hey sorry for the late response I've been working today so I'm responding on my break atm
you definitely wouldn't be able to just know how someone identifies just by looking at them, as you said. the way I think about it is, you don't have to try and define it one way or another if you arent actively trying to pursue a relationship with this person, if that makes sense. like - acknowledging when you find people you aren't usually attracted to, attractive, doesn't necessarily mean you want to pursue a relationship of some kind with them. and it doesn't mean you aren't a lesbian, bi, straight, etc.
if you are wanting to pursue a relationship I think it is a bit important to have a conversation like that - not so much in a "how do you identify and how often" way, but as in "does my attraction to you as a lesbian make you uncomfortable" ; if it turns out this person identifies as a man 100% of the time, I think it's time to assess where you both want the relationship to go. if you want to continue to pursue it, then there's thankfully other sapphic labels and identities that encompass this experience ! but if it turns out that you aren't comfortable pursuing a romantic relationship anymore, , that's okay too.
I hope that this helps? if you have more questions I can try my best to answer them !
It does help! Thank you again. Don't worry about the late response, by the way: I was in bed asleep. If I lived in Shizuoka my sleep schedule would make more sense: up at 9 or 10 am, bed around midnight? Sure, that's normal enough. But no. Oh well.
I can certainly see how a man might be uncomfortable with being attractive to lesbians! If he thinks lesbians are never attracted to men—well. It's like they're calling him Not A Man, isn't it.
In my experience, though, people are never attracted to me on the basis of my own internal sense of gender identity!
Straight men are attracted to things about me that they associate with women. Gay men are attracted to things about me that they associate with men. And so on. From there, it's always just been a matter of figuring out what (if anything) they want from me and what (if anything) I want from them—and what each of us actually has.
So I think you're right when you say that being attracted to men doesn't mean someone isn't a lesbian! That lesbian is probably attracted to things in men that said lesbian associates with women.
Pursuing a relationship is trickier.
Once you discover someone's gender, the things that initially attracted you to them don't go away—but it's possible for the gender alone to be an attraction-breaker. Same goes for discovering someone's sex, or build, or tendency to fart.
What breaks the attraction says as much about you as what created it in the first place, I think.
A lesbian and a gay man might be attracted to one another only to mutually lose the attraction once he realizes she's a woman and she realizes he's a man: or the attraction might persist because she's drawn to feminine things she perceives in him and he's drawn to masculine things he perceives in her. Once upon a time, they'd both carry on identifying as a lesbian and a gay man, even as they kissed or slept together. Some still do.
In the end, labels are created things that are only useful if the people who use them know what they mean—and the meanings change too often for me, at least, to get prescriptivist about them.
It's good to know where the next generation is heading with these labels!
Thank you for explaining your interpretation of them to me.
