u/UnablePast4430

I'm a kind-of openly out pansexual, "kind-of" in the sense that coming out lowkey doesn't make sense to me.

So like, ever since I was a young girl, I'd watch Barbie movies and go "huh, Barbie and that girl bestfriend should be the ones dating not Barbie and Ken". It wasn't a sentiment I'd openly express. Further on, with the rise of Disney Princess movies like Frozen and all, I did have crushes on the likes of Elsa, Cinderella, and the rest. Also not a sentiment openly expressed. It wasn't like I was ashamed of it, more like i didn't think it was significant.

I was 12 when one of my friends came out to me as lesbian and the first thought that went through my mind was "wait why is this a big deal?", considering that so far I'd js thought liking both girls and boys was a normal thing. Liking only girls wasn't that big of a stretch.

Cue in a bit of fiddling with my own sexuality over the next 3-4 years. I originally thought I was heterosexual, then found out that the word wasn't as mainstream as I'd have liked + wasn't the description I wanted, and went for bi, but then I discovered trans, genderfluid, and non-binary people, and realised I didn't actually care about the gender (not that I think that trans ppl are a different gender altogether - it was simply what I thought at age 13 before finding out that the ppl I thought were trans were actually non-binary) and decided that I best fit into the pansexual description. Straight was actually the last term i discovered in my "learning about different sexualities" journey. It was the one sexuality which puzzled me the most because wdym you only like one gender and not your own? Very boring in my opinion but oh well, they love who they love.

And then I found out about the coming out business. And that confused me the most. What do you mean you need external validation to come to terms with yourself? What do you mean you can't come to terms with yourself simply because of what gender you are or love (or don't)? Like, are there rules saying that accepting yourself immediately as you are and acknowledging that you might change is not a natural thing?

I then found out about homophobia and internalised homophobia. Okay, understandable, so we don't accept ourselves cuz society hates it. But then why does society hate it?

As someone who has grown up in a straight environment where the concept of queer didn't even exist, I grew up thinking that sexuality wasn't something you could control and that it was js natural. For someone who has been raised (even if unconsciously) to believe that love is a force of nature which you can't control, homophobia is illogical. Like, why? Just why?

I never really came out to ppl cuz I believed that sexualities are not something we can control and something that we are maybe, just maybe, born with. Not in our hands. It's like celebrating being a girl when you've been a girl your entire life - it's been here all along, it's never been something we could control, it's a part of our "normal", so as to say.

Then why is it such a big thing? Why is it something some ppl fear so keenly? Why is it so.... significant?