From straight to lesbian

[Britva415]

No, I don't get your point. If you have a straight and a lesbian woman and want a HEA, what else can you do?

Don't call her straight?

This suggestion has been made like ten times in this thread already.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Like I wrote before, I'm really not into the labeling-stuff, so am I wrong in thinking that 'Bi' (also) appreciates women for being women and men for being men, (in, appreciating breasts, figure, toned and muscled body; maybe even some stereotyping) whereas 'Pan' is more focussed on a mental/emotional level?

I haven't encountered those particular connotations, but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody used it that way.

I always thought that "pan" was just about explicitly signaling potential attraction to more than two genders.

I'd be surprised if there were many bi people who were actually not able to be attracted to enby, trans or other people.

But I can't speak for what pan people think.

Yeah, when people want to argue about terminology it tends to come down to that "bi implies only two genders" vs. "language is more complicated than that, sometimes bi just means *at least* two". [e.g. somebody with three spouses may still be charged with "bigamy"] In practice, as you say, there are plenty of bi people who are attracted to NB people.

 

[Britva415]

No, I don't get your point.

The point was that the myth of "turning" people queer is harmful.

I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't write this story. We all know that many people think they're straight before awakening to bisexuality or even to being hard gay.

It's called the closet.

But such a story can be written, and for that matter a forum post asking for help can be written, in a way which doesn't leverage the harmful "turning gay" message.

I don't know, maybe things are different in the UK, but you have a global reach here. In the USA, conversion therapy has been recently outlawed in some places, anti-gay propagandists still shriek about "the gay agenda" and use "turning children" as scare fodder. All I'm suggesting is sensitivity and awareness.

"Turning gay" is a message which doesn't need to be reinforced. "Coming out" would be healthier.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Right, I get this. I just didn't think that gay men were doing the same thing if they were objecting to people using "queer."

Not if they're objecting to being called queer, no, which I think is what you're talking about here. If they're objecting to somebody else calling themselves queer, that's another matter.

 

[Cagivagurl]

You can't turn anybody. Full stop.
In saying that, there are people, straight people, who have been straight their whole lives. They have questions though, when they see gay people together, it makes them uncomfortable. The reality is, they may have underlying tendencies, and in the right situation will be uncovered.
It might tuen out they are Bi, or on the odd occasion (I have seen this is real life) Once exposed to their new sexuality discover, that is who they really are...
They may have been uncovered, and exposed. But they were never turned... We are what we are, no level of electric shock treatment will ever make us something we aren't.
That is my opinion, and worth only what you paid for it.... Nothing.....

 

[Djmac1031]

I intentionally wrote a line about how one of my female characters declined to do "lesbian stuff" when invited to go home with a couple who were swingers just to subvert the trope that "every woman is just three drinks away from being a lesbian."


That said; you're writing erotic fiction. You really don't need much more of a "reason" than "character has always considered herself straight but suddenly feels same sex attraction to someone."

Who and why can be a multitude of choices.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Some people identify as queer, taking the hateful term and making it their own. It's the Q in LGBTQIA+.

 

[AlinaX]

1. She was always a lesbian, but so strongly in denial that the truth is a revelation.
2. She's bi, but perhaps she's mostly attracted to men and falling head-over-heels in love with a woman is something new.
3. She's straight, romantically at least, but discovers a sexual relationship with a woman can actually be a lot of fun.
4. She was straight... but something has changed in her head; the familiar attraction to men has diminished, and now she finds herself more drawn to women.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Language changes continually by generation. Using queer as a disparaging word as virtually ceased in UK language - it belonged to a much older age group.

Copy this. Here in Oz at least, queer has moved far beyond being a disparaging term and has been rightfully claimed back by those who declare it, with pride. The difference now, compared to thirty or forty years ago, is that it's now owned by all genders, whereas historically, it was only gay men deemed queer (mostly by straights).

There's many an old queen who'd say, "I've always been queer, dear," as he got knighted by the Queen. It's possibly more an English cultural/historical tradition - I don't know much about the American usage (from Millie's comment, that's more hostile, even now).

 

[MelissaBaby]

I wonder what could turn a straight woman into a lesbian.

Men.




Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Men.




Sorry, couldn't resist.

