s/Women

Copy of Am I a Lesbian? Masterdoc

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Am I a Lesbian? What is Compulsory Heterosexuality?

How do I know if I’m a lesbian? Exploration of how societal
conditioning can lead lesbians to have conflicting
feelings and attraction toward men. A look at female
sexual orientation sexual identities.

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Am I a Lesbian?

What is Compulsory Heterosexuality?

How do I know if I’m a lesbian?

But I like fictional men/male celebrities..

But I think I’ve Liked men before?

Conflicting Feelings About Men

Signs of Compulsory Heterosexuality

‘Attraction’ to men
Relationships with men
Sex and Intimacy with men
Early interest in women
The ‘straight’ version of you
Exploring attraction to women
Gender Feelings
Considering lesbianism

Attraction VS. Compulsory Heterosexuality

Nervousness and Blushing
Hypothetical Attraction
Sexual Fantasies

You might be a lesbian if TL;DR

Conclusion

What is Compulsory
Heterosexuality?
“Compulsory” is the opposite of “optional”.
“Compulsory heterosexuality” is exactly
what it sounds like - being straight is
something our culture tries to force on us.
It affects people of every gender, but it’s
mostly been studied as something that
affects women. This is because compulsory
heterosexuality easily ties in with the
misogyny that causes women’s sexualities
and even identities to be defined by our
relationships with men.
Women are taught from a very early age
that making men happy is our job. We’re
supposed to be pretty for men, we’re
supposed to change the way we talk so men
will take us more seriously, we’re supposed
to want a man’s love more than anything
else. Our magazines are full of sex tips on
how to better please men, our movies are
about how we’re supposed to fall in love
with men. We literally cannot exist in public
without men loudly grading us on how well
we’re pleasing them visually.
So… what happens if you want to be with
women? What happens if you’re not
attracted to men at all? When you’re trained
from childhood to see romantic/sexual
relationships with men - and only men - as
major life goals, how do you separate that
from what you want?
Compulsory heterosexuality is the voice in
my head that says I must really be het even
when I’m in love with a woman. Compulsory
heterosexuality is what forces lesbians to
struggle through learning the difference
between what you’ve been taught you want
(being with men) and what you do want
(being with women), which is why so many
lesbians have dated men at some point.
Compulsory heterosexuality is very similar
to heteronormativity - the assumption that
straight is the default. We’re trained from
birth to believe that we will find someone of
the other binary gender, fall in love, have
sex, etc. In a million tiny ways we’re taught
that only relationships with the other binary
gender are valid. (And if you’re not one of
the binary genders, this can be even more
confusing.)
Compulsory heterosexuality is built into you
from the moment you’re born into this time
and place, and it takes a long time to
dismantle it.

How do I know if I’m a lesbian?

If you’re questioning if you’re a lesbian, it's
way more important to ask yourself if you
can be truthfully happy with a man than if
you’re attracted to them. Ask yourself if you
can have healthy fulfilling relationships with
men and actually wanna be with them. You
can be attracted to men or not know if you
are because of compulsory heterosexuality
and it doesn't mean you want to be with
them. Attraction is supposed to feel good. If
being in relationships with men isn’t
appealing to you, if you can’t truly see
yourself ending up happy in relationships
with men, or if your attraction to men makes
you uncomfortable, you may be a lesbian.
Lesbian isn’t a dirty word and being a lesbian
is beautiful.
Many lesbians STILL struggle with
compulsory heterosexuality even when they
know they don’t want men. If you love
women but feel fake about it, just remember
that those feelings are the product of a
patriarchal society which has conditioned
you to believe the false idea that you are
defined by your ties to men. this can be
really difficult to remember at times, and it
might take you a while before you can fully
love women without feeling like you’re
somehow “wrong”, but just know that there
are a million other women who are in the
same boat as you are, meaning that this is a
problem with society and not with you.

But I like fictional men/male

celebrities..

Lesbians are allowed to like male celebrities

and fictional characters. it’s usually a
symptom of compulsory heterosexuality—
male celebrities/fictional characters are
completely unobtainable crushes and thus it
allows the lesbian in question to distance
themselves from men. Because it’s
impossible to ever be with that person, they
get to avoid the romance and intimacy, which
is usually something that girls can recognize
that they don’t want with men but can’t
exactly place why or what it means. Even if
the attraction to male celebrities/fictional
characters is NOT an effect of compulsory
heterosexuality (which would be really hard
to figure out), it’s not fair that straight
women can have “girl crushes” and straight
men can have “man crushes” without anyone
telling them they can’t be/aren’t straight
anymore, so the reverse should not be
applied to lesbians.

But I think I’ve Liked men before?

