Sometimes it takes people a long time to figure out their gender and sexuality (and it's perfectly okay!) I was 27 when I came out as pansexual, and honestly it's not even that late. Still, it makes me feel sad about all time “wasted” not knowing who I am and being confused AF.
So today I'd like to take a moment to rant about three of the awful things that contributed to that.
Patriarchy and heteronormativity
In pretty much every movie, book or TV series the heteronormative relationships look the same. The girls is supposed to be submissive, delicate, while the guy is dominant and strong. He's supposed to fight for her, impress her, ask her out, pay for her. She's supposed to play hard to get, innocent… He makes money, she's a hausfrau. Roles are clearly defined and very asymmetrical. Most love stories don't look like love, but rather a conquest.
Seeing same-sex relationships was so fucking refreshing for me! No stupid schemas, expectations, rectum-derived rules!
That's why straight people keep asking gays the iditoic question “who's the man and who's the woman in your relationship?”. They get that a guy might like men instead of women, but still cannot comprehend any other model of the relationship than what popular culture taught them.
And I did the opposite – I knew I don't want a patriarchal relationship, I just didn't realise I can have that with a woman.
Mainstream porn
As hard as it might be to believe, this outrageously unrealistic porn scene CW: porn has been released by a studio called “Reality Kings”. How ironic!
Those boobs are fake. Those lips are fake. This voice is fake. The plot is unrealistic. Getting a blowjob while still hanging from a basketball loop is probably not comfortable enough for people to actually do in real life. And don't even get me started on his dick springing out rock hard right away with no mental or physical stimulation whatsoever.
And that's not an exception, the fakeness pretty much a common theme. The strong makeup that's supposed to start dripping with her tears when she gets face-fucked by a colossal dick. The almost absolute lack of interest in the girl's pleasure…
If that's what straight sex is like, I don't want it.
Except porn lied to me! Sex isn't like that.
Monogamy
Well, not monogamy per se, but forcing it as the default, or even the only, option.
When everyone in your life tells you you're supposed to find “the one and only” and “till death tears us apart”, it's easy to fall into the trap of feeling forced to choose. Not just the person to spend your whole life with, but the entire gender.
Finding out that it's possible (and awesome!) to love more than one person at the same time has also opened my eyes to endless other possibilities.
Summing up
There's way more, but those three things in particular I'm very angry about. The world keeps lying to us about how to be happy. It shows us just one possible way: a patriarchal, monogamous relationship. Or, yeah, whatever those gays are doing.
But turns out that queerness is vastly more colourful than any of that!