• if you get butterflies in your stomach or feel nervous/excited when looking at women or being around them

• if you can see yourself dating a woman but not being sexually intimate with her

• if you can see yourself being sexually intimate with a woman but can’t imagine a romantic relationship with her

• if you think about kissing or “practicing kissing“ your female best friend

• feeling scared or anxious when you check a woman out and quickly looking away because you’re afraid someone will notice

• feeling nothing/indifferent/bored when you’re in romantic or sexual situations with men

• having extremely high standards when it comes to men that no man can ever fulfill, but very low standards in women

• if you had many experiences with women in your childhood where you wish something more could have happened or where you think you felt something that wasn’t very heterosexual

• conflicting feelings about femininity and masculinity (this can have two meanings, feeling like you’re not lesbian enough or that you can’t be a lesbian because of the way you present your gender or questioning your gender identity see he/him and they/them lesbian resources at the end of the carrd)

• not being able to see yourself marrying a man and having kids with him when you think about the future and possibly also imagining a woman in these scenarios instead• dreaming about women, thinking about how soft their skin is, how pretty their lips are and wondering what it feels like to touch another woman in any romantic or sexual or both way• you’re welcome to dm me if you would like to know more these are the most significant examples I can think of

• look in the mirror every day and say you’re a lesbian and that your lack of attraction to men is valid and your love for women and enbies is beautiful, this one is especially hard when you’re struggling with comphet but it has the power to make you feel more secure in your lesbian identity.

• surround yourself and communicate with other lesbians to hear about their experiences and see if they might have any advice that could help you, if you don’t know any irl, there are lots of support sites you can turn to, openly lesbian people on social media platforms and you’re always welcome to dm me :)

• educate yourself and try to find representation or something you can relate to in whatever form you can: read up on lesbian history, listen to music by lesbian artists, watch lesbian tv and films (but check out recommendations by lesbians to avoid those that perpetuate harmful stereotypes), see if you can listen to podcasts or interviews with lesbian activists aso.

