Since I was a kid, I failed so hard at being a guy. I’ve always been hopeless at athletics. My body type has always been pretty meek (let me not doxx myself and say more). I hate any sort of competitive environment. I can’t hold my liquor for shit. I have a very high pitched voice and an expressive way of talking. Friends have described my voice as a “gay twang”. My mum probably assumed that I was gay from day one, as I got a lot of “it’s OK to be gay” from her growing up. Sadly I had too much soy or not enough soy, because I grew up attracted to women.
Maybe you old comrades remember, but schools in the 90s were full of homophobia. “That’s so gay” criticised any action that deviated from some masculine ideal. I got this multiple times a day, and I learned to stifle my personality to avoid the rebuke of my male non-friends. I’m not even complaining, there’s so so many that had it way worse than I did.
Nowadays it’s great being a flamboyant straight dude. I can be as sweet, as empathetic, and as expressive as I want. I have cute and colourful clothing. I get really ecstatic around animals. I cry. People like me for being fun and engaged with stuff. Nowadays if some guy colleague says that’s “gay” it’s like 
“are you alright mate??”
I did go some LGBT events and actions in the past, but not a lot. If I do anything positive, it’s to enforce no homophobic language with my students, which guys has gotten a lot easier in the past 20 years. Really, the kids nowadays are much better than we were. OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.
So thanks a whole lot to all the queer people who have made my life much easier, when I’ve done so little.
Feminism also played a big role. When you were being called gay what you were really being called out on was being feminine and not suppressing your self enough. Patriarchy also hurts men as much as it hurts women. The early gay movements were very aware of their oppression coming from patriarchy. The two have been separated out a bit in modern thinking as you can’t have solidarity between different oppressed people. But yeah men embracing their emotions and not having to be stoic machines in modern society owes alot to feminism.
These liberatory movements wanted everyone to be free not just themselves. They believed it would help everyone. It’s not an accident or unintentional that they have helped you.
Well said
you can’t have solidarity between different oppressed people.
Do you mind elaborating on this? Not a leading question; genuinely curious if this is an analysis I am not familiar with since I have not really heard that sentiment before (not from anyone who meant well, anyway…)
I’m a bit lazy to type out an effort post so forgive me for my simplicity. I think it refers to how NGOs and pressure groups have professionalised the activist movement, and everything liberalised so that a wider mainstream analysis won’t be allowed to gain traction in the West anymore. Another Slide had a good YouTube playlist on this, which is worth checking out.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.
so you suck dick and are a cute twink yet somehow aren’t queer 
Not calling you out or anything Im just doing my duty and posting the correct emojis
kristina’s word is law
OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.
Nah, that sounds pretty bi. Bi is incredibly broad, literally just “not exclusively hetero and not exclusively homo”. If you enjoyed hooking up with dudes, congrats you’re bi!
I made a comment recently about how I think most people have the capacity to be bi, even if they end up “straight”.
yeah I think if they want to identify as straight thats fine but I dont think its stolen valour at all
Trans and Queer Liberation is Liberation for all.
Came here to post this. Read Beyond Blue or Pink even just the first chapter. It’s so good and speaks exactly to OP’s sentiment.
OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.
It’s ok I already stole the valor for you, here you go
(let me not doxx myself and say more)
not to be that guy but a lot of us were bad at sports, I dont think thats gonna get you doxxed
Hey it’s the one guy that is bad at sports! Get his ass!
OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there
Definitely not bi, no sirree
give em a few years mate
or just let him be who he says he is
didn’t say i wouldn’t
Policing people’s labels is kinda intrusive behavior, part of a larger struggle to maintain control over the sexuality and gender expression of others. The cishetnormative patriarchal matrix has indoctrinated us to mark each other in this way, to confine each other to restricitve little boxes that limit our freedom to just be and explore things. We should all strive towards cutting such reflexes out and create an environment where people can live self-determined lifes, and a huge part of that is to claim control over how to express and describe our experiences. Part of that is to not gatekeep bisexuality, but the same goes for gatekeeping straightness.
When you look at how our society treats men who’ve made the tiniest amount of same-sex experiences as automatically not straight, how guys only get the right to call themselves straight when they’ve never tested that theory, when male bisexuality is viewed as a “highway to gay”, when there’s gatekeepy bs like gold star lesbianism etc. etc., it should become understandable where i’m coming from.
Not even saying this guy can’t identify as straight, I just went through the exact same thoughts of “stolen valor” when I figured out I was bi in the past year.
Me reading this post: I dunno you sound kinda a lot like me when I was like “oh yes I’ve touched many a dick but I’m totally straight I promise.”
