fuck comp het

Blog to collect info about compulsory heterosexuality because it is too difficult and I'm dying. Main tags: info, experiences.

[lesbiangaara-deactivated2017052]

girls who feel especially pressured and uncomfortable about compulsory heterosexuality are the ones you’re most likely gonna hear say things like “my standards are just so high for men so I haven’t found anyone haha!”, and most likely gonna be the ones who put their focus on unattainable men…aka musicians/celebrities/characters in books, tv, and movies, so they can tell the world “of course they love men!” while keeping a safe distance from any actual romantic interactions with them.

a lot of these girls are the wlw we know and love today. support these girls.

[sapphogirls]

Hey uh ive ID as bi for a while but im not sure now. I realized Im only attracted to 2 boys in the world! An actor and a fictional character. I liked a real boy once bc he reminded me of n°1 but it didnt last. Could this be comp het? Am i still bi?

Hi! It sounds like it could be comp het! Somewhere i have a post about comp het, and I’ll get it in just a second(I’m on mobile). I would suggest reading about comp het and seeing if it sounds like you.

You might still be bi, but ultimately that is up for you to decide and figure it (:

heres the post!

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

How can I figure out If I'm bi or a lesbian?

Hey there! Let me tell you, orientation is a tricky thing to figure out – but the good news is, you have all the time in the world. There’s no rush, and no rules: if you settle into one identity now and later realize it doesn’t fit you after all, you aren’t stuck in what you picked – you can always change! The purpose of labels like bi or lesbian is to help you describe yourself as you are in any moment in your life (and, for many people, to feel a sense of community with those who share the identity) – for some people, an identity lasts a lifetime, while others end up shifting into new ones. And both kinds of people are equally valid and doing just fine!

From the sounds of it, if you’re stuck between bi and lesbian identities, I’m guessing you’ve recognized that you feel attraction to girls and/or feminine-aligned folks and are not sure about attraction to guys (and/or other genders). If this isn’t the case, feel free to message again and correct me. Stuck in a heteronormative society that assumes that every girl lives to be attracted to and attractive to men, it can be really hard to realize either that yes, you do like guys naturally or no, you feel no attraction towards men.

Some posts about compulsory heterosexuality might help you figure out whether your attraction to men is genuine or feels forced: x, x, x. Note that, as far as I can tell, these posts were all written by lesbians, so if anyone has some sources from bi women that would be helpful too! But if what the posts say speak to your experience with attraction to guys, it might be that your attraction is a result of compulsory heterosexuality, while if you feel your attraction to guys is genuine – makes you actually happy, may be similar to your attraction to girls, etc. – then it’s likely you’re bi! Either way, you are valid and awesome.

One last thing I can think of that might help you is to keep in mind is that you could be on either the asexual or aromantic spectrum along with being bi or gay: i.e., you could be gray or demi: do you rarely experience attraction towards people or only after a strong emotional connection, and does their gender apply to that sense of attraction or not? 

I hope that helps, anon! Followers, if you identify as a bi woman (or woman-aligned person) or lesbian or any other type of sapphic person and have more advice for anon, please feel free to contribute! 

[teensapphic]

I identify as gay but often catch myself feeling excited when an attractive boy is around me. Not the same way as i do around girls, but it's definitely there. Like i want to impress him and get him to notice me but I don't actually want anything to do with him romantically or sexually. Why do i feel this way? Why can't i detach myself from these feelings even tho i know i'm gay? Could it be because of the way we are all conditioned to impress men/want mens' attention? Thanks

this is compulsory heterosexuality at work! wanting to impress a boy but not wanting to date him is part of that, you’re still totally valid in your gayness.

[lavendermenacing]

Compulsory heterosexuality is a useful concept to describe how society attempts to coerce lesbians into heterosexuality. It is, in essence, an insidious, society-wide form of gay conversion therapy.