You can identify as a lesbian if you’ve liked
men in the past but no longer are attracted
to men or want to pursue relationships with
them. lots of lesbians have dated or had
genuine relationships with men before
realizing they were lesbians, and that doesn’t
make them any less of a lesbian. If you don’t
care about men or would no longer like to me
with them, you can be a lesbian now. It’s a
“now” identity - it matters how you feel now!
you’re not interested in men, so you can ID
as lesbian regardless of how you’ve felt in
the past. if you ID as lesbian now, and then
meet a man and fall for him, it would be
wrong to call yourself a lesbian but having a
relationship with a man in the past doesn’t
mean you can’t be a lesbian now.

Many lesbians have previously liked men at

some point in their lives before realizing they
are lesbians. Now a common misconception
is also that everyone is born knowing they
are gay and that’s not necessarily true. It
can be because of both nature AND nurture.
If you have had terrible experiences with
men and now would like to no longer date
them because you don’t see yourself being
truly happy with a man and would only like
to date women, you can be a lesbian too. It’s
okay to try on the lesbian identity and see
how it fits you because many lesbians were
unsure of how they felt about men until they
identified as lesbians. This helped them
realize how much of what they felt for men
was actually compulsory heterosexuality over
time.
If you think you feel attraction towards men
but don’t want to date or be with them and
instead want to date and be with women,
then you CAN be a lesbian. Lesbian doesn’t
need to mean “only experiences attraction to
women”, it can mean “only feels comfortable,
only prefers, and only prioritizes women &
relationships with them”. Many lesbians have
found out this way that their “attraction” to
men was in fact compulsory heterosexuality.
Attraction is super complicated. It’s possible
to recognize a man IS attractive but not be
attracted TO him. Attraction is often coerced
by societal conditioning and some lesbians
have hypothetical attraction to men due to
compulsory heterosexuality. But we don’t
want to actually date or have sex with a man
ever. Allowing people to identify based on
where they are willing to put their romantic
and sexual energy is more powerful and
gives people agency.

Conflicting Feelings About Men

You can really, genuinely have warm,

positive, strong feelings towards men and
they can still be compulsory heterosexuality.
Compulsory heterosexuality is the
assumption that any feelings that you have
towards a man MUST be attraction because
society talks all the time about hetero love
and attraction so when you feel something
towards a man you think “oh, this must be
what it’s like”. Then as part of “discovering
your sexuality” you try to find ways that you
find men attractive. You think “i’m not
attracted to physical appearance, only
personalities” or “i only like feminine men” or
you find ways to make yourself aroused by
men by imagining them in all kinds of
unusual scenarios until you hit one that
appeals to you
Then when you can’t follow through with this
‘attraction’ in real life scenarios when you
have a chance to have a romantic/sexual
relationship with a man you assume that’s
it’s some broken part of you that’s stopping
you, or some quirk of your personality, or a
circumstance of your life (”i have high
standards” or “i only like older men” or “i
have some incredibly obscure made-up
sexuality where i only like men until they like
me back”), and you explain away why you’re
unable to find an attainable man in real life
who you’re attracted to.
This is something that’s really difficult to
recognise because in the process of figuring
out your sexuality you question how you feel
and you come back with “well i definitely
have strong feelings for men” and assume
you’re straight or bisexual. But another
important thing to question is “have i
correctly labelled and understood what this
feeling is and am i certain that it’s actually
attraction”
Society puts so much emphasis on the
importance and intensity of heterosexual love
and attraction that it’s important to actively
remind yourself that it’s possible to love
someone and have a deep interest in them
without having romantic or sexual feelings
towards them (especially if that love comes
along with another intense interest, like your
feelings towards a fictional man in a tv show
you love).

Signs of Compulsory
Heterosexuality
If you relate to or identify with a lot of these
things, I’d say it’s worth an investigation into
why so many of these things resonate with
you. Is it because you have a specific taste in
men or because society has conditioned you
to want this? Is it because you have bad
experiences with men related to trauma or
because these kinds of desires have been
ingrained into you? In no way are these all
the experiences of lesbians who once thought
they liked men, but these are the most
common ones from lesbians I have gathered.

