A Bisexual Man Said He Used to Be Straight. Is That Odd?

Many queer and trans folks believe that sexual orientation is an innate trait that never changes.

To be clear, I don’t support conversion therapy, nor do I think that being straight is better. I’m gay and trans myself and I’m proud of my identities.

I only wish to talk about experiences from people I know. While many of us don’t change our attractions, some other folks might.

A few years ago, shortly after I realized I was nonbinary, I went to a bisexual support group because I questioned whether I might be bi. There, I met a guy who told us he used to be straight, but now he likes men too. Other members told him he was wrong, because sexual orientation doesn’t change. He must have just suppressed his attraction towards guys all along.

The guy fell silent after that.

At the time, I thought it was like genetic expression, where certain parts of your DNA get turned on or off depending on your environment. So his same-sex attraction always existed but was just switched off until now.

Yet, now I’m rethinking my stance. Was it right of us to shut down the guy’s opinion? He was only talking about his own experiences. He wasn’t making any claims about other people. Was it presumptuous of us to think that we knew his feelings better than he did himself?

Is Sexual Fluidity Real?

When I went to grad school, I attended a queer group. During a social mingle, a nonbinary person lamented that many people have such a rigid, black-and-white view of sexuality. “Sexuality is fluid!” they declared.

Wow, I didn’t say anything because I doubted their conclusion. I didn’t believe that our sexual orientation could change. But this was also not the first time I had heard someone from the queer community speak of sexual fluidity.

Am I actually gay? Or am I attracted to girls sometimes?

As I mentioned earlier, I thought I was bi, that I might have suppressed my feelings towards girls due to a fear of homophobia. (I was read as female before my gender transition.)

I could appreciate girls aesthetically, and I did seem to have mild crushes on a few female fictional characters: Raven from the Teen Titans, Mulan from Disney, and Margo Roth Spiegelman from John Green’s Paper Towns.

Moreover, I had a female friend who was super gorgeous. For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. I found her very exciting to talk to. And it felt like my heart beat faster when she was there.

Or maybe the latter was because I had tried black coffee for the first time, and I couldn’t deal well with caffeine. The verdict is still out on this case.

Plus, a few girls I know are so thoroughly my type in personality, that if they came out as trans male tomorrow, I might even fall in love with them.

Similarly, when a female comedian I knew dressed in masculine clothing on stage, I suddenly found her very attractive. But when she reverted back to her usual clothes and style, she was still beautiful, but I didn’t feel that strange spark anymore. How strange!

Also, to my fellow gay folks, have you ever crushed on a friend you thought was of the same (or similar) gender, then you find out that they are actually of the opposite gender? But your feelings for them still remain to some extent?

That happened to me. Both my friend and I believed we were cis back then. She thought I was a girl and I thought she was a boy. But we both realized we were trans afterwards. My crush on her got milder but didn’t fade away entirely, even after I learned that she was actually a girl.

Perhaps the most puzzling thing for me, was that I had no problems understanding lesbian romances. (I got stumped over the sex scenes, but that’s conflated with my gender dysphoria.) In fact, my first ever LGBTQ+ character I wrote was a lesbian, and that was back when I thought I was a cishet girl.

What may surprise you even more, is that when I started writing gay romances, I was most comfortable writing lesbian romances. Even though I knew that gay male romances were more common, especially for straight female authors.

It took some time before I could write gay male romances as well, and later my romances expanded to all other gender combinations, including nonbinary and gender-fluid people.

Gay, Bi, Pan, Queer — What’s In a Label?

After reading all this, you might wonder whether I’m in denial over my attraction towards girls. Well, to clarify, I identify as gay because I discovered that sexual attraction was a thing.

I’m on the asexual spectrum, and sexual attraction is super rare for me. But I could see that I had no interest in kissing or doing anything physically intimate with girls. I was interested in physical intimacy with most of my male crushes, though.

So you may see why I call myself gay even though it’s not that clear-cut. But I don’t feel comfortable calling myself a “monosexual,” either. Perhaps I feel mild emotional attraction towards some girls, though not sexual attraction, at least not from what I’ve seen so far.

I also know folks who are mostly attracted to the same gender, but had a few opposite-gender crushes, and they identify as gay. Some may argue that they are actually bi or pan, yet labels are so personal and emotional. For me as well as those other folks, we felt that “gay” expressed how we felt better than “bi” or “pan.”

I know a trans girl who is a lesbian, but she’s currently dating a transmasc nonbinary person. While she still describes herself as a lesbian, she also feels like labels are limited and only approximate.

Moreover, I had a couple of Grindr friendships that were puzzling when it came to sexual orientation.

A guy I spoke to identified as straight, but he sought hookups with other men. He also said that he was interested in me, and from talking to him, he did seem to take my transmasc identity seriously. Much later, I saw him change his profile name to “kinda str8.”

I had a crush on a nonbinary friend on Grindr who was not transmasc. They were masc-presenting at the time, but from some of the things they said and showed me, it was possible they were transfemme. This made me panic because as far as I knew, I wasn’t sexually attracted to femme folks.

What was funny was that three weeks after we met up in person for dinner, they confessed that they had lost interest in me, because they are only into femme guys, and I look a lot more masculine in person than in my photos. In fact, they were more into girls now. That was too bad for me, but it was nice not to be misgendered as a girl.

But what was even more intriguing, was that some days before my friend admitted that they lost interest in me, a cis lesbian woman confessed to my friend that she had a crush on them. She was struggling because my friend was the first man she ever fell in love with. (My friend was not out as nonbinary to her.)

At first, my friend politely rejected her. But after breaking things off with me, they reconsidered, because she was “pretty cute.” And before I knew it, they were sleeping together already.

Yes, I still feel bitter and jealous about that, even though I was never involved with my friend. We had never done anything sexual together besides talking about our fantasies. But it still felt like being dumped, and for such an unexpected reason, too.

For fun, I showed my friend my pre-transition pictures. They said I was “really really cute,” and added that they would have been interested in me before my transition.

Suffice it to say that sexual orientation labels can be more complex than we think, and very surprising things may happen.

Changing sexual orientation after gender transitioning?

I’m not just talking about label changes after we are correctly seen as our true gender identity. I’m talking about our changed feelings towards people.

Some folks I know, used to only fancy one gender pre-transition. But post-transition, they fancied other genders as well, and identified as bi, pan, or just queer.

Moreover, some friends used to only be attracted to one gender, but became only attracted to the other gender post-transition. (They didn’t specify anything about nonbinary folks. So I’m only talking about men and women here.)

A trans woman I know was only into men before. But post-transition, she was only into women. A trans guy friend was mostly into women in the past, but post-T, he became only into men.

These cases don’t fit into the neat and tidy idea of being always gay, always straight, or always bi or pan. But whether they fall into neat categories or not, they are still people’s real-life experiences, and should be respected.

So, Can Sexual Orientation Change?

It depends on how you define sexual orientation, and on the person’s specific case. My bottom line is that I will respect what the person tells me is true about themselves. I don’t have the right to assume I know better than them, since I am just an outside observer and cannot know what they are truly feeling.

Over to You

Have you ever felt confused about your own or other people’s sexual fluidity? Did you also believe that sexual orientation is fixed and innate, rather than dynamic and changing for some people? What other thoughts do you have on this topic?

Originally published in Prism & Pen on Jan 6, 2023