Which is why I am really uncomfortable when I see posts that claim that compulsory heterosexuality can succeed in causing lesbians to feel attraction to males. Are you claiming that gay conversion therapy can work? Compulsory heterosexuality can create confusion and competition between a lesbian’s natural desires for women and her desire to fit in with straight society, where attraction to men is mandated. But it can’t create attraction to men, only a desire for normalcy that masquerades as such.

If you feel attraction to men, you are not a lesbian. Claiming that lesbians can be made to feel attraction to men is homophobic.

[pearlbambi-deactivated20200610]

a suggestion that I think might be helpful for lesbians struggling with compulsory heterosexuality: I didn’t really like boys. I liked the concept of them. I had this image of a perfect boy in my head and I got more and more frustrated that I hadn’t met him. I didn’t really like any boys I knew but I knew that some boys were likeable so “obviously” I had to wait for the right one and then I would like him. just because you feel like have that potential to like a boy or can tell when a boy is attractive doesn’t mean you’re not a lesbian. tbh with time I found out that I liked girls, real girls, not just the concept of them. and it feels real and much more intense. it might be confusing at first but you will be able to tell the difference. just give it a chance.

and to any lesbian who feels fake, like she’s just ‘a lesbian because it didn’t work out with men’, no, it didn’t work out because you’re a lesbian and you’re valid

[violetsandflannels]

Hi! Do you have any tips on distinguishing actual attraction to guys vs. compulsory heterosexuality?

hi there! I wasnt sure if you wanted this public or not but this ask is super important and i think it would be good to share with our followers, i hope you dont mind if i answer publicly and if you want me to delete this let me know!

for a long time i identified as bisexual and thought that my compulsive attraction to men was more prominent than my love for woman / woman aligned people. and so, i have a lot to say about this because of my struggle for so long! these things are what really stood out to me about my own personal experience with compulsory heterosexuality, i know @thexfiles is a good blog for sapphic folk needed some reassurancemy experiences!!•unease around boys- i never felt comfortable, the thought of a relationship was pretty neutral i wasnt opposed to it and wasnt for it but when it came down to it i panicked and felt gross and weird whenever a boy would pursue me romantically, but always assumed it was just nerves•my first kiss was with a boy, and i remember before i ever had my first kiss i would threaten boys who wanted to kiss me that i would punch them in the face if they ever tried because i was so uneasy and uncomfortable with the thought of pda with a boy that it made me physically ill, my actual first kiss i felt physically ill afterwards and my anxiety was so intense i had a migrane and stomach pains. •whenever i imagined myself with a man in my future, i could never imagine myself staying in a relationship for long or wanting to be with a man for a long period of time (over a month) without freaking out of becoming unhappy. i didnt see myself in a secure and happy future and that really concerned me •whenever my friends talked about crushes and they would ask me, i never really had an answer and i picked the closest mediocre boy and convinced myself i liked him to conform to my friends beliefs but in reality i was really miserable and didnt really care if the boy didnt like me or notice me.

my stuff might be a little extreme? feel free to add on !! -mod rose

[mcdyke-deactivated20171112]

how do i tell the difference between compulsory heterosexuality and genuine attraction to men? this is so confusing, i've been trying to figure it out for years..

compulsory heterosexuality makes being with men feel forced and pressured, rather than enjoyable and a result of complete agency. the feelings are artificial and concocted from socialization, so you may feel sincere friendship that may even make u feel the STEREOTYPES of love, like wanting to be with them all the time, but when u strip it all back it’s more of a friendship bond. it’s less romantic/sexual and more “this is what’s MEANT to happen” due to heteronormative socialization. it’s something you have to observe about yourself and see what happens. for now just call yourself questioning, and see what happens.

[couldbegayer]

compulsory heterosexuality as i experienced it

this post is obviously inspired by @clextra​ and many other people i’ve seen sharing their experiences. they are such an interesting read and i thought i would say something too because its a good reflection tool and it could potentially help someone through their own feelings. so here goes.

