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Learning About Sexuality
My experience with sexuality was definitely unconventional. I never really had “the Talk” or
anything with my parents, Ever since I can remember, heterosexuality has been forced on to me
in in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As a kid I liked the movie Aladdin a lot, so I was often told
“oooooooh I bet you wish Aladdin was your boyfriend, huh???” This attitude being forced onto
kids is pretty awful, honestly. I wasn’t even old enough to know what a boyfriend really was. Of
course, to the adults that enforce this, it’s all one big joke. This kind of suppression of queer
identities played a key role in my struggles I had throughout my childhood years. For a long time
I had believed I was a boy, because I felt like I was not a girl and I was not taught that there was
any other option. I also had an attraction to girls, so that further reinforced my ideals that I had
to be a boy, because boys liked girls. If I had known otherwise, or even what attraction was, I
might have been much more secure in who I was and been happier for a lot longer. I also
believe that my experiences with rape and sexual assault were linked with this mindset, as I was
harassed for a couple years by one of my good friends to the point of rape and him telling me
we were dating, and I felt like I had to go along with it because he liked me so it was okay, and
girls were supposed to have boyfriends. I also tried to speak to him about my attraction to
women, and he played it off as a fetish for himself, and would often ask me to perform romantic
or sexual acts with other women in front of him. (Luckily I am in a good relationship and this
person is out of my life now. Also, sorry if this is too graphic but I felt it was relevant to my
reflection and opinions.) I had to learn about sex, gender, and sexuality by myself for the most
part, and that was much more in line with the podcast on fanfiction. Much of my exposure to the
LGBT community was initially through a fanfiction community. The values here are placed
slightly in that same fetishized sense to an extent though, specifically fangirling over gay “boys”.
And although it taught me a lot, if I had not done research on my own and had personal
experience, I would have been severely misinformed. I feel as though my life would have been
