Can Someone Be Homosexual and Not Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• 17 SIGNS YOU'RE ACTUALLY GAY (AND JT DON'T KNOW IT)
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• AM I GAY??
• CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?
• HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?
• AM I GAY? QUIZ – 100% RELIABLE TT
• QUIZ: ARE YOU GAY?
• AM I GAY OR BISEXUAL?
• I’M NOT GAY, BUT MY BOYIEND SURE IS
• LONGEST GAY TEST!
• I’VE INTIFIED AS GAY FOR YEARS. NOT ANYMORE.
• I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?
• I AM NOT SURE IF BEG GAY IS WORTH .
• HOW DO I KNOW IF I'M GAY?
• AM I GAY/STRAIGHT? ?️‍? (FEMALE EDN)
• AM I GAY? HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY?
• AM I GAY, OR BI?
• IF YOU’RE ASKG, ‘AM I GAY? LBIAN? BI? TRANS? QUEER?’ HERE’S A START
• AM I GAY IF I HAVE SAME SEX FANTASI?
• AM I GAY QUIZ
• QUIZ: AM I GAY?
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

17 SIGNS YOU'RE ACTUALLY GAY (AND JT DON'T KNOW IT)

One of your top ten experienc was at a Pri para where you were surround by the most tertg, fun strangers you have ever enuntered, and no one you knew was there to judge you, or the only people you knew there were gay.

When down to , there is no reliable "Am I Gay tt", so the only way to know that you are gay (fn of gay) is to look wh yourself to terme your own thoughts and feelgs towards others of the same sex.

If you have had romantic experienc or fantasi volvg people who are the same genr as you, then there is a good chance you are gay or bisexual, but 's okay if you're a ltle nfed. Jt for funI'm spic that I may be gayI've never had a csh on anyone, and am unsure where I lie on the spectm of sexualyWhat would your ial partner be if you two are gog to spend a week on an island?

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

Havg sex wh the person I love mostCuddlg wh the person I love mostJt beg next to the person I love mostHangg out wh iends / beg aloneHow would you feel if your bt iend me out as gay?

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. So when we therapists are nonted wh male clients, often married on, who e to wh ep nflicts about their sexual attractn to other men, we often fd that they are willg to e the word “homosexual, ” but chew the “gay” label. Unfortunately, much of our natn’s polics have long exacerbated the problem as well, shamg and vilifyg homosexualy, leadg legns of men stgglg wh sexual inty to ternalize their homophobia.

AM I GAY??

I warned them of the pfalls of keepg their sexual orientatn secret: a life of creased prsn, pursug a secret life the gay unrground wh the danger of beg ught, how attemptg to supprs urg n often e them to bee even more obssed wh them.

CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?

They may need, om time to time, to seek further therapy, but wh the right therapist, one who has thoroughly unrstood the dangers of such practic of “reparative therapy” which the therapist seeks to change the client’s sexual inty om gay to straight.

” Some people’s doubts are further plited by havg such experienc as hearg other people talkg or lookg their directn and thkg that the people mt be analyzg their behavr or appearance and talkg about them – discsg how they mt be gay (or straight).

I have sometim wonred if those who experience the most distrs om such thoughts as the do so bee they were raised wh more strongly homophobic or anti-gay attus to beg wh, or if is simply bee one’s sexualy n be such a basic doubt. The flip si of this is when they look at thgs havg to do wh sex of an oppose orientatn and then feel aroed some way, which they then nclu to mean that they liked , which means that they are gay (or straight).

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

Makg a seri of three-mute tap that based on the wrgs gradually suggt more and more that you are gay, and listeng to them several tim a day changg them when they no longer bother you). —and we n sometim sense early on that somethg about our ternal experience feels the fifth gra, when a iend of me sneered that I was gay as an sult, I thought maybe I had land on a name for what I felt. Eventually, this led me the oppose directn of what you might assume: My sexual boredom and sometim even disgt wh the men I dated led me to believe I was, and always had been, super gay after, my early 20s, I threw myself a new directn and got eply volved my lol queer muny.

I tried donng a “homoflexible” label for a few years, but two boyiends later I had to s back and take a good look at my inty and why my perceptn of kept shiftg seemgly so I didn’t unrstand as I tried on the different labels was that isn’t simply our behavr that dictat who we are.

Even if some of the wilst adventur wh your girliend don’t exce you and the image of another man shirtls or a naked photo exc you to the re, then there are chanc that you might be gay. Although both inti volve havg a physil and/or romantic attractn to a person of the same sex, beg gay appears to be more ser your md, whereas beg bisexual may not be que as fe. Whether you are fally acceptg your homosexualy after many years of supprsg or if you are newly disverg now, you are ee to intify yourself any way that feels right to you.