“she has a lot of boy friends. uh oh, that’s a worry!”

i found my old baby journal and my mum wrote that when i was barely a toddler. its not pleasant to think about but the root of my compulsory heterosexuality was my mother’s attitudes when i was younger. she would repeatedly insist that i had crushes on every boy i met when i was little. the most prominent time was when i was six and my best friend was a boy called sean. both of our mothers thought we had crushes on each other. i was six and he was just my friend. mum said she could tell because she ‘knew these things’, and because i believed her, i grew up thinking that what i was feeling (friendship with a boy) was romantic love. meanwhile, i idolised and adored my first grade teacher (who was a lot like miss honey mind you) and i kissed girls on self appointed dares. but because i was little and they werent boys, i didnt question it.

“no dating til you’re 18!” “ok”

i am my parents’ first child and only daughter, and though it wasn’t said in so many words, it was a given that i would not be allowed to have a boyfriend until my parents said so. and i was okay with that. i coasted through primary school without crushes on boys. most of my friends were getting their first boyfriends and i was confused. like, ‘why would they want to do that?’. while my friends noticed boys for the first time, i noticed girls’ breasts and stared at my friends when they were getting changed. but because i was young and they weren’t boys, i didnt question it.

“they think you’re gay”

i was about two weeks into high school when a few girls spread a nasty rumour that i was a lesbian. i lost 90% of the female friends i’d made, girls would move away when i sat next to them. although it wasn’t the first time others thought i was gay, it was the first time it got really awful. i cried a lot and told me mum as soon as i got in the car. without missing a beat, my mum said, ‘well you’re not gay, so there’s nothing to worry about’, which calmed me down quickly. i went home and rewatched my avril lavigne dvd for the third time that week. but because i was young and she wasnt a boy, i didnt question it.

“eeny meeny miny moe”

it seems to be a common thing that baby wlw chose boys to have crushes on, but i took it to an extreme. in an effort to convince people that i was straight, i got out the class pictures and played eeny meeny miny moe to choose which boy i liked and what my backup options were. the boy i chose i had a crush on for about 2 years. he was barely my friend, we’d spoken about three times, but i was In Love TM with him. i watched how my friends talked about their crushes so i tried to copy them. they were obsessed with their crushes, so i became obsessed with making sure i acted obsessed enough. meanwhile, i had sex dreams about girls, but because i was young and they weren’t boys, i didn’t question it.

“you’re smiling, that means you like him!”

my friends insisted that i had a crush on one my best friends. he was the aforementioned ‘backup’ from a few years earlier, and because he was nice and i liked spending time with him because he was my friend, i assumed that i did have a crush on him. about a year later my friends about this and manipulated me into asking him out, which i didnt want to do at all. even though i liked him, i didn’t want to date him. i wasn’t heartbroken or even sad really when he said no, if anything i was relieved that my crush was over. but i was also embarrassed and i avoided him for a long time out of shame. meanwhile that same year i recognised i had a crush on a girl in my art class so i panicked and dropped the class. i rationalised that it was a one time thing and it didnt count. i was young and she wasn’t a boy, so i didn’t question it.

“i don’t get it”

after panicking about having a crush on a girl, i went straight back into the compulsive behaviour of obsessively choosing crushes but i would only like boys that were boring and way below my standards so i wouldn’t ever date them anyway. it was a safe way to keep my Heterosexual Identity while avoiding actually needing to date boys. however i did have my first and only boyfriend when i was 15. he asked me out and other girls liked him a lot, so i said yes. the ‘relationship’ lasted two weeks. i didn’t want to touch him at all, i didn’t even want to hold his hand, and because i didn’t see the point, i broke up with him. it was at this time that i first recognised that how other girls felt about boys was very different to how i did. at lunch my friends would talk about how hot their boyfriends were or and share stories about their sex lives. i spent a lot of time listening with a disgusted and disturbed look on my face. i didn’t get it. upon realising that i never wanted to have sex with boys, i came to the conclusion that i was not like other girls and that i was better than them (which was an awful way to think). i then delved into fiction. i wrote from boys pov to gush about how pretty girls were, i became very emotionally invested in brittany and santana from glee, and created oc’s who were questioning. bonus gay points because i envisioned the characters as phoebe tonkin, who i ‘admired’ so much i made an ultra gay video about how hot she was. but because she wasn’t a boy, i didn’t question it.

