1. I kept talking trash about this female artist. I was just going on and on about how I hate her music. Truly she is just the worst.

Another peer finally asked me, “If you don’t like her, why do you keep talking about her?”

…Oh. I just didn’t know how to express attraction.

2. Bisexual female friend was talking about how hot giving blowjobs was. Straight female friends agreed. I’m like, “Okay, there’s no men here, cut the BS, you can say it’s gross and horrible.” They looked at me super confused.

All these 30 years I’d assumed that no women actually found anything about men attractive but only pretended to to be nice and because men will give you orgasms if you ask them nicely.

3. I was around 10-11 when I got The Sims 2. First video game I ever played. I wasn’t aware you could have 2 male sims in a relationship until I saw the “flirt” option pop-up. I spent hours making hot male sims, usually shirtless and making them “woohoo” in the hot tub, usually with Don Lothario (a pretty well known sims womanizer for those unfamiliar with the franchise).

At first I didn’t put much thought into it, then a friend from school came over to play The Sims together (everybody in my school played it). He asked me why not a single family has any women, then it hit me. Up to this point I thought what I was doing was completely normal and everyone was just playing The Sims like that… I did make an excuse at the time and it took me about 10 more years to come out.

4. I’m a girl and I was 12-13 when the third Harry Potter movie came out. I saw it eight times in the cinema because my gay ass was fascinated by the fact Hermione had gotten boobs… Told myself I just liked her pink hoodie though!

That same school year I was always dragged along on my female best friend’s dates with her first boyfriend and couldn’t work out why I was absolutely devastated every single time. Suddenly hit me I was madly in love with her, cue 10 years of gay panic.

5. Spending more time than necessary picking out underwear in department stores, wondering what the models looked like without underwear. That shortly led to looking up gay porn.

6. When I was a Mormon missionary in Eastern Europe. The other missionaries were tempted by the pretty girls and lingerie ads, and I was tempted by the other missionaries.

7. One of my very old female friends realized she was bisexual and got into a relationship with a woman. When she told me the story of them getting together, I was just overcome with jealousy (I’m not usually a jealous person!) and all the other clues in my life came together for me. I realized I wanted that too, and now I have it!

8. Honestly still had doubts until I kissed a girl. I’d been trying to date guys unsuccessfully for years at that point. Kisses had felt gross and awful. I never wanted to touch them. Kissing her was amazing. I started feeling all those feelings you see/read about and that I had previously thought were somewhere between exaggeration and straight up lie.

9. Wrestling unit in gym class in middle school. Young and buff body builder gym teacher asked for a volunteer to demonstrate on. One of few people to volunteer. He picked me and I immediately got hard and had to hide in my waste band but it was too late to turn back. It was fun getting pressed up against his body though.

10. I’m embarrassed to say that my husband pointed it out to me. I was convinced that I was demisexual for yeeears because I don’t feel immediate attraction to men, and (I thought) I didn’t have celebrity crushes like the other girls growing up. One day we were watching a movie, and my husband was like, “Honey, are you sure you aren’t bi? You like boobs a lot… Like, I’m pretty sure you’re looking at Kate Beckinsale’s boobs as we speak.” And I was like, “Ohhhhh, fuuuuuuck. That’s totally what’s happening here…”. As soon as I started paying attention, it was abundantly clear to me that I had plenty of celebrity crushes, they were just all ladies, and I do feel immediate physical attraction, just always to women. So embarrassing. Since my relationship with my husband is monogamous, I’ve never had a relationship with a woman.

11. When I was in seventh grade, I was at a dance with a friend. I had managed to convince her to go with me as my “friend date” and her boyfriend at the time invited himself along. I was RIDICULOUSLY jealous. She wouldn’t dance with me because her boyfriend instead wanted to pin her to the wall and make out with her and I had the thought that “I could treat her better than this. If I were her boyfriend, I would respect her and I’d kiss her like I love her, not like I want something from her. She’s so pretty, i wish I were her- waaaait.”

And then I cried for the next two hours because i was a Christian and thought I was going to hell.

12. A girl I (unknowingly) had a crush on started talking to me and I could barely respond. Like, I couldn’t put a sentence together, because oh my god she’s so beautiful and she’s acknowledging me. She left thinking I was an idiot, I left with the realization that maybe I wasn’t as straight as I had thought.

To be fair, I suspected I wasn’t straight before this, but this moment was when it really clicked.

13. When I was about 12, I had tried to get excited by boobs and other such feminine things for a few months to no avail. Thinking I was just broken for a while I stopped trying.

