I Am Not Confused Straight, attracted mostly to people of the opposite sex or gender. Gay, the phrase used mostly by men, attracted mostly to people of the same sex or gender. Me? Bisexual. Attracted to both men and woman. Most say that bisexual individuals are confused. Stating that bisexuals could simply “pick one” and that is not that case. Yet bisexuality is not confusion, it is not a refusal to pick one gender over another, it is merely being secually attracted to both genders. Discovering your sexuality is difficult. Figuring out you like something different than the “norm” is even harder. Through a great support system from your friends, family, and employers, identifying yourself through sexuality is a much more smooth transition. Noticing that I was a little different than my other peers came as a shock. It started when I strange feelings I have never felt for a friends of mine in middle school. This was the moment I …show more content…
I truly believed these stirrings inside me would only ever be for her. Or if this tenderness for her could have been a fluke thing. Until it happened again in the ninth grade, except this time feelings were reciprocated and it went somewhere. Introducing my first girlfriend Miyah Stewart. Having a girlfriend was very strange and hard at first. In society you are taught how a man treats a woman, not how a woman treats her partner who is also another woman. This felt almost wrong and I wanted no one to know. After being together for a month I quickly learned that if you are ashamed of what you are and who you are with no one else would respect it. During the course of our relationship, Miyah and I received many derogatory, inappropriate, and disrespectful comments. Being that I was embarrassed, I never stood up to people when they made these remarks, causing me to lose my girlfriend and almost losing her as good
Sexual orientation is a term used to describe a person’s physical, sexual, and romantic attraction to another person, whether they be Male or Female. The term is relatively new and the idea of having a homosexual identity has only been around for one-hundred years at the most (APA).
It is also a belief among some lesbians that bisexual women are only saying they are bisexual in order to please heterosexual males.
Today in our society, this kind of ordeal is happening everywhere. You read about it in magazines, see it on different talk shows, or you might even know someone who has gone through it or is considering it. If you are not happy with yourself you are going to be miserable until something is done about it. If that means coming out of the closet or going a step further and having a sex change, more power to you. You can't make everyone around you happy. Your first mission is to feel good about yourself. If your friends and family are genuine they will like you no matter what the circumstances are. In my own personal life, I have been friends with Pierce my guy best friend since the fifth grade. He moved away to Florida our ninth grade year.
"A lot of people see gender as very one-sided, girl or boy, but in reality, even the choices of one, the other, both, or neither just don't feel right.” Many people don’t realize that there are more gender identities than just “male” and “female.” In June 2016, The Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that about 1.4 million US adult’s genders don't align with the one they were assigned at birth. One can identify as the opposite gender from their assigned sex, as no gender, as both, or as a unique identity not so easily categorized.
However, an umbrella term, or a word that covers more than one specific topic, such as transgender, does not only describe people who identify as the opposite sex; it also describes people who identify with both male and female genders, people who identify as genderless, or people who fluctuate between two or more genders. Many transgender people often refer to themselves simply as “trans.” Transgender does not define one’s sexual orientation, however; gender is considered a social construct while sexuality is not.
The term sexual orientation is known as the preference of one’s sexual partners, whether the same sex, opposite sex, or both sexes. Sexual orientation occurs when a child reaches the adolescent stages in life (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). Adolescents activate their sexual orientation within four steps that create their identity. Adolescents are unaware of their identity at the beginning stages of sexual orientation. They work their way into the exploration stage by learning their preference of sexual partners. Once they are aware of their sexual identity, they will start the process of acceptance. Once acceptance is achieved, they will begin to integrate their sexual orientation into their lives (Gallor & Fassinger, 2010).