“oh shit??????”

(tmi coming up dudes) so i graduated high school and i was finally free from that toxic environment. not long later i discovered masturbation (years after everyone else had because i never even thought of doing it), and although i really made an effort to fantasise about whatever male celebrity i had a crush on, i would daze out and just focus on the feelings. christmas 2012 i saw clara oswald / jenna coleman’s face and i was suddenly Really Interested in doctor who and i plowed through seven seasons in a few weeks just to get to her two episodes. i counted down how many episodes i had to get through to finally get to clara. “thirty episodes until clara! ten episodes until clara! next episode is clara!” sometime in the middle of all this i started entertaining the idea that i wasn’t straight. i tried to see if i could masturbate thinking about clara, and oh yes i could.

“i am bi but with a really really really really really strong preference for women”

(just a preface that this is my personal experience and that bisexuality is a real orientation) i like boys, i like girls. that means i’m bi, right? i was ready to embrace that i wasn’t straight and for me that meant having an identifier. i jumped the gun and said i was bi before i was sure of it, because that had to be what i was. i didn’t even consider that i could be a lesbian. i went through my first years of uni developing crushes on a lot of girls who i knew, but never on guys. as i discovered what it felt like to like girls, men paled in comparison and i realised that i only found like two men in the whole world attractive, and they were unobtainable celebrities. i envisioned my future and it was always with a woman. i would fantasise about women all the time, but never about men. it didn’t cross my mind to anymore. i thought i was bi with a really strong preference for women until the beginning of last year, when a man hit on me. i walked home absolutely certain that i was a lesbian, because i realised that i never ever wanted to interact with men in a sexual/romantic way. and i’ve identified as a lesbian ever since.

looking back i’m sort of like how the hell did i not know i was a lesbian? i really should have, but compulsory heterosexuality fucked me up big time for 21 years. i hope putting this all into words helped someone. compulsory heterosexuality is a bitch.

[exgynocraticgrrl-archive-deacti]

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich Signs, Vol. 5, No. 4, Women: Sex and Sexuality.(Summer, 1980)

[sheepdyke]

my experience w compulsory heterosexuality, inspired by @clextra and others

first thanks to @clextra and others for sharing their experiences bc i’ve been thinking a lot about compulsory heterosexuality a lot lately n y’all inspired me to share my experience w it. there’s a little bit of experience w Bad MOGAI stuff too which I know other people have gone through but I haven’t really seen in these posts so here goes:

kindergarten boyfriends: bc any boy friend is a boyfriend? (right??)

so in kindergarten I didn’t have many female friends bc a) my class was mostly boys and b) there were like three girls who were assholes to me, and so I mostly hung out w the boys in my class. one boy, who i’ll call call Mike, lived on the same block as me. he ended up changing schools while I was still in kindergarten but still lived right down the street, so I used to go to his house all the time to play with him. at some point he p much just told me he was m boyfriend and i went along with it because i was five and i might not have had a crush on him but i liked playing with him and he was basically my best friend at the time. he would tell me to kiss him instead of asking and i eventually decided i just didn’t like kissing at all.