Then my high-school aged sister started dating a football player. They were sitting on the couch and his shorts rode up a little. One glance at his thighs and I figured out what I was really about.

14. When I was like 12, I was sleeping over at a friend’s place. We shared a small futon with us and her dog. Obviously, cuddling happened. Later, I found myself making Google searches about women’s sexuality and if it was normal to like girls as much as you liked guys. Well, whatever I clicked said ~women’s sexuality is just different, everyone thinks girls are pretty because they ARE pretty!!~ Went 6 years thinking all girls thought girls were more attractive than guys.

Side note, I live with her now and we’ve both admitted to having massive crushes on each other during high school. Nothing’s happened since then (purely platonic now) but I thought that was kind of funny. Also had a lot of people in our hometown ask if we were sisters but we don’t look alike, just hung out a lot.. now I’m wondering if those were euphemisms or just stupid questions!

15. Was at a birthday party in middle school. We played spin the bottle, all girls. Afterwards we were laughing in the bathroom and one of the girls goes “Wouldn’t it be so gross if one of us was a lesbian?” And then I realized that I’m bi.

16. There was this girl in our friend group I just met. At first I was like, “She’s pretty I wish I had her style.” Then I was like, “If I were to have sex with a girl it would her.” Then it was like, “Damn sex with a girl has to be better than the shit sex I’ve had all my life.” Then it was “oh… it’s cause I’m gay.”

17. My best friend was furious with me because she thought I had a thing for the guy she was dating, as I wanted to hang out with them a bunch and she thought it was to get closer to him. Halfway through the argument I finally snapped and yelled “I DON’T LIKE HIM, I LIKE YOU!” Bing, lightbulb. Suddenly a whooooole bunch of shit made sense.

18. In like 5th grade some of my friends all slept over at my house. I have a pool and after my parents went to sleep we dared each other to go skinny dipping. Long story short I realized I was interested in boys in a way that I wasn’t with girls.

19. I was best friends with this girl online for the longest time. I didn’t have anyone IRL so I focused most of my attention on her and I was thinking, oh, we’re just besties right? Then at some point, I realized that if she were a dude, my behavior towards her would be obviously like a crush. But since I’m so good at lying to myself I settled on the idea that I might be bi.

Cut to like a year later in science class and I’m looking around at everyone. The girls were definitely cute, but when I looked at the guys who were considered conventionally attractive, I realized I just felt… nothing. Then that was when I went from might be bi to total lesbian.

20. I ate pussy for the first time and realized that I liked it just as much as I like sucking dick. That was when I realized I was sexually into femme people.

Then about a year ago I started making a lot more queer femme friends, and I realized that I also kinda wanted to like, flirt with and date some of them.

I’m generally not attracted to straight women, so it took a while for me to figure out the romantic component because I barely knew any queer people for a long time.

21. Accidentally saw gay porn and immediately was like, “Aaaahhh so many things in my life make much more sense now.” Seriously it took me almost 18 years to realize it.

22. For me it was my first wet dream starring some guy I’d later have a crush on. For the next week I was in denial of who I was: my family tends to be very conservative and the thought of telling them that I was gay terrified me, even before I knew my sexuality. Three years later I told them and I couldn’t have asked for more understanding and loving words.

23. I got the first hint when I was fourteen, and I kept listening to “I Kissed A Girl” on repeat. Still ignorant about my sexuality, but kind of obsessed with the song lyrics.

Fast forward a year later, I caught myself fantasizing sexually a girl from my school, while I was alone in the classroom.

And I was like “oh, shit…”. Needless to say, I hated it initially.

24. Told my friend about a dream I had where I kissed her. Her reaction was basically “hahaha what. Well was it a wet dream?” and I thought holy shit maybe it was.

Then it all made sense. As a child I’d become enamoured by certain girls, never guys. They were the only ones I found physically attractive. I’d make lesbian couples in the sims (one time I made a sim of me marry a girl) and it was just kinda fascinating to me? Turns out I’d been crushing on girls my whole life and hadn’t realized it until my friend harmlessly teased me about it.

25. Cranking it in 4th grade and realizing I was focusing on the dude and not the girl. I remember going about 2 years saying to myself, “It’s not gay I just like the way the muscles look.” Eventually I had to face the facts and say “Okay, you’ve been beating off to dudes for the past 14 months, that’s pretty gay.”

26. I was at a friend’s birthday sleepover. Another friend was awake, typing on the computer, working on the story three of us were writing together. I was laying on the couch watching her work as I dozed off; the birthday girl had gone to sleep awhile ago. The friend who was typing was someone very close to me, I spent every spare minute with her, the kindest soul you’d ever meet, and she was so gorgeous, too. I wished I could be like her.

