The amount of lesbians who know that they’re lesbians from a young age versus the amount of gay men who know that they’re gay from a young age shows a staggering difference in that most lesbians take way longer to realize that they’re gay.
Girls are told that dating men is supposed to be hard and essentially unfulfilling. That it’s normal to expend emotional and sexual labor without receiving anything or feeling anything in return. Girls are told that their attraction to men and relationships with men should be difficult and sometimes feel forced because men are so emotionally lacking or otherwise “hypermasculine”.
Realizing that you don’t like men because you’re gay versus just feeling emotionally exhausted or unable/unsure of how to “please” men is part of the reason why compulsory heterosexuality is so damaging. It forces many girls to continue to date men and to keep trying to feel attraction to them long after they’ve realized that there’s nothing there—particularly blaming themselves for the reasons why relationships with men don’t work out instead of thinking it’s an indicator of being gay, which most (though of course not all) gay men are able to recognize as an initial indicator early on.