why is a girl holding my hand and why do i get freaked out when she does: the middle school sagas

so, lets skip ahead to middle school because most of elementary school is repressed due to abuse lol anyway

so in middle school I had this friend (let’s call her Lacy) from elementary school. we p much hung out all of seventh grade. we had PE together, she lived in my neighborhood so she came over a lot, and we’d spend lunches together. a lot of times when we’d walk out of P,E. she’d grab my hand while were walking and i’d get super awkward and flustered and try to Slide TF out of That because I was Straight and she was straight and i wouldnt want anyone thinking we were lesbians or anything.

i don’t see lacy anymore, and to this day I don’t know if it was a Friend handhold or a “i like you” handhold but i look back on that a lot. idk.

fixating on One Boy™: what do you mean reasonable ppl don’t have crushes on one person (boy) for multiple years?

up until i started liking girls (or being aware that i did) I would fixate entirely on a crush one One Boy until he was out of my life. i don’t even know why but i’d make a Really big deal out of secretly telling my friends and wanting it to be a secret, but like, wanting people to know because everyone is supposed to have a crush on a boy!

wanting boys to like me but wanting them to Never tell me about it:

I kind of always romanticized the idea of being wanted by boys because I thought how that’s how things were supposed to be. but i’d literally panic as soon as I thought a boy actually wanted to date me if he wasn’t That Boy that I’d fixate on.

this one time in one of my English classes (eight grade, I think?) this boy we’re gonna call Brian kept joking about me liking him. i didn’t. but he kept teasing me because I was blushing and embarrassed and at one point Brian literally said he was going to flip a coin and if it was heads i had to date him. he flipped it and it was heads and i just ended up going silent and I was super upset and cried as soon as I got in the car when I got picked up. I refused to talk to him after that  but I felt this expectation of me to date him from everyone and it was the worst feeling.

am i not a convincing straight??

freshman year, a friend was kinda jokingly like “lol yeah i’d date you” and one of my classmates asked me if I was straight and I clammed up and stuttered out that I was, and she kind of just said “okay” but didn’t sound convinced. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and wondering why the question had freaked me out.

kissing girls doesn’t count, apparently:

so the first time i actually kissed someone that wasn’t my kindergarten ‘boyfriend’ was at my friend’s birthday party in freshmen year. we were all in my friend’s room and they decided they were gonna kiss everyone in the room and I didn’t actually realize they were doing it until they actually kissed me and it was only for a second but i was all surprised n people were like “omg was that your first kiss! aw!” and it wasn’t a weird situation despite the circumstances

i felt really good about it after? i wasn’t consciously questioning my sexuality at the time and I didn’t have a crush on them I wasn’t grossed out by my friend kissing me like I had been about boys before. i ended up texting one of my guy friends about it bc I thought it was kind of funny the way it had happened and I told him it was my first kiss and he was just like “oh. that doesn’t really count”. and I kind of lost any good feeling about it after that.

dating a boy: yikes

later in freshman year, I became friends with one of my friend’s exes. let’s call him Tom. Tom was tall and gave good hugs and we hung out a couple times and I thought he was funny and good to be around and I told my friend “if I’d date anyone right now, I’d probably date him” and she asked me why and I didn’t really have an answer. it was kinda like Mike in kindergarten- he was good to be around and I liked his company, and I think I forced myself into having a crush on him after my friend decided to set us up. I made a point of talking about how attractive he was (even though we was def not attractive, like… at all)

anyway, after we spent some time together and he kissed me a few times, he asked me out and we dated for a month. i didn’t so much like kissing him as much as I liked the idea of being kissed by him, if that makes sense?

looking back it was kind of a shitty relationship lmao, we barely really talked and he didn’t officially break up with me, he just stopped talking to me and I felt like shit about it for a while.

bi? pan? no labels? multiple confusing a-spec labels and MOGAI terms to cling to some shred of being attracted to men when I knew I really wasn’t? yes, please!: the ongoing series

around mid-freshman year, this new person transferred to our school, and we ended up having a bunch of classes together. we had a weird on-again-off again flirty thing that I won’t get into but this was the turning point of realizing I was attracted to ppl other than men.

