Questioning

The twenty first century has had many wonderful advances for same sex couples - marriage equality was achieved in June of 2015 and more and more lesbian, gay and bisexual celebrities are coming forward and being public with their same sex significant others.

But, with that being said, I was completely oblivious to the idea of same sex couples as a kid. I grew up watching superhero films where the hero finds his heroine, or saves a woman in an epic love story - just good ol' heterosexual storylines.

I was eleven years old when I first started questioning my straightness, for lack of a better term. I thought I was weird because I had a crush on a female superhero, and I can only blame my confusion and ignorance to same-gender attraction on the fact that people assumed that I was straight - because that’s the normal thing to do, right?

No, not in the slightest.

It appears as though society has taken the legal system’s rule of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but only changed it to ‘straight until proven otherwise.’ People act as though being gay or bisexual happens overnight, or that it’s a choice.

Quite often when I speak openly about my bisexuality, I get comments such as ‘when did that happen?’ or ‘since when?’

And the answer is that I have always been this way. The ‘admiration’ I had for the Pink Power Ranger as a kid? That wasn’t admiration or idolisation, that was a crush. Not a girl crush or a I-want-to-be-her crush, it was a crush, the same type of crush that I had on Harry Styles.

But at the time, I didn’t know that - because nobody ever told me that liking girls was a completely normal thing. I didn’t know that there was a whole community of people who had that one thing in common.

And personally, I believe that the whole discovery of my sexuality and the entire process of understanding and coming to terms with being okay with it might have been a lot easier if I had been introduced to the idea at a much younger age - telling younger kids about same sex marriages and how it’s completely natural and okay might be the beginning of creating a more accepting and comfortable society in the future.

If I could give my eleven or twelve year old self a word of advice now? Embrace it and learn about it. Rather than shying away from the idea and flat out denying it because it seemed so strange, I’d tell myself to get educated on the subject, thus beginning a process of realisation; the realisation that same sex attraction is the same damned thing as opposite sex attraction.

And that’s my word of advice, whether you’re the one that’s questioning your sexuality or the one who might not know much about the subject - learn about it, become more familiar with it and embrace the fact that people love who they choose to love. ​