Me at the end of the post: Oh and there it is. If you hooked up with a couple of dudes and it was consenting and you’re like “yeah I’d do that again” then you’re queer enough. Welcome to it. Literally every queer person feels imposter syndrome. This is just part of the experience. Some worse than others. You don’t have to be actively touching multiple types of genitals at the same time to be queer. You don’t have to be attracted to everyone to be queer. There are lots of genders out there besides “men” and “women” too, if you’ve ever met someone who doesn’t go by she or he and is confusingly hot anyway, yep, that’s queer too. That’s mostly my experience anyway.
Anyway I for one give you permission to call yourself bi or queer or whatever label you want to use. You’re not gonna hurt anyone by saying you’re bi. You can use straight too if you want I don’t want to take that away from you. I just want to let you know what the way you’re talking now sounds like you’re a baby queer maybe thinking about starting that journey. Be true to yourself you deserve it.
imposter syndrome
Fair enough.
You don’t have to be actively touching multiple types of genitals
Wow, what’s the point then
But for real, good effort post and thank you. I wonder if I just attached my identity too hard to straight people in my lib phase. But your words are food for though.
Now if you want to be queer and polyam then you can touch multiple types of genitals at the same time. 10/10 highly recommend. One thing at a time though
It’s about the journey, not the destination.
It’s about how many butts you touch along the way
the point is that you know who you are, and that you love yourself for it. and you have a community that loves and supports you.
a high body count is not proof of anything.
TrashFuture once described school in the 1990s as one kid announcing that if you don’t drink from a puddle you’re gay and then every other kid lining up to drink from the heterosexuality puddle. I distinctly remember that puddle. Even as a cishet guy, that casually reactionary environment was so repressive that at best I could hope to be in an arms race with the other boys to prove I can drink the most puddle water. My grandparents bred flowers and even that- being two generations removed from liking flowers- was a puddle for 90%~ of the other boys who knew me. They just assumed I was gay and lumped me in with the female cliques, who also assumed I was gay because I must like flowers.
But now I’m a plant scientist with a home full of flowers who’s good with women. They’re probably still desperately drinking from the puddle if they didn’t also find communities which radically break from cis-heteronormativity. Nothing threatens me more as a cishet male than masculinity.
We really should’ve taken advantage of that. Say “Do X or you’re gay!” Where X is every step of building a proletarian revolution.
Normally I just tell people to read theory because it will help them reach a clearer understanding of the world and themselves.
But…
I remember in middle school the popular girls were trying to trick the stupid foreign girl (me) into thinking various english words for stuff like genitals or poop were the english words for things like chocolate and other fun things.
Are you in Dogtooth?
I don’t know what that means.
Dogtooth is a movie where abusive parents raise their children in a complex they’re not allowed to leave, and they teach them the wrong meanings of words. There’s a scene where one of the daughters asks her parents what a vagina is and the mom tells her it’s a chandelier or something to that effect.
no my parents are immigrants so we didn’t speak English at home.
yeah its insane how far its come. I commented this on another post here but: Im straight, and I had to do therapy to accept it because I got bullied so intensely for so many years a deep, deep part of myself was convinced I was in denial. It was brutal, I would get followed home and beat up for like, wearing shorts (gay to have your knees out?)
Maybe you old comrades remember, but schools in the 90s were full of homophobia.
Oh yeah, it definitely was. Basically the way normal trans people are marginalized and abused today is how normal queer people were marginalized and abused back then. And the smaller the community one grew up in, the worse it was.
Basically the way trans people are marginalized and abused today is how normal queer people were marginalized and abused back then.May want to rephrase this as it implies that trans people are not normal.
That’s a very good point! Edited.
Thanks!
I prefer the terms spicy vs unami queer. No I will not explain which one is which, if you know, you know.
i developed some really nasty internalized homophobia. Im straight, and I had to do therapy to accept it because I got bullied so intensely for so many years a deep, deep part of myself was convinced I was in denial. Like a lizard section of my brain was just convinced everyone else was right or something, very weird.
it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi
It isn’t, all it takes is being into people of your own gender and people of other genders. That’s literally all there is to it. You wouldn’t even have to hook up with them, people can be in lifelong monogamous relationships with a person that only has one gender and still be bi. That’s valid. Being bi may actually be the most common sexual orientation out there, at the very least it’s super fucking common, and we should just normalize that fact.
Edit: That’s not to say you have an obligation to call yourself bi, if you identitfy with the straight label it’s ok. Just saying that you have every right to call yourself bi if that’s what you want to.
I appreciate the supportive reply. It’s just that I don’t feel super attracted to men most of the time. Maybe I’ve absorbed the reactionary idea that kids are choosing to be gay because it’s cool, but I hate to take the spotlight from my gay friends who have it much harder than I do.
