I know no one can tell me my identity, that’s for me to decide. But I’ve been thinking long and hard about whether or not I’m bi, even pan, or just a straight girl who wants to be an ally to LGBTQ+ people. Heck, this may even be a “rhetorical question” and I already know the answer and just wanted to talk about it.
First off, I’m trying to get better at this, but I don’t really understand homosexuality. And what I mean is more like it doesn’t sit right with me. Something is wrong with my brain where two women kissing especially, grosses me out a little and just feels unnatural and weird. I feel homophobic like this, though, so I’m trying to get better at it. I’m completely fine around gay people, supporting them, and people coming out to me, but something about me being in the vicinity of women doing romantic stuff makes me feel weird or having to hear about girls on a date. With men, however, the gender I find attractive, I do not feel weirded out about them going on dates, holding hands, kissing, and the like.
I genuinely can’t imagine being with a woman. Like, I can imagine us being “girlfriends” but I guess I’d only really want to be friends because I never find any women romantically nor sexually attractive nor would I feel like ever kissing a woman/holding hands or anything like that. The only thing I can tolerate with a woman is going on dates, which I could easily do when I hang out with friends.
But with men… I find men physically and romantically attractive. I easily find men attractive. Men kissing doesn’t bother me and I find it awesome even. I would like to kiss a man, go out with a man, hold hands, have a family and kids with a man.
But I thought women were pretty, so that made me bisexual and I would get a little warm feeling around them, but I realized I don’t wanna actually kiss or hold hands with them nor do I easily find them attractive.
And let me tell you, though I find women pretty, such as celebrities, it’s been so long since I actually had romantic feelings for a girl, or feelings I can consider to be such. I’ve liked guys for as long as I can remember and currently like a guy I know via a friend.
It sounds like you are a straight woman who actually thought about your sexuality and might have some social conditioning that is making you feel repulsed by women kissing instead of just not finding it arousing without knowing why. At least you thought about it!
You can most likely get over that revulsion, as in accept that since it doesn’t involve you it is just like any two people kissing, if you spend some time reflecting on how it really isn’t any different than seeing any other two people kiss.
Men kissing grosses me out.
It also doesn’t affect me in any way at all, like, the smell of garbage waiting to be picked up grosses me out and I just ignore it and go on with my day.
No one forces me to watch two men kiss each other, my own aesthetic sensibilities are my own, and nobody should be forced to alter their behaviour because I find it icky.
It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with two men kissing and it doesn’t mean two men shouldn’t be allowed to kiss.
It’s okay to find the sight or the thought of two women kissing gross, as long as you can understand, intellectually, that that doesn’t make it gross objectively, that two women are allowed to kiss, that their choices are their own to make, and that they’re still people deserving of respect.
You sound like a straight woman who’s attracted to men, but can appreciate the effort that women put into appearance. And who can blame you, women are beautiful! Similarly I can appreciate a ripped dude working out at the gym because they’re impressive, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to hop into bed with him. That’s not homophobic, that’s personal attraction.
Something is wrong with my brain where two women kissing especially, grosses me out a little and just feels unnatural and weird.
You can think something is gross. I think shrimp is gross. But you can be like, “Oh! No thank you” and politely disengage, or you can be like “EW. HOW COULD YOU? THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.” Some people, people with poor emotional regulation and empathy, do the latter.
If you’re polite and respectful, there’s nothing wrong with you.
I also think there’s just a difference between whether or not you find something attractive, and whether or not you think everyone needs to conform to what you find attractive or alluring. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
So as a cishet man i can find two men kissing not attractive and i can also be an ally and accept gay people. When i say “not attractive” what i mean is the absence of attractiveness but also not unattractive. Since I’m not involved in this two men kissing scenario then i don’t have an opinion about it. They neither are or are not anything. They just are. I see my best friend kiss his boyfriend and i see love, that’s it.
Maybe OP just needs more exposure to women kissing to get over the repulsion, and/or maybe just think about what I’ve said and internalize it. I do agree with another poster that the repulsion could just be social conditioning to be straight. But like i said you can separate what you personally find attractive and what you accept from other people
This is the important distinction. You don’t have to like everything personally, but you should understand that someone else might like what you dislike.
Besides, you probably like something odd like tomatoes, and I merely tolerate them as long as there’s enough salad dressing to camouflage them. There are even some who have zero tolerance for tomatoes, and that’s ok too. If you like tomatoes, go for it. If not, go with something else. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.
Maybe you were bicurious for a while???
Give a listen to https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn8Er6AFT1k
Not exactly related, as it’s about sex rather than romance, but certain things aren’t for everyone. That’s ok.
Nobody serious is going to shame you for being 100% hetero. The gays mostly know sexuality isn’t a choice.
Deleted cuz i forgot to reply to the right person
I’m not going to comment about your sexual orientation. But I do want to say that finding homosexual kissing gross doesn’t make you homophobic. I’m a man and to me the thought of two men being physically intimate feels like the thought of someone eating a spider. It’s viscerally disgusting and I don’t want to see it, but there’s no moral judgement included in my reaction. I’m unbothered by people doing either as long as I’m not looking at it. (Actually, I am bothered by the hypothetical spider-eating because I’m a vegetarian, but that’s beside the point.) I think my reaction and yours are actually common among both heterosexual people and homosexual people (but with regard to heterosexual intimacy).
With all respect, I don’t think it’s okay to call two adults kissing “viscerally disgusting.” I genuinely see that as on par with someone saying they “objectively” think a black person and a white person kissing is viscerally disgusting.
Like, idk maybe check yourselves a bit? Just because your emotions are sincerely felt doesn’t mean they’re okay in a civilized society. (Just like I tell my racist af grandma when she thinks it’s acceptable to say she’s “afraid” of black people so she shouldn’t have to talk to them—it’s not okay and her “fears” are bullshit.)
I don’t tell people that they’re being viscerally disgusting to me. It almost never comes up and on the rare occasions that it does, I just look off to the side and I’m fine. However, here the OP feels guilty about her similar reaction and in this context I don’t see a good way to reassure her without being frank about it. She doesn’t need to enjoy seeing two women kissing in order to be a true supporter of equal rights for people of all sexual orientations.
To me, “visceral” is actually a pretty apt word to describe the feeling. A visceral feeling is one that isn’t arrived at through deliberate thought, rather something that our brain / body just decides on it’s own. I think it’s fair to say that people’s sexualities on the grander scale are largely out of their control, i.e. you don’t “choose” to be gay / straight / whatever, which makes sexuality inherently visceral.
Based on that, I don’t think anyone should be ashamed for being disgusted by otherwise tame sexual behavior, especially if they have a higher level awareness of what’s going on (as OP & PP appear to). Where it’s a problem is if that’s used as justification to be hateful or -phobic towards other people, because that’s no longer visceral.
I think we’re touching some interesting topics here.
The social and societal expectations may, and often do, clash with our personal feelings and thoughts. In order to function as a part of the community, we have to restrain ourselves to some extent. Doesn’t change the way actually feel about things inside, but we can change the way we react and express those feelings.