my personal journey with the lesbian label

tw: suicidal thoughts tw: internalised lesbophobia tw: violence tw: homophobic bullyingI realised I’m not straight at the age of 12. Looking back there were definetly signs before that. I didn’t realise that the way I felt about and looked at girls meant that I was a lesbian and that I had genuine crushes on girls.
But getting back to realising I’m not straight...
At 12 I started to really notice girls. I distinctly remember it was summer and I was walking around my school and everyone was talking to me about how hot the boys looked shirtless or in tanktops...but I didn’t see the appeal. That should probably have been a crystal clear sign for me that I wasn’t bi but I ignored it because internalised lesbophobia is a bitch. Anyway I started to notice that looking at girls was unlike anything I felt before it I hadn’t felt romantic and sexual attraction like that before and I felt kind of giddy if that makes sense when I spoke to them. I started to notice girls in dresses and shorts instead and the way they would play with their hair and how soft their lips were. But anyway I think I’ve established that there definitely wasn’t a straight bone in my body lol. As time progressed I started to think about girl love stories and what kissing a girl would feel like. I couldn’t picture myself being with a man romantically at all but picturing myself marrying a girl someday filled me with hope and joy.
This part of my identity was very beautiful because I didn’t feel fear initially about my crushes on girls or even imagining being sexual with them.
Realising I was a lesbian and coming out...was not quite so beautiful.
Now I’m getting to the part about labelling myself because unfortunately my journey to identifying proudly as a lesbian is still a long way away.
So basically I was struggling a lot with comphet, something that I’ve thought a lot about is that my "crushes" on boys weren’t actually crushes. I know for many lesbians they start of having genuine feelings for men and later on realise they aren’t attracted to them...but for me it was a bit different.
You see I grew up in a very sheltered neighbourhood in a small village where everything had to be picture perfect down to the white picket fence and the first time I heard the word lesbian was in 7th grade.
I remember clearly growing up that I had lots of crushes on boys or so I thought. The terrifying and sad thing is I thought every time a boy was nice to me or made a kind gesture that that meant I had a crush on them. Even though they made me feel nothing. But because of comphet and society’s expectations that women mold and center their lives around men I thought "this is natural“ "this is what it’s supposed to feel like“. Already when I was like 6 I had my entire life mapped out in relation to what my parents expected of me and of the expectations that were of me as a woman. I knew that I was supposed to do my A levels become a teacher like my parents find a good husband give him children and live a picture perfect life where I would never discuss my mental health, my attraction to girls or what my dreams are.
So the sad fact of the matter is from age 12-16 I thought I was bisexual and identified as such. Don‘t get me wrong I absolutely loved identifying as bisexual for a while and it’s a beautiful label and Identity but it isn’t me!
And my reasoning behind identifying this way instead of lesbian was, that I felt like I had like 5% attraction to men so I wasn’t allowed to identify as lesbian. And I didn’t want to exclude them from my attraction because that meant identifying as a lesbian. And that terrified me because I only ever heard negative things about lesbians.One of the worst times of my life was age 12-16. Because I started to realise that I was a lesbian and I watched countless of coming out videos and I felt absolute hatred towards myself and thought I was disgusting because I didn’t fit the norm and I thought being a lesbian meant I couldn’t be happy. I even had suicidal thoughts because of it.
I used to force myself to be sexually attracted to men and find things that made them appealing even if it was just that I found them pretty, because I thought not being attracted to men was unnatural. I had comphet crushes on celebrities because they were unattainable which is something many lesbians experience and let me tell you, that doesn’t make you not lesbian.
It didn’t help that I was getting bullied all my childhood and they found out I liked girls too.
I had come out to my parents as bi, but my mother was only ok with it as long as we didn’t talk about it so I didn’t feel comfortable at home.
During this dark time in my life I realised that no matter how hard I tried my identity and feelings wouldn’t change and since the internalised lesbophobia that plagued me wouldn’t stop I started to search for anything to make me feel better. Now even though the internet was full of misinformation that slowed this process down I‘m really glad I did this because I started to find explanations for how I felt. I found countless of other stories like mine, I watched out celebrities talk about being lgbt and I watched tv shows and read books with lgbt representation. And I mean ANY lgbt representation I could get my hands on because the lesbian resources for girls my age were almost non existent at the time. This meant I also educated myself on lgbt history and that trans and non binary people exist because growing up that was something I hadn’t heard of either I’m sorry to say.
And I realised being a lesbian is the lack of attraction to men but doesn’t mean that you can’t be attracted to non binary people f.x. so that was pretty liberating as well.
Now that I’m grown up I really really wish there had been irl lgbt resources for me but I can tell you in my small village in Germany and all the nearby towns and cities there was NOTHING.Then years passed and I went through a lot of stuff at home and with my mental health so I but my lesbian identity a bit at the back of my mind. That changed when I met a girl that I fell properly in love with for the first time. She’s my girlfriend of 6 years now. I don’t know why, but being with her made me feel all the more certain that I wasn’t attracted to boys in any way. She really struggled with accepting that she was bisexual and through seeing how horrible she was towards herself and how hard it was on her it was like something clicked and I wanted to help her and realised I wanted to stop doing this to myself any longer. There were rumours about us at school and people didn’t make a secret of being homophobic to our face and behind our backs. But this was when I realised I didn’t want to be scared or live in the closet anymore. So I came out as lesbian. First to myself. Then to my girlfriend. And that was it, with everyone else I just stopped denying it.
Even though I was certain I identified as lesbian now, I had practiced saying the word lesbian over and over again years prior when I wasn’t certain. I thought that the more I said it the less scared I would feel and it took a long time, but it really helped.
The first few years of identifying as a lesbian were tough because I was met with reactions such as “are you infectious” “i can’t sit next to you i don’t want to catch it or that you check me out” and my personal favourite getting beat up and shouted the d slur at and getting told it’s unnatural and I can’t have children.
But the longer I identified as a lesbian the more secure and confident i became in my label.
I still struggle with comphet even to this day. I have days where I still think “are you sure you’re not faking being a lesbian and are attracted to a man deep down”. But the good things outweigh the bad and now I’m proud to identify as a lesbian. I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.