Gender roles?

[sky]

Well like I do but I’ve disappointed enough people being lesbian. I don’t wanna disappoint them anymore

[Mo]

I'm so sorry that other people have both felt disappointment about this and expressed it to you. If someone says they're disappointed to learn you are a lesbian, they're saying much more about their own homophobia and their inability to really see and accept you than they are about any truths concerning you as a person.

[sky]

I’m calmer now and I hope I can speak the things I want to with it making sense.

I want to be able to talk to people about this but I just know that I’m going to be belittled and hated, I want to be able to talk my confusions out to someone I love but they don’t understand

Another reason I’m not sure about things and why I’m like not open about it in real life is because I’m femme like all the time (unfortunately) but I do like super femme girls but I find myself so attracted to butch’s (sorry if that’s not the correct term I don’t mean to be rude) and when I talk to them I get told “why not just date a man since she looks like one” and also get weird looks because I say “she’s so hot” and my friends will see and make a face and say “that’s hot?”

It’s like society and my family and friends is against me. I can’t like accept anything. I can’t even meet a girl because I’m just scared since I don’t know much about me that it’s going to go down in flames.

I know 100% I’m a lesbian. I’m a little bit curious about men but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not an attraction it’s just a sexual feeling because my whole life I’ve heard about a man and a woman and toes curling and all that heterosexual stuff and I would like to explore that. But I at the same time want to be a gold star lesbian because I think girls like that.

I hope that made sense. I have a hard time translating my brain jumble to words. If it doesn’t make sense I can retry

[sky]

And you guys might think im so stupid but like I promise I’m trying so hard to accept and understand myself but it’s just hard and I know I’m so stupid, I’m the stupidest person alive but I’m trying my best

[Heather]

You know, you bad talk yourself a lot. I say this as an expert bad-self-talker, so I know it when I see it.

What do you think about trying to just make this space -- even if you do it nowhere else -- one place where you do NOT put yourself down? That would give you one place to practice that, but also give you one place where your psyche is safer from it. It's amazing how easy it is for our own negative self-talk to keep us feeling shitty and incapable, IMHO.

The people telling you these things about who you're attracted to: these aren't queer people, I take it? Do you have any lesbian or otherwise queer friends?

Btw, I support you in whoever you choose to be sexual partners with, and in healthy relationships, current partners do the same about past partners. very few women meet the gold star standard in a lifetime: it's never been a sound expectation, and it's also often been based on a lot of ignorance, like the idea that if cisgender women only ever sleep with cisgender women, they won't have any STI risks (nope), or are somehow "more" lesbian than others (also nope). My hope for you is that you choose to partner with who you want to based on what you want, not based on your idea of what others might think or want. <3

[sky]

I can try to make this the safe place to not talk shit about myself.

I have a best friend who is a gay man but he moved states and we’re not how we used to be
I also have a bi friend (girl) who I met through taylor swift twitter haha, who also lives in another state, That’s it

I have girls just stop talking to me when I say I’ve never been with a girl before and I have had girls that think it’s “so cute” that I never have. So I’m just going to focus on me and not pleasing others like you said

[sky]

Can I talk to you about something that happened to me a few years back that I think was my fault but I don’t know if it was and that’s scarred me physically and mentally?

[Heather]

So, sounds like it's time to see if you can't find yourself some queer community. Talking to people who aren't and also for whom you're their only queer friend is often a lonely place to be, and yep, uninformed straight people can unfortunately be total assholes just because of ignorance alone, even when they aren't meaning to be. There's not something wrong with who you're attracted to because people who don't get queer attraction and gender presentation don't get it. Maybe cut back on sharing with those folks and see if you can't find some queer people -- or at least some not-clueless people who aren't queer -- to share with more openly instead?

There are a million other benefits to expanding your queer community, too, but I don't want to sound like a used car salesman.

And yep, you can talk here about traumatic things. Does this feel like a good day and time for you to do that? Like you're in a good headpsace for it and will be able to do some self-care after if needed?

[sky]

You’re okay! You don’t sound like a used car salesmen haha. I really do need to get into the queer community more.

And yeah I am okay to talk about it and I’m off work today so if I do start to breakdown I have time for myself. I really appreciate it.

So I was 18 (22 now) and I was at a friends party and I was drunk, party ended and there was still like 10 of us hanging out, I met this guy Nick who was 19 and he kept insisting on my number and so I gave it to him and then he left, and texted me all night, I spent the night over there and the next morning he came back over and we all went to eat and he took me home.

When I got into the car, he had a baby bottle of red stuff and I asked what it was, he hid it in the compartment and said it was lean, I just shrugged it off because I thought who doesn’t do drugs and i wouldn’t see him again it’s fine.

My friends said he’s a really good person so I went and I was openly bi at the time and he knew that and he was accepting so I was happy about that. I asked him what he used to lean for and he said it was a friends that he just delivered it to him and I thought nothing of it.

He asked me on a date and I said yes. I was always told that if i didn’t want to have sex to tell the person. I told him I didn’t want to have sex with him, he said that it was okay. He picked me up from home and we went bowling and he was touching me but not a lot.

