Q:

Dear Autostraddle,

I (18F) am an overthinker spiralling deep into confusion since I started actively questioning my sexuality two and a half months ago (ridiculously recent, I know). The question of whether I might be sapphic consumes me wholly. As a virgin, I have not had any sexual or even romantic encounters of any kind. I am incredibly fortunate to be in an environment accepting of LGBTQIA+ people. Half a year ago, if someone had enquired about my sexuality, I’d have blurted out “Straight!”. Now, I would only answer if they first assured me they had at least two hours to indulge my incoherent rambling. I urgently need help untangling this overwhelming confusion.

When I forage through my past for clarity I find only contradictions. At ten, I curated a list of boy crushes whose attention I craved. Around the same time, I remember play dates with girl friends, pretending to be a couple, the whole point of the game for me seemingly being laying on top of each other, cuddling. My first sexual fantasies featured a fully fleshed out woman and the blurry presence of a man. Later, I had various male celebrity crushes and one limerent real life boy crush at fourteen that was all nervosity and longing, but barely any sexual spark. While my friends were gradually beginning to make their first sexual experiences with boys I was bored senseless, alienated by their gushing accounts, considered a “prude”. I desperately wanted a boyfriend, but no one was good enough.

Still, I loved male attention, I do now too, it’s validating, and I check out handsome men while out and about, but I can’t tell whether that’s attraction or just craving approval. Fantasies involving men are quick to arouse me but the prospect of real-life intimacy with a man less so. I feel I couldn’t let go the way I imagine I would with a woman, partly out of fear of being overpowered, of my consent being violated in some way. Nerves!

When I watch sapphic content I feel tense but replay it again and again. A choking wave of jealousy surfaces whenever a lesbian couple appears on the screen. Listening to WLW audio stories I feel aroused but then plumet into a hollow sadness, crying and sobbing because it seems I could never have that, like I’m just a straight girl titillated by sapphic erotica. I’ve felt boundless joy and shivery excitement once or twice, grinned idiotically imagining being claimed, adored by a woman. In my sapphic fantasies, she’s either my only female celebrity crush (a sizzling dandyish woman with an inexhaustible intellect) or a general “aura of womanhood” (is this non-specificity a clue?). For fifteen minutes afterwards I imagined cuddling my girlfriend, drifting in a fuzzy warmth I’d never experienced before, only to feel cold uncertainty the next day.

I notice stunning women in real life, but it’s usually a deep aesthetic pull or at most a subtle tingle, not instant “wanting to have sex with her”-attraction, which makes me wonder whether it might be all in my head. Does that qualify as queerness? The prospect of turning out heterosexual is deeply disheartening. Sometimes, I feel hollow, with no right to claim I am anything but straight because what is two and a half months anyway. My orientation is the last thing I think of when I fall asleep and the first thing on my mind when I wake up, I am exhausted, often numb to any kind of sexual desire because I can’t turn off my mind, constantly analyzing During these phases, when I suspect I’m straight, I fret and wonder: Is it momentary clarity or compulsory heterosexuality trying to convince me I couldn’t possibly be queer even though I am? I hope it’s the latter.

Am I queer or just repulsed by straight norms, do I love women or am I just a passionate feminist? I often find dynamics in straight relationships (even happy ones) daunting, I am furious at society for undermining female pleasure, feel suffocated by the idea of a husband, a kid and a backyard trampoline. Am I just co-opting queerness out of frustration with the straight world?

Finally, what scares me most, is that I’ll meet an incredible girl, we’ll start to get close, and I’ll freeze, because, after all, I can’t feel what I thought I did. I wouldn’t want her to feel like an experiment but cherished, desired. I dream of my first sexual experience being with a woman, but do I really want that, or do I just want to be queer, belong? I think I want to make her coffee just the way she likes it, dry her hair after she comes in from a downpour, heatedly debate with her, take her dancing, read to her in bed, tell her I’m in love with her, be her fantasy, but other times, that leaves me cold. What if I’m not sapphic and I lose that prospect?

How do I overcome this uncertainty without it eating me alive? Am I overreacting, attention-seeking? How can I explore these feelings, live out my sexuality in real life when I’m scared all I am is a straight girl who doesn’t fit into the straight world, and I’ll just hurt any girl I’m with if I’m unsure? Am I queer or do I just want to be?