AM I GAY? QUIZ – 100% RELIABLE TT

Brandon Ambroso argu that simplistic explanatns have ignored the fluid, shape-shiftg nature of our sir.“You n’t be gay.”She was on top of me.It wasn’t a mand —  was a challenge.

You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good sex.It 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.

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this way.Many 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. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to 37%.The 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.” Vios started circulatg on the ter featurg gay people askg straight people “when they chose to be straight.” 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 gay.Take, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame.

QUIZ: ARE YOU GAY?

“I unrstand that for many people ’s not, but for me ’s a choice, and you don’t get to fe my gayns for me.”The blogger John Aravosis was one of many crics who pounced on Nixon. 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. 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.

AM I GAY OR BISEXUAL?

In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way iology.As 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.

“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 nclus.In 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.”While I n unrstand why some ntemporary activists (and the journalists who seem beholn to their agendas) might chalk up recent gas LGB acceptance to Born This Way’s cultural filtratn, activism mt be found upon facts and tths, or the whole program will eventually turn out to be a sham.

Drowng out every voice that dar to qutn domant cultural narrativ is not the same thg as validatg the arguments those voic are makg.As Ward says, “Jt bee an argument is polilly expedient don’t make te.”It is only recent history that we have started to label sexual orientatns wh rigid tegori (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)So what do the science say about Born This Way?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.” Ltle wonr the therapi have been shown to provoke anxiety, prsn and even suici.In other words, the qutn of the efficy of nversn therapi is a non-issue. 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.”Te, var eye-grabbg headl over the years have claimed that some scientists have found somethg like The Gay Gene.

I’M NOT GAY, BUT MY BOYIEND SURE IS

In 1991, for example, nroscientist Simon LaVey published fdgs that he claimed suggt that “sexual orientatn has a blogil substrate.” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual men.Try as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way? LeVay himself poted this out to Disver Magaze 1994: “Sce I looked at adult bras, we don't know if the differenc I found were there at birth or if they appeared later.” Further, the bras LeVay studied belonged to AIDS victims, so he uldn’t even be sure if what he was seeg had somethg to do wh the disease.Another landmark paper on the origs of homosexualy was published 1993 by a geicist named Dean Hamer, who was terted to learn whether homosexualy uld be hered. He believ there’s about “99.5% certaty that there is a gene (or gen) this area of the X chromosome that predispos a male to bee a heterosexual.”A 2015 study sought to nfirm Hamer’s fdgs, this time wh a much larger sample: 409 pairs of gay brothers.

“It’s not.”And as Allen pots out, there have also been studi that found no “X-lked gene unrlyg male homosexualy.” Perhaps predictably, the studi haven’t received as much media verage.Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at.

All science is dog is wag to fd the proof.”The other problem wh Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are askg whether homosexualy is natural when we n’t even agree exactly what homosexualy is.”Grzanka agre. How then uld they be rooted our genome?” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’.This is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men. Ccially, she argu, “whether or not this baggage is appealg is a separate matter altogether om the appeal of homosexual or heterosexual sex.”Even if you accept that sexual sire may exist on a kd of spectm, the predomant ia is still that the sir are nate and immutable – but this ns unter to what we know about human taste, says Ward.

LONGEST GAY TEST!

“Our sir are oriented and re-oriented based on our experienc throughout our liv.”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc. All of our sir are ntually beg shaped throughout our liv, the very specific ntexts which we disver and rehearse them.I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy. I want to be very clear: I’m not claimg I simply began to ‘grow to’ my homosexualy, or that as I beme more fortable wh beg gay, I allowed myself the eedom to exprs what had always been latent wh me.

This new inty turn helped rerce and grow new gay sir wh me.Granted, none of this means that there were no geic or prenatal factors that went to the nstctn of my or any other sexual orientatn. But that’s not the whole story, and to engage disurse that pretends is — regardls of the nobily of the tentns — uld have “profound and very negative nsequenc” for the LGBT muny, says Grzanka.“Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited,” he says.Early gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric? “That’s a very narrow unrstandg of what jtice looks like,” says Ward.What about the ncern that homophob will want to ‘enurage’ gay people to be straight if there’s no blogil basis for sexualy?

It don’t take too much creativy to image a scenar which homophobic parents, upon beg rmed their fet has ‘the gay gene’, choose what to them may seem the lser of two evils: abortn.Fally, I would argue that the Born This Way narrative n actively damage our perceptns of ourselv. We’d never accept that story.”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement. “They were anized around sexual liberatn, and the radil notn of challengg heteronormativy.”Gay and lbian activists, says Ward, ed to draw on relign parallels to argue for cln.

