When did you realize you were a queer?

My much older cousin called me a sissy when I was a pre-schooler.

4. A friend of mine who is in the shrink biz says that is not unusual.

When I would read my brother’s GQ Magazines so I could look at the underwear ads. I developed a serious crush on Jim Palmer.

I think it kind of crept up on me. I was obviously interested in boys in junior high, but didn't label myself as gay yet. Definitely by my freshman year of high school, I was boy crazy. But it wasn't until my freshman year in college that I actually outed myself to anyone else.

That baseball player's JOCKEY ads.

The hot goalie on my 8th-grade soccer team, with white-blond hair woke me up.

The first time I looked at Sean Connery's chest ([italic]Dr. No[/italic], I think) and got a funny feeling all over me.

I knew I liked other girls at around age five in 1975.

I used to enjoy looking down women’s blouses but knew I “shouldn’t” be doing it and never discussed it with anyone until college.

RIGHT NOW

I was pretending to like girls in kindergarten. I knew it was what I had to say to appear normal.

Everyone in my grade school was 'dating'. Going steady for a day or two, 'breaking up', etc. Kinda creepy before puberty.

I asked a girl to 'go' with me once and she said okay as long as I didn't tell anybody. I told everyone. She broke-up with me after lunch.

That was my last girlfriend. It felt unnatural, like a lie. I didn't bother to fake it again all through school, and I was ostracized for it.

I went to the public swimming pool at age 11(ish) and saw a very hairy man with a very large penis showering after a swim. It was as if a lightning bolt struck me.

It would be a few years before I actually started acting on those interests, but those few seconds of seeing him really left an impression on me.

Can’t believe the use of “queer” has not been attacked yet. Yay DL. Anyway, wanted to cuddle with the guy in the locker next to me on the seventh grade football team. He’s in prison for meth stuff now.

When I sucked my best friend's cock every day after school in junior high

I was about four years old when I knew I was different from other kids. I was my grandma's Baby June, doing splits, twirling faux batons, wowing the family with impressions and songs. I was about seven when kids started asking me if I was gay when I didn't even fully know what that word meant, how did they? How did they know the word faggot? My grandma would be drunk and call me sissy and cremepuff. The preteen years are really when I would hear "you're gay" in my head, the biggest tip-off though was when I was thirteen, Saturdays, I had a ceramics class with a guy named Randy, a hippy looking guy, still in 1970, he was sitting across from me blowing on the seamline on piece of greenware, when a literal vision outside of my eyes of me taking out his cock and jerking him off.

I put on my mom’s chiffon negligee at age 5 (she was not pleased) and always wanted to be Dorothy when we kids played WIZARD OF OZ.

So…. there were indications.

I'm gay. NOT queer.

Bury the word 'queer' in the ash heap of history where it belongs.

I kind of like Queer, because it puts same sex attracted people (LGB) under one umbrella. Lesbians resented being shoved in with gay men, as Gay, and bisexuals aren’t gay or lesbian, though they have gay or lesbian sex. So Queer just kind of tidily puts us all together without giving any group more attention than the others.

Fuck that “queer” bullshit.

I’m gay. A homosexual.

“Homosexual” sounds so clinical for everyday-speak, though.

OP is addressing heterosexual women.

I just loved girls company and felt like an alien around boys. They were all So similar; into football, The A-Team; i liked Golden Girls and LHOTP. When i went to events with my friends and it was split into boys and girls, id end up split up from my friends; i wud beg to go with my friends. Bullies wud constantly ask me, Are You a Girl? The boys in my neighbourhood(very working class) and in school were incredibly cruel to me, all through my childhood. Many of these guys ended up in prison, or dead; one was begging outside a shop for months b4 he died 2 years ago. So, maybe being gay saved me? Ive become very successful and often get requests from the neighbourhood to donate to various community charity events; it gives me validation and it all probably led to me over achieving; despite terrible grades in school, cos Surviving was hard enough without actually concentrating to learn. So i guess the world told me i was gay b4 i understood.

My friend and I used to get bath towels and put them on our heads, pretending we were Cher.

I knew I liked boys and didn’t like girls, but I didn’t put it all together consciously until I was in college. It was the dark ages.

School changing rooms for gym and swimming.

Queers are just better!

