yes, it's real.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I always thought it was 6-10%.

    As one of my high school teachers would say to the class, "Three of you are gay, that's just the way it is".

      • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        how many cis-hets are some kind of demi or agender or a little bit bi and just never think about it? never have to think about it?🤔

        • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          If you called a man at birth and aren't disphoric about it, there's pretty compelling reasons to never even think about questioning it. Same is true if you're mainly attracted to the opposite sex, just never really question the outliers, not worth the hassle.

          • Deadend [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Or if you think a famous person is hot who is not the opposite, but not actually CARE about that fact, as you probably will never meet them, or attraction to someone who is non-binary.

            I think as more non-traditional hot people gain greater visibility, the masses will also move along the kinsey scale.

            • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I don't think I know how feelings for non-binary people goes. Like, if someone looks traditionally feminine and I find them attractive but they don't identify as a woman I don't really see that as not being straight.

              • DinosaurThussy [they/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 years ago

                Yeah it’s kind of the flip side of how straight guys will get fragile about being “gay” because they’re attracted to a trans woman. Their initial attraction is to the correct gender and then they put the wrong label on it because of whatever insecurities they have. Being attracted to an enby who identifies more masculine, but having that attraction be to perceived femininity is the opposite. Wrong gender, correct label.

                And also gender is more complicated than a single spectrum. The more I dig the more gender seems like a series of islands with convoluted trade agreements.

                • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Yeah that's a good point. Like there's a whole range of combination of non-binary identifications and presentations and sex traits I might find individually attractive(like a trans masc person with discernable breasts. I might like their chest but not be attracted to them) on a sliding scale, but it's ultimately body types that would be considered female and more feminine gender identities I consider attractive, so if I dated someone non-binary but trans fem with a feminine body type I'd probably just count that as spicy straight. IDK for sure though burn thag bridge if and when I get to it.

                  • DinosaurThussy [they/them]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Yeah I think the point the important thing is you’re both on the same page about both the gendered attraction and the label. And ideally that’s something you can just kinda discuss and work out. I find that just knowing how someone identifies changes how I perceive them and am potentially attracted to them. But I also only experienced sexual attraction once before transitioning, so the whole attraction to individual body parts thing is a little foreign to me and a lot of this is more about romantic attraction. So idk

              • Deadend [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                But they aren’t a woman. But they are hot. So what are the features that are hot?

                Then there is also the “I’d fuck X but would not romance/ltr that gender.”

                Basically it’s a messy spectrum and always has been but awareness is increasing.

          • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            right, we're not primed to examine ourselves like that and if you fit in there's no pressure to do so either. Doesn't mean I experienced gender before I realized that I don't experience gender. So I wonder about other peoples' unexamined internal being.

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Same is true if you’re mainly attracted to the opposite sex, just never really question the outliers

            IME, this is incredibly true. Most of the people I had crushes on when I was young were girls, but then I'd be reading a book and there'd be a very erotic scene between two men and I'd be very intrigued and then the next day at school I'd be daydreaming about some girl, and to me this just felt like normal straight boy before. A decade+ later it's obvious to me that primarily attracted to the opposite sex is in fact different from only attracted to the opposite sex. If I were a youth today would I recognize that already? I think maybe, some of it is introspection but a lot is a increased level of dialogue and understanding about these topics.

        • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I've always kinda occupied a space between genders or at least blurred the line in several ways, and I've been forced by peers to think about it. I don't identify as LGBT or think of myself as queer though; I feel like there are people who need and fit that term far more than I do.

          Is demisexuality really in the same category as the rest? I thought it was either a style/mode of attraction, or something like being an "empath" where most people have it to some extent.

          • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            i was referring to demigender, but I figure demisexuality would be like the rest of the ace spectrum where a bunch of people are but never have the introspection or vocabulary, and could comfortably live their entire life fitting in well enough to avoid external pressure on their identity.

            • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Interestingly, my attraction to women was very different from how my guy friends described theirs, so I thought I was demisexual for a while.

              Only after coming out as a trans lesbian do I now realize I was never demi lol

              • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                uh I dunno people have little a salami gender, as a treat.

                There's no Académie Française for gender labels so there's gonna be overlap from people who feel gender consistently but mildly, gender fluid who move between none and some, and some other folks i'm forgetting about.

          • DinosaurThussy [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I personally do not experience sexual attraction at all until I know someone very well and have a pretty intense bond with them. I didn’t experience sexual attraction until I was about 23 and was really freaked out when it happened.

            I think asexuality is pretty firmly under the umbrella of “queer” for me, and the dual attraction model helped me understand my sexuality for the first time in my life well after most people have had their sexual awakening. But I’m not sure how long that language has existed in its modern form. Not long, I don’t think. So the shared history is thinner.

        • DinosaurThussy [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          A ton. The amount of times I’ve explained asexuality and had it met with, “I guess I’m a little asexual” is surprisingly high. That’s not even counting the people who are like, “well everyone’s like that”

      • CIYe [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I still maintain that most people are somewhere on the spectrum

      • DinosaurThussy [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I definitely would’ve considered myself cis indefinitely if not for the intense boost in trans visibility over the past couple decades