Lol, my analysis feels really bad.
It’s just that I don’t feel super attracted to men most of the time
otherwise known as The Bi Experience for a lot of people, tbh
It doesn’t help that the typically bro type of guy is so unattractive to me, and they’re the most typically type I meet. If a guy is into music, books, or anything non-typical, isn’t a football fanatic, doesn’t smoke or drink, OK I can feel some attraction. Sorry if the above describes anyone. Bros are fine, I just don’t want to kiss them.
idk why but im attracted to the most disgusting men. e.g. frat bros that have beer bellies and wear camo 24/7
someone fix my brain
I think that being attracted to bellies and camo is fine. But if you’re attracted to jerks, like I used to be, maybe you have the same problem I do and it’s self esteem??? Sorry to randomly guess at your issue.
That’s just having a type. Personally I’m not into macho guys either (or very feminine girls). You could literally only be into fem twinks and still be 100% bi. Being attracted to members of the same gender to the point you’d fuck is honestly pretty inherently queer
I’d imagine most queer people don’t want the spotlight. They just want to be able to exist, so normalizing labels like bi is a plus. Some agender/NBies give similar reasons as to why they don’t identify as trans and no one whose opinion is worth caring (so excluding transmeds) about want people to be afraid of using the label for themselves. Likewise with people who would like to use they/them pronouns, but don’t feel trans enough and are worried using their language for yourself. Bring a to use the pronouns you want, whether you are cis or trans, is something most trans people want.
Likewise, people who commit bi-erasure have opinions not worth caring about. Your type for guys doesn’t need to be any sort of stereotypical guy for you to call yourself bi.
But there is no requirement to use such labels either.
Adding that, it’s perfectly valid to say you’re bi if you would never consider having a long term romantic relationship with a man, you only do that with women, but you are willing to have casual hookups with men.
Yeah this honestly sounds like a degree of internalized biphobia from growing up in a backwards era. I wonder if OP grew up today they’d have different revelations.
I convinced myself I was 100% straight despite same-sex attraction until about 14/15, solely because I could only see myself with a girl. Looking back it was cognitive dissonance, I very much wanted to fuck guys and that’s pretty bi.
I also think I mind-blocked myself idea to the idea of same-sex romance from some pretty strong heteronormative societal conditioning. I feel like sexual attraction is uncontrollable, while romantic gender attraction is more mental and environmental, but with decades of conditioning, is probably extremely hard to change. There’s plenty of gay men who’ll tell you they are/were into guys exclusively sexually and women exclusively romantically. But afaik, sexual attraction is the main definer for sexuality
You can be bisexual but only hetero/homoromantic.
“Is this a post about me?”Maybe you old comrades remember, but schools in the 90s were full of homophobia
Graduated in 2017 & nothing has changed lol
Wow, that sucks. I’m no expert, but I hear it much less from the teens I teach.
Maybe it’s improved in the last eight or ten years, Idk. Also, you in a big city? My school was far enough out to have to serve both military brats and rural racist types.
Ya I’m in a city. I’m sorry for your situation. I guess that I forget that other cultures exist out there.
Where I grew up if you weren’t an aggressive wrestler fanboy ready to thrown down at random then you must be gay. Some boys put up a facade just to avoid the witch hunting. I didn’t bother. Didn’t care for that stuff at all. By high school I was considered defacto gay.
I know which raging conservative men are in the closet. I know because they thought I must be into secret gay sex with them. Some of them attempted to forcefully. One of them had moderate social media popularity for a while as a local evangelical community leader. I think most people believe it’s a stereotype that is to say exaggerated but from my experience it isn’t at all.
The amount of people who thought I was gay at my previous job because I didn’t make obscene comments or passes at women coming to the department or my female coworkers, was so damn high. Like I straight up got asked if I was gay during a hangout once - this is despite there being a fucking sex pest the same year I started as a student worker, so it blew me away. My wife, on our first date, thought I was gay cause I complimented her nails and I was respectful. I just had no game. Which a) how fucking low is the bar for gayness. b) The fact, it was more accepted to be gay or queer at the time and I didn’t have to worry that my shyness and lack of interest in shitting where I eat, into a reason for harassment and bullying. I am constantly blown away by that.
As a cis straight (like a 2 in the kinsey scale) dude, I am shocked that doing even the bare minimum around the house, for my wife, or my kids, will put me in the “he is not like other guys”; my wife has had so many comments from older women like “your husband is so different”. Which can both, go to your head, and just make you depressed as hell - like lady, what the fuck is your experience and expectation of men? I am very thankful for gender theory and literature I’ve read about patriarchy and trying to be a better guy. I have a very lovely relationship with my children, that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