I didn't realise what it meant but I remember around the age of 5 idolising (fantasising) about the Handsome Prince in fairy tales. I don't think it was, at that stage, but definitely an emotional attraction to an idea of masculinity.

[quote] kind of like Queer, because it puts same sex attracted people (LGB) under one umbrella.

Queer means tranny. They started this queer shit so they could lump in trans with gay and piggyback over the work gays have done. That’s why they also rewrote Stonewall. They keep screaming that gays would have no rights if trannies were there.

I learned the truth at seventeen that I was quite a Broadway queen.

I knew from a very early age that I was different from my brother and other boys. I thought toys for girls were much more fun and interesting than those for boys, with the exception of Hot Wheels, which I adored.

However, I had a very religious upbringing and it fucked me up thinking that if I accepted what I thought I was, I was going straight to hell. It wasn’t until after college and I was on my own that I was finally able to “fuck that noise” and be who I was. I’ve had a happy life since and never looked back.

The irony of all of this is it may have saved my life since I graduated from college and moved out on my own in the mid-80s at the start of the AIDS crisis. Had I been as sexually active as my brother was in those days, who knows where I’d be now.

I always knew. I may not have been able to define it,but even as a small child I knew I was different . It never bothered me either. When I was 11 and started puberty and having sex with other boys it just felt so natural I never questioned it then either. I remember once a psychologist told me that being gay was the strongest thing about me. Like so many of you,I played with the girls and loved girly things . Much to my ex marine redneck fathers despair . Its funny but I never was bullied in school though I was truly a nellie priss pot but I think a lot of that was the fact that most of the kids had been my classmates for my entire life . Plus I was besties with all the popular girls so that helped too.

I'm a gay man but I've never been "queer".

[quote]R29 Queer means tranny. They started this queer shit so they could lump in trans with gay

Oh. Did they start Queer Nation in NYC back in the 90s?

I'm not queer. I'm gay.

I was 8 or 9 years old. My father hired these two neighborhood boys to mow our line, Rocky and Randy (for real). They were teenagers. One hot day, Randy was out there shirtless mowing the lawn, and I watched him clandestinely from inside the house for at least half and hour. He made me feel funny, in a good way.

mow our LAWN

gay all the way. Early 70s

The word 'queer' is harmful, hurtful and degrading with a violent past.

Shove the word 'queer' up your ass.

The proper words are gay, lesbian, bisexual. Transsexual is a different category related to body dysmorphia.

She has spoken!

When did you realize you were a nosy individual, OP?

I knew from a young age. But I had no word for it so I didn’t have a concept for it. I do remember really wanting to see Gregory Harrison in “For Ladies Only”. But a few months after that, I was on the school us and the kid sitting next to me was telling me about a new movie where the husband turns out to be a “homo” and he started laughing. I asked what a homo was and he told me and zing- there it was. It all clicked into place. But from the way he was laughing, I knew enough not to say anything. (The movie, by the way, was “Making Love”.)

So since 1982.

I think I always knew I was queer, but at first, like many, I was only able to muster the courage to come out as demi gray asexual. When I was twenty I finally agreed to let some friends dye my hair blue for the first time, and with that the closet door blew off for once and for all. Now I’m living in my queer truth. Thank you for your question and for holding space for our identities, OP.

OP- I have one thing to say-

We're Here

We're Queer

Get Used To It!

R12 so... You were a baby WHORE

I've never realized I was "queer", but I realized I was a gay youngin' as a preteen in the early 1980s. We didn't have the tiktok to impress back in 1981 so I didn't try to grab onto the whole "queer" label. I was just gay.

no father while growing up so most of what people saw in me and what I saw in myself was that "oh, I want a dad."

Which I did, of course.

Wanting an older male role model didn't feel the same as lusting after a hot guy. It all got stuck and mixed

Fucked me up. I'm alone and always will be.

When I was 8 years old, I figured out I was GAY& liked guys. 2 weeks later, I gave Johnny McGinley a blowjob in the bathroom at St. Bridget's School in the boy's bathroom& swallowed his yummy nutt. Johnny was 13 years old.

I went over to the Falls of Schuylkill library at Warden Dr& Midvale Ave to look up what " Homosexual acts", there was a book that answered some questions. Also, Joey McGinley, Johnny older brother was there. Joey was 16 years old& had chest hair& could grow a beard.