Excellent observation.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Language changes continually by generation. Using queer as a disparaging word as virtually ceased in UK language - it belonged to a much older age group.

Yeah, it was derogatory here until maybe 6 or 7 years ago. At least in OKC.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I always thought that "pan" was just about explicitly signaling potential attraction to more than two genders.

I'd be surprised if there were many bi people who were actually not able to be attracted to enby, trans or other people.

But I can't speak for what pan people think.

Bisexual is being attracted to the same gender and others.
Pansexual is being attracted to all genders.

Basically the same thing.

In practice some pansexuals say they identify as that because they think bisexual limits themselves to only two sexes or genders, which then pisses off the bisexuals.

IME pansexuals are bisexuals under 30 with lurid dyed hair and piercings and a neurodiverse diagnosis.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

The point was that the myth of "turning" people queer is harmful. ...

"Turning gay" is a message which doesn't need to be reinforced. "Coming out" would be healthier.

Or "realising I'm not completely straight" or "finding I might be a bit gay after all". Coming out tends to be used to telling other people, though you can (have to, I suppose) come out to yourself first.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Can someone explain the joke with the double meaning of wedge, please? I didn't think gay men were particularly associated with golf or 90s sandals...

Queer is still pretty damn insulting if used as an insult, even in London. But generally widely used as a self-description, especially by bisexuals and kinky and polyamorous people. Just not popular among generations old enough to be on the Sex Offenders register for consensual activity - nowadays mostly 70 or older, though threesomes in hotels
were still getting prosecuted in the 90s, not to mention SMers like in the Spanner case.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I look at stories where the woman turns from straight to lesbian in the same way the girl who is accosted goes from being raped to full blown slut.... NOT gonna happen. Yeah, you can maybe tell a story where the person changes his or her mindset a bit. OR more likely, responds to the stimulus provided despite his or her inclination or wishes. The telling of an erotic story is that. In the telling. Make the transition believable (if you can). I have tried and it is difficult.

 

[Britva415]

people are adopting the word 'partner' instead of girlfriend of boyfriend

or even "spouse" ffs

 

[Cagivagurl]

Men.




Sorry, couldn't resist.

That'll do it

 

[yukonnights]

I wonder what could turn a straight woman into a lesbian.
Imagine a lesbian woman who is secretly in love with her straight friend.
What could bring these two together?

I am thinking about a RPG based on a lost bet, where suddenly the straight woman develops feelings for her friend.
Another idea would be a kind of "marriage-of-convenience". Those ideas don't sound too convincing.

Any better ideas?

As others have said, it's not so much a "straight woman" into a "lesbian". There are humans who are perhaps 100% heterosexual with zero chance of ever changing. But IMO, there is a greater proportion of humans who are not homo-phobic that abide in the middle who, under the right circumstance, will have affectionate feelings for a person of their same gender.

I wouldn't think these feelings of attraction would be sudden. More likely, there would be a time of self doubt — of questioning what is happening — of moments of irrational rejection of such thoughts. In short, for a story like you're describing there would never be a sudden shift — no marriage of convenience. IMO, such a story needs to be filled with doubts, backsliding, and a slow acceptance that she is not 100% heterosexual — but the love for the other woman steadily moves her towards a moment where she accepts these feelings and desires. In short, she "comes out" of her denial, etc. After that, she is free to pursue the once forbidden fruit of her love.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Thanks to my parents living in America, I grew up with a toaster oven. When that episode of Ellen came out, Brits who I had to explain to what a toaster oven was, all jumped to the conclusion that I'd acquired it in a far more interesting way.

Sadly, no.

I had no idea about what this reference was, so I searched the Internet.

This is what I got as my first result and somehow its funnier than any sit-com could ever be. Before you decide the joke is all played out, make sure you've seen the yodelling pickle.

 

[SimonDoom]

I had a girlfriend once who, years before she met me, spent about six months in a lesbian relationship. It was her only such relationship. So it DOES happen. As others have noted, sexuality isn't either/or; for many it's a continuum, and people fall all over that continuum. I think you can plant a seed early in the story: the woman is open-minded; she's dissatisfied with recent straight relationships; she sexually restless. Maybe there's something latent that wants to come out and something triggers it to do so.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Be aware that that one is also a loaded statement. The implication that bi people are more likely to cheat is one that bi people hear a lot, and it can be very harmful.

