I thought I only liked women, but..

[TransOrca_33]

Hi everyone, I've never used this before so sorry if this doesn't make any sense.
So for context I'm trans-masc, AFAB and identify in the middle of male and nonbinary. There's this one character that I experience really intense gender envy from, but I think it may actually be attraction.. I can't tell if I actually like this character that way, or if I want to be that character that way.
I think I only like women and also non-binary people, but I'm not quite sure anymore.
thanks
-Ben

[mikky]

Hi, welcome to the boards! I think this makes sense. It sounds like there's one specific character you've been feeling this sort of attraction toward, and it's hard to tell that apart from gender envy- or maybe, it's both...?
I have a few thoughts. One is that attraction can be made up of many things, such as admiration, a desire for romance or sex, curiosity, comfort, to name a few. The admiration or "gender envy" that we can experience I think can be a sort of attraction alone, and it can also lead to crush-y or sex-y attraction feelings. Does that make sense?

Another thing is that because this is a character and not a real human you know, this isn't someone who you'll ever have a physical relationship with- our attractions to fictional characters can certainly be informative of what we like in real life, but it can also be a fantasy alone. I think a lot of people find fictional men attractive who wouldn't want to pursue any sort of relationship with a man in real life. I've heard this from plenty of people here.

Last, it's ok for your sexuality to be complicated- people are complicated! Gender and what genders we tend to be drawn toward is just one piece of the whole big quilt that is our sexuality, and because human people don't fit very neatly into gender boxes, trying to figure out a perfect box for describing what kind of people we are attracted to can be tricky and will always be imprecise.