My very last thought before I drifted off to sleep was “I wish she would kiss me.”

I woke up the next morning, remembered that, and had a full GAY PANIC moment.

It all worked out. 25 years later, she’s sitting beside me rolling her eyes at this post.

27. I was in fourth grade when gay marriage was legalized, and I remember thinking, “Wow. I wish I was gay, girls are really pretty but I like boys. Guess I’m not.”

Cue my surprise a few years later in sixth grade when finding out bisexual was a thing.

28. For me there wasn’t much of a single moment, more like a week. It started with a therapist apologizing for assuming I’m straight. After that I basically started connecting the dots. When fantasizing about sex, I always kinda forced myself to think of a woman, and my mind would easily drift to men. I would subconsciously look longer at pictures of men, than at pictures of women. When looking at porn, the penis was the most interesting part, and more penises in porn was better porn, that kinda thing. Before going to that therapist I hadn’t given my sexuality much thought and didn’t really care. And all of that happened when I was 18.

29. I happened to see a scene of some R rated movie my parents were watching where this black guy was going to town on a woman missionary style, and the image stayed in my memory. While jerking off to said image later I came to the realization that the tiddies were really not what had me turned on, but that the guy was actually really hot and had a really nice ass. I was horrified, because I didn’t think being gay was acceptable, cue several years of repression/denial.

30. I had a very intense dream about me sexing up my close female friend. When I woke up the next morning I just KNEW.

31. I’ve convinced myself that my fascination with boobs is because I’m flat chested and have always wanted boobs. And like.. I can appreciate when other women are attractive because they’re my competition, right?

32. Watching porn and always watching the guy over the girl.. getting annoyed when they’d cut the guy out of the shot, and always wanting to see the guy finish. Eventually tried gay porn and was like OH.

33. When I was eleven at first I thought I was normal but looking back there are these little hints that I look back on with “How did I not see that!”.

The first was when I went swimming with the school, in the men’s changing room another person naked started pelvic thrusting joking about with his friend and I noticed and had to quickly hide because the blood started pumping, no idea what was going on I recall feeling confused and a tad ashamed.

The second was this cartoon book about puberty and it’s effects on the males body and I recall getting aroused by those men. Around 13 is when I discovered internet porn still thought normal even though looking at those images I stared more at the men.

Then at fourteen I was just staring at gay porn and I recall blurting out to myself “Wait! Am I gay?”. Looking back on that memory I find it funny just because of my response.

34. When I saw the high school football players and cheerleaders, and had no interest in ogling the cheerleaders. For some reason I was more interested in the deep voices, muscular bodies, and broad shoulders, of the football players than the cheerleaders.

35. One of my gay friends was telling me how he realized he was gay and I found myself relating to everything he was saying. Before that, I thought I was asexual. I knew I wasn’t into girls but had never really seriously contemplated whether or not I was into guys, perhaps because I was afraid of the conclusion I’d reach, so I just settled on thinking I was asexual. In hindsight, I’d always been into guys, I just misinterpreted all my feeling of attraction as feelings of jealousy. I’d see a hot guy and tell myself that I really wanted to look like him and that that was why I couldn’t stop staring. It made sense at the time, even though it sounds absurd in retrospect.

During that conversation, the realization that I had been in denial for years just hit me and I knew I was gay.

36. I’m not gay, I’m bi, with a tendency to develop crushes for girls more than guys. It had to be when I went to Florida with my friend for spring break and she cut her toe open on coral. I don’t think I’d ever seen her bleed like that before and it made me realize how much I wanted to keep her safe and happy BEYOND in a friendly way. The feelings never went anywhere sadly but it really do be like that sometime.

37. I was watching some YouTube video when a girl caught my eye. Had the thought that “if I was gay” I’d be totally into her.

Then I realized that was not a heterosexual thought.

38. I’m Bi, fresh out of the closet, even tho I tried my hardest to suppress it, the moment I realized my taste in man, I was watching Captain America Winter Soldier in the cinema. The moment WS jumped from the bridge into the roof of a car and walked STRAIGHT INTO CAMERA, just made me go:

“Oh… fuck”

I realized that not only I wanted that to have that physique, to cause that same effect on women, but I also wanted to obey a man like that.

39. I was 12 years old. I was watching the movie Practical Magic for the umpteenth time. Sandra Bullock did something particularly attractive, and it clicked in my brain and suddenly I just knew.