‘Attraction’ to men

● Deciding which guys to be attracted to – not

to date, but to be attracted to – based on
how well they match a mental list of
attractive qualities. You have a ‘list’ of
impossible criteria in your head that a man
must meet for you to be attracted to him,
and if you ever meet someone who matches
all the criteria you just add more impossible
standards.
● I’m constantly testing my attraction to men.
I pick one or more conventionally attractive
men in the room, and try to force myself to
be attracted to them.
● I like the idea of being with a man, but any
time a man makes a move on me I get
incredibly uncomfortable.
● I do not like the reality of men, only the idea
of being with men.
● I like the idea of marrying a man/being in a
relationship with a man, but I can always
pick out a reason to not want to date any
man that is interested in me or any man
suggested to me. These reasons are
sometimes reasonable, but often
insignificant (i.e. “I don’t like guys who do
their hair like that, he has a weird mole on
his face, he’s too tall”).
● I can fantasize about men and find men
attractive, but thinking about
realistically being with a man makes my
stomach churn.
● Only developing attraction to a guy after a
female friend expresses attraction to him
● I like getting attention from men and being
validated in my attractiveness, but the
moment it goes from attention to an
interaction (i.e. from flirting to asking out) I
start panicking.
● Getting jealous of a specific female friend’s
relationships with guys and assuming you
must be attracted to the guys she’s with
(even if you never really noticed them before
she was interested in them)
● You view relationships with men as a chore,
burden, or just something you must deal
with.
● Confusing a strong emotional
connection/dependency with a man for
romantic feelings, can be due to mental
illness.
● You get crushes on just about every guy
you’re friendly with, because there’s really
no difference between friendships and
crushes to you
● You feel like you could theoretically be
attracted to men (you may even have
fantasies about them), but in practice you
never have any feelings for them.
● Picking a guy at random to be attracted to
● Choosing to be attracted to a guy at all, not
just choosing to act on it but flipping your
attraction on like a switch – that’s a common
lesbian thing.
● Having such high standards that literally no
guy meets them – and feeling no spark of
attraction to any guy who doesn’t meet them
● You’re far more certain about being attracted
to women than you are about being
attracted to men
● Only/mostly being into guys who are gender
nonconforming or feminine in some way.
● Alternatively, the guys I like are always a
hyper masculine man’s man who embodies
everything about manliness.
● You want to date/fall in love/get
married/have kids/etc with a guy, but the
guy you dream about is never specific and
may as well be a cardboard cutout
● All of my fantasies around men are always
with faceless, nameless men; the more
realistic the fantasy and the more details
about my partner I invent, the less excited
and into the fantasy I become.
● Only/mostly being attracted to unattainable,
disinterested, or fictional guys or guys you
never or rarely interact with. (Such as
teachers, married or older men, and men
that live far away)
● Similar to only crushing on famous or
fictional men, the men you like may be gay
or in relationships as they are also
unattainable (if they are in a relationship,
you may even start to wonder if it’s actually
the woman you have a crush on)
● You lose all attraction or get extremely
uncomfortable if there are any implications
that they might like you back. You get deeply
uncomfortable and losing all interest in these
unattainable guys if they ever indicate they
might reciprocate
● You mistake the desire for male approval as
attraction. You don’t necessarily want a
relationship with men, but you want men to
want a relationship with you.
● Reading your
anxiety/discomfort/nervousness/combativen
ess around men as attraction to them.
Confusing your anxiety around men for
“butterflies” or being flustered.
● Reading a desire to be attractive to men as
attraction to them
● Having a lot of your ‘guy’ crushes later turn
out to be trans women
● You wish you weren’t attracted to men / You
wish you were a lesbian

Relationships with men

● Dreading what feels like an inevitable

domestic future with a man
● Or looking forward to an idealized version of
it that resembles literally no m/f relationship
you’ve ever seen in your life, never being
able to picture any man you’ve actually met
in that image
● You have every reason to be happy in your
relationship with a man, but you just aren’t /
everything is going really well, but
something is missing and you can’t figure
out what
● Being repulsed by the dynamics of most/all
real life m/f relationships you’ve seen and/or
regularly feeling like “maybe it works for
them but I never want my relationship to be
like that”
● Thinking you’re commitmentphobic because
no relationship, no matter how great the
guy, feels quite right and you drag your feet
when it comes time to escalate it
● Going along with escalation because it seems
like the ‘appropriate time’ or bc the guy
wants it so bad, even if you personally aren’t
quite ready to say I love you or have labels
or move in together etc.
● Or jumping ahead and trying to rush to the
‘comfortably settled’ part of relationships
with guys, trying to make a relationship a
done deal without investing time into
emotional closeness
● Your relationships with men are devoid of
passion.
● Feeling like you have to have relationships
with guys and/or let them get serious in
order to prove something, maybe something
nebulous you can’t identify
● Only having online relationships with guys;
preferring not to look at the guys you’re
interacting with online; choosing not to meet
up with a guy even if you seem very into him
and he reciprocates and meeting up is totally
realistic
● Getting a boyfriend mostly so other people
know you have a boyfriend and not really
being interested in him romantically/sexually
● Wishing your boyfriend was more like your
female friends
● Wishing your boyfriend was less interested in
romance and/or sex with you and that you
could just hang out as pals
● Thinking you’re really in love with a guy but
being able to get over him in such record
time that you pretend to be more affected
than you are so your friends don’t think
you’re heartless
● After a breakup, missing having a boyfriend
more than you miss the specific guy you
were with
● Worrying that you’re broken inside and
unable to really love anyone