Yours sincerely,
A Hopeful Overthinker

[follow-up question sent a couple days later]

Hi! I just wanted to clarify some things in the message I submitted a couple of days ago.

When I am not aroused by thoughts of intimacy with women or WLW content, it causes intense stress. I constantly try to prove to myself I am queer and when my sexual response is weak or non-existent I don’t know what to think anymore. I am worried I want to be with women because I’m afraid of intimacy with men or seek a sense of community rather than because I feel genuine desire for them. Finally, I seem unable to let my mind and body rest. If I’m not constantly engaging with sapphic feelings or thoughts, I am terrified it proves they were never real, that my queerness might just fade if I stop focusing on it.

Thank you so much and I’m so sorry this is so long!

A:

Hey, deep breath okay! I’m going to kick things off by saying I think you’re queer. No caveats! No clarifications! You’re queer, full-stop. If you just started questioning your sexuality a couple months ago, you’re indeed just very early on in this journey, and that’s okay! It often does mean a lot of confusion, stress, anxiety, and over-thinking like everything you’re expressing and moving through in this letter.

I think you’re butting up against a few internalized narratives that are ultimately getting in your way. For starters, I think you’ve probably ingested the “born this way” narrative that maintains that queer people are inherently, well, born this way, which suggests an implicit certainty and knowing of one’s self. But a lot of us do not figure these things out until much later. Some people may wake up one day and realize they’re certain about their queerness, but the vast majority of us do not have that sudden sense of clarity right away, especially because a lot of us experience shame around queerness that we have to unpack, and I get the sense that could be something you’re dealing with, too, based on some of your reactions to WLW content. (Shame can look like a lot of things by the way! Even shame is more complicated than a lot of dominant narratives suggest.)

You also could be butting up against the fact that there are some people in the LGBTQ+ community who are sort of rigid about identities and categories and make others feel like they have to commit fully to a letter in the alphabet and then remain there. I am very against this line of thinking. I think you can choose to identify as a lesbian now and realize you’re bisexual. I do not think this would amount to making another girl feel like an experiment. Sexuality just takes time and also experiences to figure out. A lot of what you write in your letter does scream bisexuality to me, but figuring out your own labels will likely take time. I invite you to use Queer for now, as it is such a great umbrella term that can encapsulate a lot of other identities within it.

You wrote some intensely queer things in your letter that I firmly believe only a queer person would write, like “I think I want to make her coffee just the way she likes it, dry her hair after she comes in from a downpour, heatedly debate with her, take her dancing, read to her in bed, tell her I’m in love with her, be her fantasy, but other times, that leaves me cold.” Those are all very romantic things to want to experience and feel with a woman. Replaying WLW content is also very queer and very common early on in a sexuality journey. The fact that you’re overthinking so many of these things so much is so queer and so relatable. I, too, struggled to fully embrace my lesbianism and wondered if I was a “fraud” early in my coming out journey — EVEN WHEN I WAS SLEEPING WITH WOMEN! But like you, I had certain mental blocks that made me feel uncertain, confused, and out of control.

The inconsistencies in your experiences aren’t actually inconsistencies — being a human is just messy and often contradictory! You can crave male attention and still feel suffocated by the idea of a husband! You can have sexual fantasies about a fully fleshed out woman and not experience immediate “wanting to have sex with her”-attraction when you encounter women you are attracted to in real life. Life and human desire are full of these kinds of contradictions. Not only does sexuality exist on a spectrum in terms of queerness and how you identify in terms of who you’re drawn to but also how you’re drawn to (or not drawn to) people. You could exist somewhere on the queer + asexual spectrum, for example. I hope I’m not overwhelming you by giving you even more identities to consider, but I’m just trying to show you there are so many ways to be queer, to move through queerness, and to act on desires.

There is no such thing as being queer enough. There is just being queer.

You’re not attention-seeking, and you’re not co-opting queerness. You’re just wrestling with a big and difficult to untangle part of yourself that you haven’t really explored much yet. I’m sure I would have hated to be told “you’re young” when I was your age and was seeking advice, but you’re young. This stuff takes time to figure out. I was as lost and anxious about all this stuff as you are now when I was your age, and now I’m the managing editor of a magazine for queer people. Don’t let other people make you think you have to earn or prove your queerness. Everything in your letter sounds so incredibly queer. I promise straight people don’t think about these things that much.

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