Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Confessions of a Fencesitter

Because I really didn't feeling like getting into it in my first post, my second post is going to deal with my orientation. As a lot of you probably know, I'm bisexual. Ooh, scandalous. It's honestly the best thing ever (in my opinion, of course), and I feel sorry for all you poor monosexuals who can't like both. Well, not really, since it's your own thing, and you really can't help it, but it would be nice if everyone was bi. At least I presume it would be.

I found out I was bi about a year and a half ago. Yeah, I'm a bit of a late bloomer compared to most other bi people, I guess. I blame my conservative Christian upbringing. I feel weird telling my story, since I'm not entirely sure what it is. That is, there are several ways I could make sense of my experiences and form a narrative from them. I suppose you could say that yes, I had crushes on guys before I figured out I was bi. But I didn't interpret them as such when I actually experienced them, since I believed I was straight and identified as straight, so to me and to everyone else, I was straight. But I wasn't straight, as I'd later learn. Of course, I rationalized these crushes as other things. I suppose it has to do with my religious upbringing, as I've heard that other people in similar situations rationalized their feelings in a similar manner. And while I didn't think it was wrong by that point (I decided to stop basing my political views on what my dad told me at, like, 12), I still had attitudes that were definitely homophobic. But more in the "scared of" sense than the "hatred" sense.

Once I started high school, I just sorta stopped having crushes on guys. I don't know why, I just did. Sorry if that makes me a fake. But, interestingly enough, I began to put my sexuality under scrutiny. I was too terrified to "experiment" (in quotes because that would entail masturbation, not sex, as I was and still am a virgin, although certainly not by choice, and I don't really like the term "virgin" in the first place, for numerous reasons, but I'm just using it for convenience's sake; tl;dr: I couldn't get any in the first place), so I never really got anywhere with it. But I kept a suspicious eye on it from time to time.

Then, when I got out of high school, I started to get into feminism. Well, I got serious about feminism. In high school, I called myself a feminist and pretty much agreed with the tenets of liberal feminism, but, you know, it's liberal feminism. I stumbled upon a feminist blog (I think it was Rage Against the Man-chine, but I could be wrong), and I got sucked in. Partly because even though the stuff they said made me feel absolutely horrible about myself (I mean, all these years I'd been unknowingly benefiting from male privilege!), it somehow made perfect sense to me. So, as painful as it was at first to read, I continued. And somewhere around that point, I started getting interested in sexuality. I'd heard a lot about LGBT issues from said blogs, and I wanted to know more about it. And this point was sort of the turning point, I guess. I didn't really know much about bisexuality, so I read about it. And pansexuality, sexual fluidity, and all of those related concepts. Of course, this only led me to become more and more suspicious of my supposed straightness. So, one night, after educating myself, I said to myself as I went to bed, "You know what? Maybe I am bisexual." And I don't care if you don't believe this next part, because it's absolutely true. The next morning, when I woke up, I remembered what I thought, and I just sort of realized it: I was bi. Everything made perfect sense. Which prompted me to freak the fuck out, since my dad is extremely homophobic, which meant that if he ever found out while I still lived at home, my ass would be toast. So, the next two weeks or so were hellish, as I was overcome with shame and guilt. I didn't leave my room much, since I didn't want to show my face. Yeah, I know, this shit sounds really lame.

Anyway, I got through it, of course. I'm currently only out to two people: my best friend and my sister. I want to come out to my mom, but I don't know if I should come out to more friends first.

As a reward for reading through all of that navel-gazing, you get an awesome song:


It's "I Can't Escape Myself" by The Sound. Criminally underrated post-punk band.

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