fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1595 ]

[ SECRET POST #1595 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1595 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 170 secrets from Secret Submission Post #228.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - hit/ship/spiration ], [ 0 - omgiknowthem ], [ 0 - take it to comments ], [ 1 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

18. http://i52.tinypic.com/9tz814.jpg

I've focused a lot on male characters in my shipping and just in general for all my life in fandom. Hell, I even shipped a lot of het back in the day. I'm still a lesbian. Honestly, OP, I doubt you Pavlov'd yourself gay.

I think it's far more likely that some subconscious attraction to girls fed a fascination with femslash. or they're unrelated and you just happen to both like femslash and rl girls. like the person above, I focused primarily on male slash since I was like, TWELVE, and I still turned out a lesbian!

(no subject)

cousinmary.livejournal.com - 2011-05-17 00:56 (UTC) - Expand

I don't think so.

Shipping slash early in my life probably made me even more lesbo than ever before

Yeah I don't get it either.

Fandom probably expanded your horizons to include the possibility of homosexuality which you later explored independently.

You can't have been that easily influenced by the media to be Pavolv'd - otherwise you would be straight, surely, as straight couples are far more common!

maybe all the femslash and lesbian films just opened your eyes to the possibility of homosexuality much sooner?

yeah, sometimes I wonder that wrt my bisexualism, then I just am all "fuck, doesn't matter" and get back to danbooru

That's not how conditioning works.

If you weren't sexually interested in girls, seeing sexual pictures of girls would just continue not to have an effect. Like someone said, you probably had an innate interest that was allowed to bloom when you felt comfortable, versus you MAKING yourself interested.

Being conditioned gay/straight/bi = hot porn plot =/= something realistic

THAT is an interesting thing to consider.

Like, if I wasn't so surrounded by the all the het and the "girls go with boys" mentality, would I have realized I was bi sooner?

Serious mindfuck.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2011-05-17 00:54 (UTC) - Expand

I also worry that shipping/fanfic has influenced the way I perceive sexuality and relationships in r/l. But I doubt that you could actually "turn yourself gay" so to speak..

You know, OP, I used to think the same thing about myself. But then I realized, like other commenters have said, that getting involved with fandom (especially femslash) only made me realize that yes, I was gay (before that I never understood why I had no interest in boys at all).

You're mistaking correlation with causation.
It's your genetic make-up (and probably hormone levels in the womb) that make you gay. You got into femslash etc because you already had those impulses.
You can no more create gay than you can fix gay. This isn't wrong, and it isn't your fault.

totally off topic but I wish I'd had more people to write femmeslash with. :/

On topic, I doubt it. I started with it because I was curious as to why I liked chicks more than dicks. It kinda rolled off in that direction, I found slash because of femmeslash, and now I write mostly slash.

*shrug* dif'rent strokes, methinks.

However you explore your sexuality is cool.

I genuinely think this is an interesting question! But fuck me I don't have an answer for you D:

Coolstorybro: I used to feel really guilty about ogling every girl in every show ever. This was sixth grade. I soon learned to repress it with a good dose of pretty manga yaoi boyz who look like gurls but srsly they're gaiz right?

I've been in slash since I was thirteen. Maybe I pavlov'd myself into being bisexual, but for now, it's not something I have to worry about - there are so many more things in life, and if you're a girl who likes girls, there's certainly nothing wrong with how you came about it. At all.

So TL;DR: it hardly matters, and all that matters is that you know who you are now :)

As a very gay girl who writes m/m slash (which, what?) I can attest it is not likely that you 'convinced' yourself you are a lesbian based on fanfic. If you do feel some attraction to guys, you could consider the possibility you're a little bi - not everybody has to be 100% lesbian or 100% straight.

I grew up with people who accept being lgbt and think nothing of it & I'm as straight as they come...

Good luck with any future outcomings you may attempt, OP, particularly re: family. Scary business. I know what you mean about detangling sexuality from the way you discovered it, and I can say that it gets easier with practice. Not having to keep both things in the same closet of secrets helps with that.

m/m slash fandom might've helped me Pavlov myself bi... or at least dragged some latent attraction to guys out into the light and petted it and validated it and fed it cookies and porn and squee until it filled out a bit and stopped looking so runty.

Or put it another way, even though I'm a (somewhat genderfluid) girl it was pretty easy to internalize the male gaze and appreciate female beauty, just by living in the society we live in. Fandom is what taught me how to turn a similar gaze on men, and damn if I didn't discover that a certain subset of them are quite pretty.

I know it doesn't make any sense ~~but sometimes I wonder that too.~~

I also grew up in a very Catholic environment/family. I didn't even know what a lesbian was or that two girls could DO that until I was 12 and watched Sailor Moon. At which point I went "oh, girls can do that. huh. ok." And moved on with my life. I've even had crushes on some guys as a kid (and on girls too). But as I grew up, I noticed that I deffinitely DID NOT like actual guys at all, not sexually anyway. Not when it came to seeing myself with them. So that's how I knew that I was a lesbian, despite shipping m/m stuff WAY more than f/f stuff and finding some fictional men attractive on an aesthetic level. (I could never get into het though. I dislike the strong gender roles.)

Does that mean that you're 100% a lesbian and not bi or straight and pavolved? I can't answer that for you. But I can tell you that, in my case, having seen that f/f is an actual possibility helped me realize what was going on with the total lack of interest in guys and growing interest in girls in real life.

I used to test my "level of gay" by looking at guys I thought I maybe found attractive in real life and then imagining myself going out with them. Let me tell you, imagining myself making out with a guy does 100% absolutely NOTHING for me. ...Imagining two fictional guys making out with each other? Score. Imagining myself making out with a girl? Score.

So, if you're still wondering... try playing little tests on yourself and see how you react to different scenarios. Judging by the rest of the replies here, what you like in your fiction isn't always connected to what you'd like for yourself. : ) No matter how it turns out, don't fret about putting yourself in a labeled box saying "ok, now I have to like this and this only!" If one day you DO find a guy you like, then that's great. (Heh, it IS a lot easier being straight. It's true!)

I reccomend reading this anyway: DAR (Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary) http://www.darcomic.org/2003/12/29/theend-2/
The artist/author is a lesbian who happened to fall in love with a guy, and this is her life. It's a pretty interesting read. : )

Isn't it possible the reason you're closeted about being fannish is because it was your outlet and that's how the two got meshed for you? Do you think you'd be so closeted about fandom if you hetshipped? If the answer is no, then trust yourself that fandom conditioning isn't the root of your fear.

Gah, I wish I could reach through the computer and hug you. You don't have to feel ashamed. You don't ever have to feel guilty or ashamed for being gay. You don't have to be shamed of loving the fandoms you love because they help you deal with loving girls.

I honestly think the 'Catholic' bit in your secret is more telling than the notion of you somehow being 'fandom gay'. They messed with your head and left you with a legacy of guilt for not being who you've been taught you ought to be. (I know internalised homophobia is a problem not confined to one group, but there's something so Catholic Guilt about the way your undermining your own experiences here. I remember those thought patterns. *Hug*)

That's the million dollar question for everyone though, isn't it? 'Why am I like this?' I don't think it matters, OP, as much as you like to know, I don't think there's an answer, even if it's outside of fandom. :( But it doesn't matter, OP. Just be you~