Sex and Intimacy with men

● Having sex not out of desire for the physical

pleasure or emotional closeness but because
you like feeling wanted
● OR: preferring to ‘be a tease’ to feel wanted
but feeling like following through is a chore
● Having to be drunk or high to have sex with
men
● The idea of kissing, cuddling, dating and/or
having sex with men is really scary/anxiety
inducing, and the idea of doing any of those
things with women isn’t (or is noticeably less
scary)
● Your fantasies about men still somehow turn
out to be a little gay. Maybe you’re
penetrating him, you don’t have to look at
his face/don’t want to look at his face, you
want a threesome with another woman, he’s
very feminine, etc. It might be a “straight
fantasy” but you’ve altered it in a way
straight people might not be totally
interested in.
● Thinking because you don't like/pursue sex
with men you must be asexual. Or vice versa
with romance for men.
● Your fantasies about men give you intense
distress or anxiety. They could be intrusive
thoughts, forms of self-harm, or otherwise.
● When I think about guys, I think about all
the things that I could tolerate doing with
them (dating, kissing, sex, marriage) but
always in terms of what I could force myself
to do, not what I want to do.
● Being around guys that are interested in me
gives me intense anxiety.
● feeling weird/wrong calling your past
boyfriends pet names or showing them pda,
but gladly showing your girl friend’s pda.
● Only being comfortable with sex with men if
there’s an extreme power imbalance and
your desires aren’t centred
● Using sex with men as a form of self-harm
● You don’t have much of an emotional
reaction to kissing or being otherwise
physical with a man, or you even dislike/hate
it
● Feeling numb or dissociating or crying
during/after sex with men (even if you don’t
understand that reaction and think you’re
fine and crying etc for no reason)
● Being bored with sex with men/not
understanding what the big deal is that
makes other women want it
● Doing it anyway out of obligation or a desire
to be a good sport/do something nice for him
● Never/rarely having sexual fantasies about
specific men, preferring to leave them as
undetailed as possible or not thinking about
men at all while fantasizing
● Having to make a concerted effort to
fantasize about the guy you’re “attracted” to

Early interest in women

● Not recognizing past/current crushes on

women until you’ve come to grips with your
attraction to women
● Being unusually competitive, shy, or eager to
impress specific women when you’re not that
way with anyone else
● Wanting to kiss your female best friend on
the mouth for literally any reason (”to
practice for boys” included)
● Getting butterflies or feeling like you can’t
get close enough when cuddling with a close
female friend
● Looking at a close female friend and feeling
something in your chest clench up and being
overwhelmed with love for her - love you
may read as platonic
● Having had strong and abiding feelings of
admiration for a specific female teacher,
actor, etc., growing up that were deep and
reverent
● Having had an unusually close relationship
with a female friend growing up that was
different and special in a way you couldn’t
articulate
● Thinking relationships would be simpler “if
only I were attracted to women/my best
friend who would be perfect for me if she/I
weren’t a girl”
● When a female friend is treated badly by a
man, having your protective thoughts turn in
the direction of “if I was him/a man I’d never
do that to her/my girlfriend”
● Being utterly fascinated by any lesbians you
know/see in media and thinking they’re all
ultra cool people
● Having your favourite character in every
show be that one gay-coded or butch-looking
woman (like Shego from Kim Possible or
Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica)
● Feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable in
locker rooms etc., when your female friends
are less clothed than they normally would be
around men and being more careful not to
look than they are

The ‘straight’ version of you

● Thinking that all straight girls feel at least

some attraction to women
● Thinking that your interest in seeing
attractive women/scantily clad women/boobs
is an artificial reaction caused by the
objectification of women in media
● Being really into how women look
“aesthetically”/“just as artistic interest”
● Thinking it’s objective and uncontested that
almost all women are way more attractive
than most men
● Being a really intense LGBT+ “ally” and
getting weirdly emotional about homophobia
but assuming you’re just a Really Good Ally
and v empathetic
● Having like half your friend group from
school turn out to be LGBT+
● Getting emotional or having a strong
reaction you don’t understand to f/f love
stories etc.
● Having had people think you were gay when
you had no suspicion you were gay

Exploring attraction to women

● Feeling like you could live with a woman in a

romantic way, even if you can’t imagine
doing anything sexual with a woman
● Feeling like you could enjoy sexual
interaction with a woman, even if you can’t
imagine having romantic feelings for a
woman
● Thinking you couldn’t be a lesbian because
you’re not attractive enough, cool enough, or
otherwise in the same league as most of the
women you know
● Interacting with het sex/romance in media
by imagining yourself in the man’s position
or just never/rarely imagining yourself in the
woman’s position
● Really focusing on the women in
heterosexual porn