Lesbian turned bisexual
Rachel* was in her mid-forties and had been married to a man for 15 years when she had her 'lesbian awakening’.
“I was watching a demonstrate. The female performer on stage was someone I knew and had immediately clicked with when we’d met, but then I saw her up there and thought, ‘Oh my God, I fancy the pants off you.’
“I hadn’t experienced that before. It was a real moment of revelation and then it was – oh! And I also desire that woman and that woman.”
Rachel had always suspected she was bisexual but only in theory.
“Looking support I’d always fancied women but never allowed myself to do it consciously like I did in that theatre when I realised, ‘Wow, this is important to me.’”
Read more: Number of people who identify as lesbian, homosexual or bisexual has doubled
Four years on, Rachel, now 50, has divorced her husband with whom she has three children and is in a joyful relationship with a "funny, awesome, beautiful" woman who “drifted into my DMs on social media and started flirting. I suddenly realised, after all these years, what I wanted.”
‘Switching sides’, ‘sexual fluidity
It sounds to me like you’ve made a pretty fine friend at work! It also sounds like you’ve been struggling with your identity as a female homosexual and how that may be impacted when you meet someone who isn’t a woman, but who still makes you undergo nice.
I reflect what you’ve said here is so important, and really the crux of what I want to say, too: it’s normal to feel nice when someone is nice to you, but that doesn’t automatically mean you’re not a lesbian. There’s a lot of societal pressure that wants women to value and desire sexual and romantic attraction from men, and this can cause a range of crappy feelings for women who are genuinely not attracted toI really execute think he's a gentle person and he's super sweet and funny and I thought "Oh, hey! Maybe I'm bisexual after all!" and left it at that. However, I thought about it some more and I don't think that's the case after all and I actually am a womxn loving womxn. I just don't reflect I could see myself with a guy or dating a guy and doing that stuff, but at the same second maybe it's me limiting myself to try and fit a label?
Women are more likely to distinguish as bisexual – can research into sexual arousal relate us why?
Women’s sexuality is vastly understudied in science and is still considered a “taboo” subject. Often, the experiences of men have been taken as the norm in scientific research, yet there are important differences in the sexuality of men and women.
In , approximately % of the population in the UK over the age of 16 identified as queer woman , gay or double attraction. But when it came to bisexuality, there was a stark difference between men and women: women were much more likely to identify as bisexual person compared to men (% of women compared to % of men).
Similarly, a study conducted at the University of Notre Dame create that women were three times more likely to spot as bisexual. “Women have a greater probability than men of being attracted to both men and women,” said researcher Elizabeth McClintock, when discussing the results of the research. “This indicates that women’s sexuality may be more flexible and adaptive than men’s.”
The evidence overwhelmingly
Am I a Lesbian, Bisexual, or Biromantic Homosexual?
Unread postby belled »
Hi, my name is Belle and I’m an year-old young woman. I know I’m not direct but I’m not sure whether I am bisexual or a lesbian. When I was younger (like 12), I had crushes on guys. I was never attracted to boys my age; I always preferred male celebrities who were older than me. I remember I liked Shawn Mendes when I was 13 and he was 17, but all the other guys I liked were in their 20s or even 30s, and they were all celebrities.
When I was about 14, I started developing a crush on a woman (a year-old professional athlete). This felt really different from my crushes on men. When I looked at men, I thought of them in a very childlike, Barbie-and-Ken kind of way. I saw them as fairytale princes with pretty, kissable faces, and I just wanted to marry them. I caring of thought sex was weird and gross, but I mind that was normal because I was still really young. (I actually found myself really attracted to gay guys). But when I looked at women, I felt very attracted to their bodies. I wanted to stroke th