I’d been wondering for a little while, after a (female) friend of mine did something unintentionally suggestive and I had a really strong reaction, but it was that particular viewing of Practical Magic that took me from “is it possible I’m gay?” to “Wow I am an entire lesbian.”

40. Oh man. I had just turned 11 and recently discovered HBO or whatever late night cable porn and had been watching for a few months. Some shows you’d get full frontal male nudity, but mostly you’d just get female full frontal and everything except the dude’s dick.

I remember figuring this out and was watching this really hot scene with a guy and a girl and just being so frustrated cause all I wanted to see was his dick. Just remember thinking “come on show your fucking cock dude” and was like OH THAT’S WHAT BEING GAY MEANS. I had always been told it was a choice so the realization that it was just my natural, unbidden desires really turned my world upside down.

Years later I actually identify more as bi since, tbh, pussy is great, but definitely, definitely into men.

41. I finally accepted that masturbating to gay porn but closing my eyes and imagining boobs just as I came wasn’t enough to make me straight.

42. I’m bi, and I realized it a little while after a friend of mine came out to me as bi.

“How do you know?” I asked her

“I just know that I check out both girls and guys.” she replied

“That doesn’t mean you’re bi, everyone does that! I check out girls and guys t- oh…”

43. As a kid, girls were gross. Kissing was gross. Just … ewww. I mean, we knew that one day we’d start hooking up with girls, but we never understood why.

Then, as I started to hit puberty, and noticed that everyone else was suddenly into girls, I still thought they were gross. We’d watch porn together and I’d be looking at the dude and the cock rather than the chick and boobs.

But what really did it for me was when I was showering in the communal showers in the changing rooms at school, and this dude two years older than me (I’m 11, he’s 13) is standing behind me asking how long I’m going to be and I look at him, then look down, then look at his (seemingly) massive cock and all of a sudden want it in me.

I looked back up at him and he knew I’d been staring at his cock. So I just looked at him and said ‘nice watch’, because he was wearing a watch. And then left the shower.

Thanks Ryan. Your cock made me realize I was gay.

And no, his cock never went in me.

44. This is pretty mortifying, but my mother, being a typical Catholic woman didn’t have the talk with me. Instead she left a book on her dresser about the facts of life knowing I was a nosey kid and would read it.

Well… there was a cartoon image of the male body that got my teenage blood pumping and I cranked one out to this book. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of a guy while masturbating but it was the one that made me realise this shit wasn’t going away.

45. The “hot” girl on college campus that my friends all wanted but she wanted me. I was questioning if I was gay and found guys attractive but never told anyone. I thought I just needed to have sex with a girl to prove I wasn’t gay. Went back to her room, making out, get her undressed, decide to just “go for it” and with my face literally inches from her lower lady bits I say out loud… “I’M GAY! Sorry, it’s not you. I’m gay. Really gay!” She was pissed and confused. I got dressed and went back to my buddy’s dorm. I told him I was gay. He was shocked but supportive and happy he “has a chance with her now.”

46. I’m so embarrassed but it was while watching that absolutely grim show ‘A shot at love with Tila Tequila’ on MTV.

I was an 18yr old girl, had never met a gay person (that I knew about) in real life, and BOOM I loved all those lesbians on the show.

Dani the firefighter, thanks for all the feelings.

Can’t believe it’s a shout out to Tila Tequila for her dumb show.

47. I never knew until I started to develop feelings for my best friend. We had been close since middle school, but around 8th or 9th grade I started feeling attracted to her. Of course, since we both came from Christian backgrounds, I tried to deny it, and I even made up stories about liking guys just to seem straight in front of my peers. But when those feelings wouldn’t go away, my mind was just like. “Fuck.”

Before then I had never had any real crushes on anyone in my school, and I thought that romance was sappy and not worth my time. I still kinda feel that way today, but I realized from this incident that when I fall for a girl, I fall hard.

48. I distinctly remember googling on incognito stuff like “how to tell if you are lesbian”, “am I lesbian quiz”, “what is a lesbian”, and “flannel”. The lesbian quiz told me I was only 60% gay because I didn’t own flannels or have dyed hair, which pissed me off.

49. When I was around 5 my brother brought home his first girlfriend. He was fifteen and she was sixteen.

I remember being OBSESSED with her. Her name was Tara and she had long brown hair and would compliment my drawings. She gave me a teddy bear & I still have it to this day. Looking back, I had a huuuuge crush on her.

50. Year 8 when my bully started humping me to (kid logic?) prove I was a poof.

I enjoyed that more than he wanted me to. In my defense, he was a very good looking bully.