emotions are not back and white. So you could have some feelings for this guy, you could be confused, and if this was ancient Greece you probably would have slept with him by now, but whether you see him as a partner or a little brother you want to protect is a conscious choice you can make.

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.

In the teenage boy caught in the hyper masculine world of American highschool? Yes.

In the actualized adult trying to understand myself and the world? Also yes.

I think that in reality, every human can relate to this post. Straight, gay, bi, asexual. You meet a person that makes you go "what the fuck is happening?".

My opinion is that it doesn't really mean (or necessarily equate) that you want to have sex with the person. For myself, I consider myself to be heterosexual although I wish I was bisexual. I do however consider myself to be biromantic, and could very well see myself in a relationship with someone of the same gender. The difference is that when I've envisioned or been close to trying the sex part, I get actually physically nautious. Not to say "gays make me sick" but, uh 😂😂 Me personally having gay sex makes me sick.

Yea I pretty much threw away labels because it got to be a pain in the ass to try and say anything when I always end up going into that description "I'm just attracted to femininity".

Yep. Thought I was straight until my 30s and saw a picture that made me feel things about men that I usually felt about women. Turns out I'm not that picky about gender but women get a +5. (which means, even if I wasn't married, the guys I'm attracted to are wayyyyyy outta my league.)

I took me a really long time and a lot of confusion to figure out that I'm ace

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.

I was curious, so my friend who bi let me go down on him. It was not my thing lol. Cunilingus, however 🤤

I am straight as a board, to my despair. Women are so beautiful and in general hold up better as we get older, it would be so lovely to know I could switch teams if my husband died or we divorced, my kids say I should date women next time if there is a next time but alas, I've tried and there is nothing. It's men for me.

I would argue that being attracted to individuals regardless of their gender is the most natural and reasonable sexuality there is, though. I think of bisexuality or pansexuality as the default setting for humans - we don't have a mating season or anything, we use sexuality for all sorts of non- reproductive reasons. My kids were raised with no pressure to be straight or not, 3/4 of them are queer, 2 of those lean gay one leans hetero, but as preference not orientation if that makes sense. One is as straight as I am, it's an orientation.

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.

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.

Only when my wife gets out her strap-on.

I identify as bi but I don't really find myself attracted to outwardly masculine or 'normal'-looking guys, often, as you said, femininity is a thing, and consideration. There's also the pansexual concept which transcends traditional borders. I do find enby peeps attractive too.

I've thought a couple different guys were hot, but the idea of actually having sex with them still doesn't do it for me. Ah well, life is confusing sometimes.

I saw gay porn once and was immediately sure that I'm hetero. That's definitely not the flavor for me. If how I felt is how gay people feel when they see hetero sex in movies, then you guys have my condolences. Yuck!

Yep, have been doing so for a few years now. I'm happily married to a woman so it's somewhat irrelevant what my feelings towards men and NB people are.

But fi you're single and the guy is open to dating give it a shot.

I never really questioned my sexuality, but I did have an experience that somewhat confirmed it for me.

I've had a fairly open relationship with my wife and we've brought people in for various reasons, and I had the opportunity to have a devil's threesome with my (at the time) brother from another mother, and during a lul when my wife had to use the bathroom, we kept the mood going ourselves. Found out that I'm definitely not (physically) into AMABs, and they (eventually) found out they were trans. I still love the hell out of her even if I don't talk to her nearly as much as I'd like (damn life always life-ing), and I have a couple non-sexual semi-ronantic relationships with AMABs in my life, and one of my partners is a (semi-transitioned) trans-man.

All that to say, you never know if you don't try. And if you feel that the person is safe/trustworthy/receptive enough, it can't hurt to test the waters and see. You may find out that you're bi, demi or pan. And you might just have your cis-het confirmed as well. But you'll never know unless you're willing to make that step.

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.

Identify as straight. F1nn5ter could absolutely get it.

Whenever I question myself, which isn't often, it's very easy to check with the Internet, if you catch my drift, but as yet, I very much do not want to see any of that. My preference is clearly the opposite.

But then, for some people, including me, images and real people are very different things. I think I could be somewhere close to demisexual or demiromantic, for example. My instinct is to try to get to know someone really well if I find them even slightly attractive. In older-school phrasing, you might say I'm not the sort of person who is interested in one-night stands.

Your specific situation is one I've heard of before and have considered if I could find myself, unexpectedly, with another guy, whatever he might look like. Stranger things have happened, but it's hard to imagine.

When I was double-checking sexuality definitions just now, I found this page: https://rainbowandco.uk/blogs/what-were-saying/sexuality-definitions which happens to list "finsexual" which fits pretty well with your description. Something to think about, maybe.

But whatever's going on with your good friend there, I wish you the best, whatever that might mean.

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

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.

Not really. Never felt anything else than being straight, as I've never felt any inclination towards liking guys, and for as long as I can remember I've always liked women, including in that special way that gave me that funny feeling in my pants when I was very young.

Sexuality may be a spectrum, but my location on it has always felt like a very uncomplicated one.

First, romantic attraction isn't the same as sexual attraction. Do you want to spend time with them or fuck them?

Second, honestly I somewhat wish I was attracted to men, but I'm not. I've known gay/bi men who are attractive, but I'm not attracted to. I'm not off put by men by any means, but there's zero sexual attraction to them for me. If this isn't the case for you, then you may be interested in men but repressing it because you haven't considered it before.

This is something you have to figure out for yourself. Consider the idea of sleeping with them and if that idea is interesting to you then I guess you've learned something new about yourself. Just like being attracted to women doesn't mean you're attracted to all women, the same is true for men and maybe you just hadn't met a man that does it for you until now.

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. 💜

I spent years questioning my orientation because of how rare and mild my attraction to men was. It wasn’t until I started hormones and it went away completely before I realized definitively that yeah I had been attracted to men.

My question for you is, do your labels matter more, or your desires? And it’s ok to use the questioning label

Yes, I've even tried to date someone. Everything started great but moved into 'what am I doing' territory fast. Ended on awkward note where you say sorry I'm not actually interested after leading another person on for some time.

I am straight, but my social media habits put me into a lot of contact with memes from gay, lesbian, pan, and everything else under the sun. A lot of it seems relatable, even if I never experience those same feelings IRL with real people. Definitely makes me question my sexuality semi regularly, lol.