anyway… even though after Tom I literally never had a crush on a man or so much as found a guy even aesthetically or objectively found a guy attractive, i went ahead and thought I was bi, but didn’t really label myself until I heard of pansexuality. i liked the definition, and so I started identifying as pansexual.

and then began my intro to MOGAI tumblr, or as I like to call it: rewind to re-embracing my internalized homophobia all over again

anyway, i don’t really know exactly how or when it started, but I routinely questioned my (non-existent) attraction to men but was so rooted in my compulsory attraction to men that I refused to even consider that I wasn’t attracted to them at all. I went through labels like quioromantic, demisexual, lithromantic, polysexual panromantic, and a plethora more that I don’t care to get into.

I was so stuck in my own internalized homophobia and compulsory attraction to men that I kept using these labels to “justify” my attraction to girls ( “oh, I don’t ACTUALLY like my friend, i’m just confusing platonic and romantic attraction again!”)(”i want this girl to like me, but when she shows interest, I get nervous and back out of it. i must be on the aro spectrum.”) and tell myself that i COULD hypothetically want to date a guy, even if I didn’t want to kiss or do anything sexual with them. 

[incoherent screaming]: other random thoughts that I don’t know how to categorize anymore

i don’t even really know what to call myself anymore tbh, being that i’m genderqueer and not really “pansexual” anymore. i don’t call myself bi because even though i, personally, know that it doesn’t mean “attracted to men and women” many people have that assumption and I don’t want people to think i’m attracted to men anymore. at all

there’s honestly a lot more compulsory heterosexuality I’ve been through and still struggling with

tbh i hope more people feel comfortable talking about their experiences bc I think if I had seen these posts when i was younger it would have really helped me come to terms with all this a lot sooner

if anyone wants to talk about stuff like this feel free to message me or something? i love talking to ppl and im a good listener i promise

[outforhealth]

Learn Data About Queers: Compulsory heterosexuality and the “Prove It” mentality

By Luca Maurer

Welcome to Learn Data About Queers. If you missed it last time, we’re featuring original articles for QueerTips highlighting research and data about LGBTQ sexual health. If you have a question that you think could be solved by sweet, sweet science or research, leave it in our ask box and we may answer it in this column.

Ever found yourself in a situation where someone else doubts your orientation? Or where you’re asked to justify or “prove” you’re bi, lesbian, gay, or queer? The first research ever to explore this common phenomenon amongst LGBQ folks has just been released. (Some past studies took a look at how often straight identified women performed same-sex behavior publicly, usually for heterosexual men to watch and enjoy; and at how often straight men do, usually because they are dared to do so by others.) It includes some findings that demonstrated the ways in which sexual minority women and men experience this in similar ways, as well as some distinct differences between them.

The study invited participants (who were all cisgender young adults who identified as LGB, queer, questioning, or other) to describe times in which they “performed” or were asked to perform their sexuality in front of others, in an anonymous survey. They were also invited to say more about what was going when they were asked, who asked them to do so, whether they did or not, and why.

The researchers noted three major themes that arose from participants’ stories. One was about the assumption of heterosexuality – that all people are presumed heterosexual unless “proven” otherwise. Many LGBQ people described the experience of having others simply not “believe” that their orientation was not heterosexual, unless they purposefully kissed or engaged in other PDAs for others who observed and judged or evaluated their doing so.

A second was the continuing myth that identity and behavior are the same thing, rather than two unique and different concepts. Bisexual participants in the study noted this idea frequently – that friends, acquaintances, or even sometimes potential dates expressed doubt that they were really attracted to men and to women.

And a third was the difference in how common it was to experience this overall – with women reporting they were asked to prove or “perform” their sexuality more often than men. However, both men and women reported feeling objectified or pressured when this happened. The researchers also found that the most common situations in which individuals were challenged to prove their orientation were parties and other social gatherings involving alcohol.