To begin with, sexual orientation can be determined by more than one factor and is not the same for everybody. According to the American Psychological Association:
But during this period of adolescence, I never really thought about what I was. All the things that took place in the emotional-sexual realm were, admittedly, real and concrete to me: I experienced real feelings for other boys (love, infatuation, sexual attraction). But at the same time, on an "intellectual" level, I never confronted these feelings, and so I continued having them without worrying about them or trying to transform them in any way. They just were, and that was fine with me. While some opponents of homosexuality often claim that it is "unnatural" (a claim which is thoroughly refuted in the essay "Homosexuality and the 'Unnaturalness Argument'"), for me, my homosexual feelings were very natural indeed.
Another identity on this scale is pansexuality. Much like one who is bisexual, a person who is pansexual is attracted to both males and females and is another sexual identity along the spectrum. The sexual attraction in pansexuals however, is focused on traits instead of sex, appearance or gender. In other words, someone who identifies as pansexual is capable of being attracted to multiple sexes and gender identities, states David Bond, vice president of LGBT crisis group, the Trevor Project (Grinberg).
The term "gay" is used to denote a person who is attracted primarily to members of the same sex. Bisexual is a person who is attracted to both people of their own gender and other genders. Transgender, or trans, is a person whose gender identity consistently differs from what is culturally associated with his/her biological sex at birth (HRC Staff). Some choose to
My best friend in high school, she was in a relationship with a guy, who happens to be my best guy friend, since our freshmen year and was dating him till our Junior year, they were inseparable and were voted as the Class of 2016 cutest couple for 3 years in a row. They were perfect for each other, even her strict serious scary parents approved of it.
My experience with being bi is that I am attracted to males and females in very different ways. The way I think of it is that when it comes to guys, I am like most girls; personality and intelligence is most important, looks come later. But when I've got my eye on a girl, I take on a more typical "male" attitude. Appearance becomes more important and I find myself very picky and critical. Girl-watching is among one of my favourite social activities, with my male friends at least. I can't explain the way I am, I just know what I feel, and it's become an important part of my personality. The group of bis that I do not fit in with is those who preach gender indifference. "We love people, not genitals!", they proclaim. I am attracted to males and females in completely different ways and I can't look at a person without seeing a gen...
In order to discuss the biology of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is necessary to first examine the differences between multiple definitions that are often mistakenly interchanged: sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sexual orientation is defined by LeVay (2011) as “the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves, to persons of the other sex, or to both sexes” (p. 1). The typical categories of sexual orientation are homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual. Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2012) found that most people identify as heterosexual, but there are also groups of people that identify as mostly heterosexual and mostly gay within the three traditional categories (p. 89). This is to say that there are not three concrete groups, but sexual orientation is a continuum and one can even fluctuate on it over time. LeVay (2011) also defines gender as “the ...
In today’s society things are being expressed and experienced at younger ages, than ever before in our time. Children and teenagers are discovering their sexuality at very early ages. Sexuality is the discovering of who you are and what makes you different from everybody else.
Then we have sexual behavior: what sex are your partners? And finally, we have sexual identity: how do you think of yourself are you gay, straight, or bisexual? Some of us develop feelings of attraction to a one type of sex before we self-label our sexual identity. Others engage in sexual behavior before they’re sure how they want to self-identify. There’s no standard for how sexual orientation emerges, and it can often be a fluid process, with attraction, behavior, and identity changing over time (Burriss, 2015). Attraction occurs in adolescence and can occur with a first romance or first sexual experience. It is common for adolescents to experience same-sex attractions. Some gay youth experience opposite-sex attractions, sometimes before same-sex attractions. Teens are moving toward forming their own sexual orientation and identity. Previous studies report that more than 60% of the boys acknowledged opposite-sex attractions and 80% of same-sex–attracted girls. Boys reported that the start of heterosexual attractions happened around the same age as same-sex attractions and occurring usually one to two years earlier than girls. They become overly concerned with whether they are attractive and place more importance on their peer group. Many adolescents may even fall in love for the first time. It is common to experiment sexual and many will have intercourse during adolescence (Kaufman & Tulloch,