Maybe all of you “gay” guys should get your own thread.

Many a time during my childhood, but the feelings I got as a young adolescent while watching Bette Midler's buxom backup vocalists in concert cemented the fact.

R48 so did you blow ALL the McGinley boys?

When I used my mother's Ban Roll-On container for a dildo at age 12.

A friend and I used my mother’s back massager on our privates over our clothing.

I had more fun putting the device on him than I did putting it on myself. He refused to do it to me and I liked him even more.

R49 kind of like the TQ+ should get their own press

Bisexual reckoning: I realized after getting to spend more time in recent years (finally) with a long-time but seldom-seen great friend of nearly 20 years that I honestly feel love for him, think about him often, and imagine him being here to cuddle, make-out, smoosh, and the like.

He’s a lovable guy, and the kind who could easily pass for either straight, bi, or gay. All of my relationships with women up to now have been one-sided. I love her more than she loves me. Or vice versa, such as knowing a woman is infatuated or in love with me but I’m indifferent as hell and thus coming across like the consummate straight jerk who doesn’t want real commitment. (Except I wasn’t really that exact stereotype, I found a “friend” of mine more intriguing).

It’s funny because when I see attractive couples out in public, many times I’ll honestly think the guy looks hotter than the girl. But I also remember some things about what really makes my primal sexual urge kick into overdrive, and that part more often than not involves a woman. I can still vividly remember the wet dream I experienced in puberty and all the details. It was very much a fantasy of a horny, pubescent straight boy whose reproductive parts were in the process of activating.

The subreddit r/Bisexual on Reddit mentions a spectrum of sexuality and preferences that can be fluid and move with time. I tend to agree with them. Despite a lot of Reddit being full of barking lunatics, sometimes you do see them make some valid points that actually seem to explain some personal things.

No measures of classification are perfect and foolproof, but I finally looked up the Kinsey scale tests which put me as either between 2 or 3 depending on the test or when I take it.

It explains some things about the past.

I was 14 years old when I started sucking dicks in the showers at the neighborhood YMCA. And the dicks were mostly 45-65 years old. It wasn’t until twelve years later that I started to suspect I might be a queer.

???????

I may be a cocksucker but I am not "a queer".

Looking back, my early teens. In other words as soon as I started to develop 'feelings'.

But at the time I was in such strong denial that I genuinely didn't realise it. In fact, I remember not being attracted to girls more than I remember being attracted to boys. I have a distinct memory of being probably 12/13 and my friends at school had got a topless photo of some glamour model. They were all salivating over her boobs while I remember being confused and not understanding what the fuss was all about. I kept that to myself obviously.

I remember really liking muscular chests and pecs/abs on a guy and not really understanding why and then obviously the penny dropped when I was 14/15 probably. I didn't come out till I was 19, though.

Gay, not queer.

I was eight when I first started playing with myself. About then I was also fascinated by my uncle's cock. When I'd stay over at his apartment, he'd frequently go naked.

By junior high (seven grade where I went and I had skipped a grade so I was 11), I was fully into thinking about boys and that's the first time I touched another boy's dick ("as a joke"). I wasn't quite sure what I was as I was a bit confused by the fact that I did recognize which girls in junior high were hot, so I still didn't fully appreciate that I wasn't like the other boys. But when you're not picturing any of the girls naked like the other boys do and you want your male choir director so fucking bad that you stay after just to get some time with him*, well, it quickly becomes undeniable and I knew what I was within a year or so of that, so I guess 12 or so. (*No hot stories, unfortunately. He did turn out to be a perv, but he liked the girls, not the boys sadly.)

Movies about Gladiators

Did you taste his older brother too, r48?

To R51 and R62...YES, but Jimmy was special for an East Falls guy. Really smart, he wanted to be a doctor.

He worked at Tastykake for 4 years on Hunting Park Ave, got a 4 -year scholarship to Penn thru them.

Jimmy told multiple times while I was blowing him, that my "non-dad" is crazy and he is going to kill you& I needed to get away from East Falls and my family.

There were "good times" in EF.

interesting, pervy, and hot, r63

OP, just so you know. "When did you realize you were a queer" is highly offensive. But "when did you realize you were queer" would have been fine.