In the future, the researchers hope to continue research on this topic, and take a look at how people of other genders and gender identities, ages, races and ethnicities are impacted. For now, though, this current research documents the unfortunately still prevailing societal belief that LGBQ people’s romantic, sexual, and relational lives are up for public display, debate, or scrutiny in order to be validated – something that heterosexual people don’t usually experience.

[transparkle-blog]

reblog if compulsory heterosexuality ruined your life

[firstsignofspring-deactivated20]

the thing about compulsory heterosexuality for me is that it hasn’t been a case of sorting my attraction into “real” and “unreal”. i mean tbh that seems impossible, because attraction as a concept is something im not sure i fully understand how to define, but also – i am attracted to guys sometimes. i have to fuckin fight that, every time i feel it, because i don’t want to feel it. and so for me at least, it’s more a case of sorting stuff into “wanted” and “unwanted”.

and some days i really hate myself, and some days i can’t see my future, being a lesbian, so it’s harder to shake the unwanted feelings. but slowly im getting there. i know i want to spend my life with another woman, if circumstance lets me.

it’s just. i think a lot of stuff about comp het on here treats it like attraction is clear cut and easy to navigate – in my experience, it isn’t. so i try to remind myself that it’s the social influences that cause this, it’s society’s wish for us to be heterosexual, and when im in a good headspace, i can take that to remind myself that. i can be a lesbian. there’s a place in the world for me.

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

compulsory heterosexuality

Okay, I’ve gotten a lot of asks about the compulsory heterosexuality thing and it’s true that the first Google hit isn’t super easy to understand, so I‘ll try to break it down a little.

“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.

[mermatriarch-deactivated2018092]

i have vivid memories from when i was younger, between the ages of like 9 and 14, consciously trying to make myself have crushes on random mediocre boys i knew just because i knew girls were ‘supposed’ to have crushes on boys. it reached the extent where i always felt awkward around boys because i felt like i should be attracted to them and consequently tried to force myself to be

but thinking about my childhood/early teen years in retrospect i can think of numerous girls who i had crushes on, except i didn’t recognise it at the time because i hadn’t even realised crushes on other girls were a thing i could have. and these weren’t subtle crushes, i just completely failed to recognise them and instead grew up feeling weird and alienated by love/romance because nobody ever gave me any indication that liking girls was fine and okay

protect young women-loving-women from compulsory heterosexuality 2k15

[slimegargoyle]

honestly just as an exercise I strongly suggest working to decenter men in your life and questioning whether your feelings about individual men are based on genuine attraction or desire for their approval. if the outcome of this process is that you’re still into them, cool! you’ll know more about yourself and be empowered in your interactions. but, if you’re anything like me, you may find that the process of giving up this approval-seeking can also pretty well quelch any sense of attraction you may have once had. compulsory heterosexuality is more deeply ingrained than you could ever imagine, and once you begin the work of extricating yourself from it, you might find yourself feeling freer than you ever have before. you’ve got nothing to lose by trying, and everything to gain.

[slimegargoyle]

since I’ve seen a few tags/replies along the lines of “how do I do this?” here’s what has worked for me (because it’s not obvious, especially at first!). some things to ask yourself in interactions with men: 1.) do you give a lot of weight to being seen with him, and how he may boost your social status? 2.) do you tend to find yourself losing interest in men as soon as they express attraction to you? 3.) do you enjoy the idea of a lot of men liking or pursuing you, but find the reality boring or even upsetting? 4.) do you find yourself checking out when you sleep with men (if you do sleep with them)? if you say yes to some or all of these, try catching yourself in these moments and listening to your gut feelings. I’ve spent a lot of my life ignoring those niggling little “I don’t want this!!” moments, which in retrospect were always present. if something you’re doing romantically or sexually with a man is giving you anxiety (distinct from excitement/butterflies) you may not be so much interested in him as in the power you feel his approval grants you.