For as long as I can remember, I've been attracted to and loved men. Growing up in a religious household, in an era in which gay acceptance was far less than it is today, I knew from a very early age that I had to keep who I was a secret. For a time, my parents waited for me to suddenly discover girls, and bring home a flurry of girlfriends as my brother had, but it never happened. Instead, I dreamt about the boys in my school, imagining worlds where we could be together in secret. I fantasized about complex schemes that would let me be with all my bestfriends, knowing full-well that not a single one of them would ever want to be with me. Eventually, my parents caught on that I was never going to get a girlfriend, and resigned themselves to having only one straight child. Then, years and many difficult nights later, my parents got their second straight child after all: I came out as trans.
My mom was the first to recognize the humor in this. Here I was, someone who had known and accepted my own gayness since childhood, who spent decades building the courage to tell my family, only for my current boyfriend to shock me into finally coming out, confirming what everyone had already known since I was my first childhood limp-wristed hand-flaps, coming out as a seemingly straight woman. My identity was gay, my love was gay, my life was gay. I was gay. Yet now, finally coming out and accepting what I too had known about myself since I was a child, I had to come to terms with these thus far separate worlds coming together. I had known I was a woman, and had known I was gay, yet I knew that I was almost exclusively attracted to men. Somehow, through the years of knowing these facts about myself, I had been unable to realize the contradiction. I was a gay woman, but I wasn't attracted to women--I was attracted to men. My mom laughed for perhaps longer than she should when she realized she had not only finally gotten the daughter she had always wanted, but that this daughter had undone the gay son that she thought she had before. But for me, I was left in a state of terror of recognition in the wake of her laughter: I was no longer a gay man.
For years into my transition, I struggled with this. It was easier to ignore when everyone treated me like a man in a dress, but once HRT did its magic and I became stealth in my every-day life, I was once again forced to consider how my identity as gay and my identity as a woman were seemingly incompatible. I faced a lot of discrimination before I passed as cis, and still today deal with a lot of heart-ache from the rejection of transness in larger American society, even if my status as cis-passing prevents me from dealing with much of this. And yet, the greatest discomfort I felt was knowing that I wasn't gay anymore. As silly as it sounds, being gay was such a huge part of my identity for so long; an inalienable aspect of who I was, that the absence of left me feeling soulless. The tipping point for me was listening to the song by Troye Sivan titled "One of Your Girls". This song cut me down to the core, and left me vulnerable, like a child searching for her mother in a storm. See, during high school, I was Troye. I was the lonely gay kid who was willing to sleep with the straight guys he had a crush on out of a desparate call for affection. I had fallen in love with so many straight guys who would never love me, and some of them I had sex with. Some of you might question why a straight kid would have sex with another guy, but I assure you it is was more common than you would expect. For adolescent boys who are curious about sex but had no luck with the girls in their class, the lonely gay kid suddenly seems like an option during late night sleep overs. As the lonely gay kid, I was fooled into thinking the straight guys who used me for sex would want something more. In reality, I was a glorified sex toy to them, but they were everything to me. In saying all of this, I am very much aware that I map uncomfortably close to the "homosexual transexual" pseudoscientific archetype, but I need to be very clear that I did not transition so that the straight guys would want me. I had a boyfriend when I came out, and that is the same boyfriend I am with today 6 years later. The first time I heard One of Your Girls, I sobbed into my pillow. The song pulled out that lonely kid and forced him into the spotlight, and in that moment I realized I couldn't hide from the contradiction any more. I wasn't a lonely gay boy, I was a lonely straight girl.
Things get a little complicated when I admit that I am technically bisexual. This bisexuality is a technicality because I don't even know how long I'll identify as such. When I first came out as male-attracted, it was as bisexual, since I felt it would be easier for my parents to digest, and I thought I might be attracted to girls, too. For years, I have tried to affirm that identity by attempting to be attracted to women, but barring a very few exceptions, I always failed. I found women beautiful, and often felt envious of them, but I don't want to have sex with them. I tried so hard, but I just couldn't. I have dated a single woman in my life, for 1 month, and I hated it. I try to watch straight porn, but it just doesn't work unless I am imagining myself as the girl having sex with the man, and lesbian porn is hopeless. Yet, there are exceptions in which I have been attracted to women (Such as Lae'zel from Baldur's Gate 3, I don't know why but she is the single female character who can shatter through my seemingly unbreakable heterosexuality, but oh my god is she gorgeous), so I can't say that I am truly 100% straight; maybe 99%. This lack of certainty has made it difficult for me to fully come out as a straight woman, but I know its time.
Hi, my name is Lexi, and I am a straight woman who used to be a gay man. It's nice to meet you.
But, I'm still gay. Even though I am a woman attracted to men, I cannot abandon my gay identity; the thought of it terrifies me. This isn't because I'm non-binary or gender fluid, I am a fully binary woman, but my attraction to men is not a heterosexual attraction at all, but rather a deeply homosexual one. I find men to be so beautiful, and sexy, and powerful, and I am so deeply in love with the male form. But none of that requires one to be a gay man, as straight women surely feel the same. Despite that, I feel as though abandoning the gay label is in some ways a betrayal of who I was. I spent the majority of my life suffering the pains, and conversely, the joys unqiue to gay men and boys, and throwing all of that away and just becoming another one of the straights just isn't right for me. In this way, I am not a gay man out of truth in identity, but a gay woman in the historic experience of the oppression of being a gay man. This idea is born on the backs of writers like Simone de Beauvoir, who said that "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman,"(De Beauvoir, 1949, p. 301). This act of becoming a woman was through the oppression that placed women as necessarily subbordinate to men in patriarchy, but I think that this thought can be taken further. I was not born a gay man, but became one through the oppression and division I experienced being assigned male at birth while being attracted to men. And now, having transitioned, I don't think I can simply throw away who I had become, but instead have to integrate it into who I am. Although I was always a woman, I was made to be a gay boy and man for the bulk of my life. I do recognize yet another contradiction: If De Beauvoir is correct that one is not born but becomes a woman, how can I say that I was born a woman, but became a man? It is here that I modify her view in accordance with my own. I think that we are all born some gender, but develop experiences and traits which reflect a necessarily unique gendered experience, thus making us more than just man, woman, or neither. For me, I am a binary woman through birth (as long as I can remember, and my aunt's own journals confirm, I have identified as a girl, as I attempted to "come out" at 2 years old, through the insistance that I was a girl), I became a gay man through being forced to live as one, and in having experienced the unqiue life as a gay boy and man, my experience of gender as a woman was irrevocably altered. So, I guess I should retract my previous statement.
Hi, my name is Lexi, and I am a straight woman who feels gay attraction to men, and used to be a gay man. It's nice to meet you.
It doesn't exactly roll-off-the-tongue, but it does feel closer to accurate to my experience of gender and attraction, and as such, I'm keeping it. I'm sure I'll find a more eloquent way of wording it in the future, but for now, that's how I will describe myself. I will never stop being a woman, I will never stop loving men, and I will never stop being gay. That lonely gay kid crying in his room, wishing the boys would like him back, has grown up to be a woman in a committed relationship with the greatest man that ever lived, and in being all of this, I am happy. To anyone reading this who might relate to my experiences: I see you, and I love you. You are not alone, even if it feels that way. I promise, you won't be alone forever, and someday soon, you'll be happy too. Nobody can define who you are but you, and nobody knows you better than you do. Trust yourself, love yourself, and be kind. Here's looking at you, kid.
Reference
De Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex (C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1949)
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