Understood, and I do need to finese this line a bit more. The basic idea is that both characters need to define an identity but one character thinks that as a couple they should be defining it together. Hence leading to insecurities and drama.

 

[SimonDoom]

Nice one, but since others took the wind out of my joke, I'll point out that she was bi before her bad experiences with men.

...and linking to my comment above, your gf wasn't in a 'lesbian' relationship ( unless of course you 'cured her' ) she was in a bi relationship in both instances.

This is too essentialist for me. I don't believe people "are" anything in any essential way. You are what you do. You are how you actually behave. You are what you are actually feeling and thinking and saying. You are your actual physical, observable self. There is no magical ether or substance that makes people "be" something beyond these things.

According to this logic, if I were to decide to have a single affair with a man, out of a lifetime of straight behavior, it would mean I was bi, that I had been bi all along, and that I would be bi for the rest of my life regardless of what I did sexually the rest of my life. I don't think that way and I don't believe that. That strikes me as putting essentialist ideology over science and psychology, and I won't do that. There is no such thing as essence. Things are what we observe them to be, and we have to be open to the idea that things can be changed, or are fluid. I don't think it makes any sense to call a 50-something woman who has had decades of relationships with men "bi" just because she had one relationship with a woman in her 20s.

It's possible that in many cases people, if you could somehow test their "real" selves, might test as "bi" long before they had a same-sex relationship, like my girlfriend did (and no, I didn't cure her -- she stopped being in this lesbian relationship long before she met me). But it's also possible that the test might yield nothing at all, that there might be no clue whatsoever that the person might someday be in a relationship with a woman. In that case, it means nothing at all to say she "was" bi years before she was in that relationship. That's just essentialist ideology.

Merriam-Webster recognizes "lesbian" as both an adjective and a noun. The online dictionary offers "lesbian relationship" as an example of the use of the term. She was in a relationship with a woman, or a lesbian relationship, for a little while in her 20s, and for the rest of her life she was in relationships with men, or straight relationships. Whatever label you want to put on her doesn't change anything about what she has done and who she is.

Also, while I haven't talked to her about the issue for a long time (we're still friends although she's an ex), if I recall we did talk about it when we dated and she identified as "straight" when we dated, not "bi." I don't know how it would make sense to insist that she "was" bi when she didn't identify that way and had not behaved that way in decades.

On your last point, while I support your right to choose your tea-and chocolate-sharing companion 100%, I wouldn't call your view old-fashioned. The old-fashioned view, which is one I share, is to care very much about what's between the legs of one's partner. That's the attitude of the vast majority of people, and it has been as long as there have been people.

 

[AlinaX]

Wow. People are what they are, and not necessarily what they do. A 100% straight man having sex with another man does not make him not straight. A straight man finding himself sexually attracted to another man should really question whether he really is straight, however. Sexual and romantic identities have to do with attraction, not action.

Lesbian has an interesting history as a word, and until recently it described sexual interactions between women, regardless of whether the women in question were exclusively attracted to women or not. Dictionary definitions of words merely reflect common usage; they don't actually prove anything at all.

The meanings of words changes with time. Bisexual hails from a time when people generally considered only two sexes to exist, thus bi meaning two, but to hold the word to that meaning is a reactionary stance. These days, bisexual generally means attracted to more than one gender, while pansexual generally means attracted to people regardless of gender. Arguments crop up from time to time because of often wilful misunderstandings of the nuances of these words, and also because bisexual as a label has often negative associations.

Tests are a dangerous thing. There has been research showing differences in brain scans between genders, but imagining that something as complex as the human brain can be reduced to a simple label is an absurdity. Labels, anyway, are most useful as a self-descriptor that indicates something to others.

If some of this seems self-contradictory, then so be it.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Men.




Sorry, couldn't resist.

That's why I suggested earlier the writer could have the husband/boyfriend pressure her into doing something she really doesn't want (attend a swinger house party), then she finds her female friend there to be more comforting.

At the party, there might be any number of reasons to spur her in that direction:
She sees husband/boyfriend fucking another woman (or man).
She sees husband/boyfriend in a BDSM situation abusing a willing sub.

The overall situation is her disillusioned with her existing "straight" relationship.