He then said he wanted to take me on his favorite mountain top I said okay and we drove and it was innocent just like holding hands and he was touching my thigh. We were up there and I was horny, I told him I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t know how to, he said he would guide me and he did, we made out and I said I didn’t want to anymore. He said why it was nice I said I just wasn’t comfortable with it. So we sat and he started to touch my butt a lot and I said I wanted to leave to to take me home.

We started to walk down the mountain and we were holding hands, then we weren’t anymore and then I was falling down the mountainside. I knew immediately that he pushed me, I just had the gut feeling he did. When I fell he chuckled and asked what happened. I was bleeding a lot of places and I couldn’t move my arm at all, he helped me up.

We got to his car and I checked myself to make sure I wasn’t bleeding all over my clothes and he was taking pictures and videos of me saying how hot I was and he wouldn’t let me put back my cardigan. I said take me home. He called his friends on the way home and said he was coming over. He was mad at me. I felt like he was.

I then looked at his social media and saw that right before he got me he was doing lean and took Xanax. So in my mind I thought that he just did it because he was high. But it was my fault because I didn’t have sex with him. I have scars still from the fall and now he’s in jail for 2 counts of aggravated assault.

The next day I told him I couldn’t date a drug addict and he got very mad at me. I feel like women can’t and won’t hurt me like that. And I still am mad at myself for not having sex with him because if I did, he wouldn’t have done that and then I would maybe be straight.

Sorry that was so long, I just needed to like explain the back story haha. It’s my fault right?

[Heather]

Thanks for sharing something so personal and hard with us.

It's absolutely not your fault. Unless I read this story wrong, you weren't the person who assaulted someone, this person assaulted you.

It is NEVER our fault when we are victims of assault. It is ALWAYS the sole responsibility of the person or people who chose to assault us. Always. After all, if they didn't make that choice, we wouldn't be assaulted. Yet, in pretty much every situation of assault, we could make a million different choices and would still probably have been assaulted simply because we had the unfortunate circumstance of being within reach of someone dangerous. You don't know he wouldn't have done this -- or harmed you in another way during -- had you had sex with him. But even if you had, having sex with someone we don't want to does us harm, too, so what's most likely is you would have been done harm no matter what because you were with someone intent on doing harm.

I'm so, so sorry this happened to you and that this person did this. I'm very glad you were able to get some justice with this, but, of course, that doesn't mean you don't have trauma.

Sexual orientation isn't about who we don't like or aren't into: it's about who we are. And the unfortunate truth is that women abuse and assault people too. Is it is frequent? Well, that depends on the kind of abuse we're talking about. By all means, patriarchy and the ways it's enabled some very toxic masculinity can make men more dangerous in some ways. But it's not just men, alas. Would that avoiding abuse, assault or other harm was that simple.

Either way, who you are attracted to probably has very little to do with this. But you know what? What if it is influenced by this -- or by how beautiful your third grade teacher was or by the fact that you like the western style of dress women wear more than what men do or because you like how Taylor Swift sounds better than how the Jonas Brothers do? Our sexualities are made of SO MANY major and minor influences (though the prevailing theory is that orientation is probably mostly formed when we're kids), there's no way we can link them to one thing only.

Also: being lesbian isn't something wrong with you or something broken. There's nothing that's more or less okay about any given orientation: they are all equally okay. They have to be, just like the diversity of our skin tones, our heights or weights, the color of our eyes or our diverse physical abilities have to be equally okay, because our orientations are just how we each are, outside our control or (for the most part) our choosing.

Your orientation isn't about this, I promise you. It was most likely formed long before this. But your orientation also isn't an injury or a failing. Loving and being into people is a positive force in the world, and that very much includes women who love and are into women. Take it in. <3

[sky]

Thank you. I appreciate it, it’s been years and I still think it was me and my mom still makes fun of me for it I appreciate you

I didn’t mention that his counts aren’t because of me. I didn’t tell anyone really about the situation and I would never get police involved. He’s just a violent person and did something else that he got caught for.

Thank you again <3

[Heather]

I'm so sorry that she engages in such emotionally abusive behaviour like that with you. Taunting someone for being assaulted is a terrible thing to do to a person.

I'm also sorry you haven't been able to see justice with this for yourself. But I hope that, at the very least, you can recognize given his other crimes, if nothing else, that this very clearly was about who he is and what he has done, not who you are and what you did or didn't do.

[sky]

Yeah my mom sucks

Also, how do I make friends with people in the community? Because I’m trying to get sober, my drinkings been out of control. I’ve tried to and they want to drink or just sit around and smoke weed which I’m trying to stop as well. I don’t want to get involved in stuff like that much because I need to stop all that.

Idk how to handle it or do it?

[Mo]

Sadly it is the case that some queer social spaces can rely pretty heavily on alcohol or recreational drug use, but not every space will! You may have luck looking at sites like meetup.com that often have groups centered around specific interests or activities; they have a specific "LGBTQ" category you can use to search for groups near your location. There may even be groups that are explicitly sober, but even if not, if you're at a group for knitting, rock climbing, etc. I suspect you'll have an easier time socializing without a lot of substance use or pressure. I don't know a lot about the Gay and Sober organization but that might be a resource for groups or events in your area, if you want something that's an explicitly sober space.

[sky]

Thank you!!

[Mo]

You're welcome! I hope you find something that works for you.