I’VE INTIFIED AS GAY FOR YEARS. NOT ANYMORE.

“Then there was a shift, and the lears of the movement chose to jump on board wh a ls nuanced argument that people already unrstood: jt like race, people are born wh their homosexualy.”Fortunately, we have now ma enormo stris unrstandg and affirmg our queer sexuali. Walter Thompson Innovatn group found that only 48% of Generatn Z (ag 18-24) intify as “100% heterosexual.” Rponnts were asked to rate themselv on a sle om zero (which signified “pletely straight”) to six (“pletely homosexual”). More than a third chose a number between one and five.In rponse to the poll, one of my Facebook iends quipped about how natural selectn mt be workg overtime, what wh makg all of gay!

I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?

And importantly, each isn’t always nstcted opposn to the other.I’m thankful for a new generatn that is pable of imagg sexualy a way that transcends the gay/straight bary, that uldn’t re ls about what happened to their bodi and mds to make them who they are today. Hi all, I am a 24 year old man, who is jt havg trouble actually gog ahead and live as a gay man, i have me out to everyone I know at age 15 or so maybe, but I have always me out as that's my orientatn but I don't know what I am gonna do about kda thg. A lot of the psychiatrists I went to implied that I should try to fix the problem, and I wish they n offer a practil way to fix , stead they keep tellg me thgs like I am jt gay e I want to rebel agast my father, or masculy, or bee I was raised wh too much women, and that I should try takg meds to rce my sexualy.

I am jt so lost and aaid of cidg anythg bee I want to try livg as beg gay, but I am ightened by the challeng of not jt beg the inty, but also not fdg a guy who actually would like me back. I'll jt avoid psychiatrists for now, I always feel like they play around what they really thk/what they should thk acrdg to their books, I gus that's medice general, but wh beg gay s charged wh their own beliefs and stuff.

I AM NOT SURE IF BEG GAY IS WORTH .

I felt like I don't want to be gay (I wish I n) talked about STD's and how most relatnships end up beg open how monogamy don't make the relatnship last but your wele to try kda thg.... Happs is not a promise life has to everyone, he talked about how you have to assume everyone is HIV +ve, and that he knows some who got the very first time they engaged a gay relatnship... I am sick of pursug my own expectatns jt to get disappoted or jt pla out cshg over straight guys, to loosg rpect e I am gay, to beg fotten now the iends have a spoe and kids, to fdg I am miserable my is a game I jt suck at...

HOW DO I KNOW IF I'M GAY?

Some people thk of themselv as straight even if they ocsnally feel attracted to (or have even had relatnships wh) people of the same genr, and some people nsir themselv gay even if they have felt some attractn to/had relatnships wh people of another genr.

Some people that have homosexual experienc ntue not to intify as gay while others that have never had a homosexual experience and rather, jt have homosexual feelgs, may ll themselv gay. "Wh time, someone who is gay will realize that not only are they sexually attracted to members of the same sex, but that this attractn is not transnal, or as often scribed 'jt a phase'. ”While is not possible to get an exact figure on the populatn of lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr Amerins, a 2015 report by the Public Relign Rearch Instute suggts that “7 percent of lennials intify eher as lbian, gay, bisexual or transgenr.

Acrdg to a paper published by the Natnal Bure of Enomic Rearch, even those numbers may be unrtimated — as are the challeng that people this muny many parts of the untry, and the world, there are stutnal rourc available for lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer people that never before existed, said Larry Gross, a munitns profsor at the Universy of Southern California who helped found the field of gay and lbian studi.

AM I GAY/STRAIGHT? ?️‍? (FEMALE EDN)

It’s “credibly liberatg” for some sexual mori to scribe themselv beyond the three labels of lbian, gay or bisexual, he seekg a partner, “male or female is pretty immaterial” to a lot of younger people, he Tillett Wright says the healthit way to e to an inty is to “e to time” and “never settle on anythg.

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

Siarly, a natnwi study by the Centers of Disease Control and Preventn released 2016 revealed that high school stunts intifyg as gay, lbian or bisexual are still at much greater risk of bullyg, prsn and vlence than their peers who intify as straight. Scientists are not yet sure exactly what someone to be lbian, gay, bisexual, or straight, but recent rearch shows that there are blogil factors place before birth that fluence people’s sexual orientatn.

AM I GAY, OR BI?

IF YOU’RE ASKG, ‘AM I GAY? LBIAN? BI? TRANS? QUEER?’ HERE’S A START

AM I GAY IF I HAVE SAME SEX FANTASI?

AM I GAY QUIZ

QUIZ: AM I GAY?

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND