Internatnal OCD Foundatn | How Do I Know I’m Not Really Gay/Straight?

Contents:

• PEOPLE THK I'M GAY... BUT I'M NOT
• ASK POLLY: WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS THK I’M GAY?
• WHY DO EVERYONE THK I’M GAY?
• WHY DO EVERYONE THK I'M GAY?!
• AM I GAY?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?

PEOPLE THK I'M GAY... BUT I'M NOT

So ’s been a mon trend ever sce I was highschool that everyone always asks one way or another “is he gay” or “ are you gay” and ’s gettg irratg. Your iends, who might already spect that you’re gay, will get to know you on a eper level and likely feel much closer to you.

”Dear Polly, I fally garnered the urage to wre to you about my particular problem, and I hope you n shed some of your wisdom on the sce the 6th gra, people have been askg me if I’m gay. Back then, the other kids thought any person who was any b different om them was gay, and attached a bad meang to the word.

I found a great girl sophomore year and we dated up until senr year, but the askg still ntued, some of which was g om my clost high school, I tried as hard as I uld to rid myself of the label people had given me. Some of the women are hopg you’ll be the gay nfidant of their dreams, or maybe they want to be the one who gracefully hers you out of the closet.

ASK POLLY: WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS THK I’M GAY?

You have to five yourself for not livg up to your ternal fantasy of what you “should” ask, “If there’s nothg I n do to nvce people I’m not gay, then am I really gay?

You uld rent When I Knew, the documentary where gay men and women expla how they figured out they were or no duck, somethg feels unsettled to you about your inty right now. Ever sce I n remember people jokgly have lled me 'gay' (I should note that there's nothg wrong wh beg gay, and I'm not tryg to fuel the stereotype).

I realize I haven't gone on THAT many dat, but there's this pervasive thought the back of my md that maybe I AM gay…I know that sounds stupid and I've never really thought about before. After we chatted for a while over lunch, I somehow jokgly said 'people always thk I'm gay…'s kda weird'…the rponse, 'oh yeah, i thought that at first…'.

WHY DO EVERYONE THK I’M GAY?

I know is owned upon mastream society now, but llg someone gay was jt a mon sult back is te that was not always lked to sexualy, but that is where the negativy started.

WHY DO EVERYONE THK I'M GAY?!

I've been lled gay many tim for beg pletely diferent om the MTV-dron and of all the people who did ll me gay, about 80% of them exprs homosexual tennci. View image: /pop/emotins/ Of urse, ironilly enough, was given to me when I was dng the stereotypil "flamg gay" imprsn. View image: /pop/emotins/<P>Serly, the next guy who sists you're gay, ask him if he's tryg to get a blowjob out of you or somethg.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>The next girl who sists you're gay, offer to sleep wh her to prove you're not. <P>My group of iends all know a guy who meets alot of female iends, but is scribed as "the gayt straight man on the face of the pla".

AM I GAY?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Everyone's been askg me if I'm gay lately and I really don't unrstand why.

You know, if 's the girls/women you hang out wh that are assumg you might be gay, what's the disadvantage to that?

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

Gay - While this adjective has historilly scribed men who are attracted to other men, the term now is ed to refer to anyone who experienc romantic, emotnal, or physil attractn to people of the same genr.

Sce genr inty and sexual orientatn are separate, transgenr people n intify as straight, gay, lbian, bisexual, etc. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change. I me out at a nservative Christian llege the US and was a gay relatnship for around two years wh a basketball player who end up marryg a woman.

Well, you mt have been gay the whole time, some might thk, and bee of some relig shame, you cid to lie to yourself and experiment wh a girl. But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy. ”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. “Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy.

” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame. Callg me “idtic” and “patently absurd”, Aravosis wrote, “The gay haters at the relig right uldn’t have wrten any better. ”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY

Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

In 1985, only 24% of Amerin rponnts said they had a gay iend, relative or -worker —  2013, that number was at 75%. “It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists. Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins.

And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.

HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?

There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure.

The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors. ”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time.