maybe naïve fascination with lesbian porn prior to coming out to oneself is actually quite common!

[cimorene]

cimorene: Eve was hot! I used to stare at pictures of her all the time. It's amazing the quantity of time I spent staring at mostly-unclothed women without realizing that I was a lesbian!
effex: I watched lesbian porn without realizing.
cimorene: ... HAHHAH... OMG, wait. I did too. There was this issue of Penthouse!

§§§

cimorene: So I said it's amazing how much I stared at naked women without realizing I was a lesbian and Effex said that she watched lesbian porn without realizing.
waxjism: Me too! Although it wasn't that hot. The women are scary.

So... maybe it's universal?

Poll #2131

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

Are you female and sexually attracted to women?

View Answers

Yes
44 (100.0%)

IF SO, were you fascinated with lesbian porn before realizing that you were attracted to women?

View Answers

Yes
16 (36.4%)

No
21 (47.7%)

Don't remember
7 (15.9%)

Did you stare at pictures of hot women (or just, you know, actual hot women in real life) all the time without realizing you were attracted to them?

View Answers

Yes
34 (77.3%)

No
5 (11.4%)

Don't remember
5 (11.4%)

Comments

[bookshop]

DOES GIRL, INTERRUPTED COUNT AS LESBIAN PORN

IF SO CHANGE MY VOTE TO YES

[cimorene]

LOLOL

You can change it yourself... but I'd count it more as the 'staring at pictures or hot women' if it wasn't, you know, at least softcore. (I don't remember, was it? It seems like I WOULD remember that...)

[bookshop]

it's more
a) angelina jolie is lesbian porn all by herself

b) i went, literally, from STRAIGHT LA LA LA to oh my god holy shit that is what i want to have sex with *cue two years of alternately freaking out/denying and drunkenly making out with women before i finally got it* purely from that movie.

[angelikitten]

I was trying to come up with a wonderfully insightful comment, but you've just made me realise that I've never actually watched porn O.O

[pocketmouse]

I read lesbian porn on the internet before I decided I really was bisexual, but that was because I was trying to find porn from the woman's POV, and that was the only way I could find any!

[telesilla]

It's a little different for me because I self-identified as bi as early as...maybe 12? 13? About the time I started reading text porn and looking at Playboy and so on. The realization that I was much more lesbian than bi came a lot later. :)

[cimorene]

I wonder if having had early access to male-aimed materials (like porn and Playboy) instead of just Harlequins at that age could have made the same difference to me. It's so weird how clueless I was.

[harpers_child]

i realized i liked girls and boys the same when i was about eleven. so no actual porn. looking at pictures of hot women i knew i was attracted to them. i didn't start identifying as queer until high school after i had seen girl/girl porn.

my younger sister realized she was a lesbian when she was about five. it followed her very first time being called a fag.

[sofiaviolet]

The thing is, I had my big earth-shattering realization before I consumed much porn at all - just a couple of months of reading slash, and not really anything visual.

[cimorene]

I bet there's a significant quantity of queer women who were restricted from this only by lack of access to porn.

[lotesse]

Do fine art nudes count as pictures of naked women? My mama's a painter, and books full of pretty naked girls abounded throughout my childhood; I got some definite mileage out of it.

[cimorene]

Certainly! Although a lot of artistic nudes (especially if you are exposed to them frequently from a young age) aren't actually intended to be erotic. For me, the demystification of the female body from art may have actually got in the way because I had so much opportunity to stare at them and, I guess, took it for granted, that I... failed to notice the titillation?

[onceamy]

I'm a bit of a porn connoisseur -- in that I actively seek out decent stuff and have favourites, as well as being a slasher/femmeslasher.

It did take a little while before I realised I was kinda bi-queer, though. A bi-queer virgin at that!

[msilverstar]

I'm pretty far on the het side of the kinsey scale. In fandom, I feel sadly limited (though I know straight privilege is paramount almost everywhere else).

[copracat]

The lesbian porn coincided with my awareness of dykeliness.

[cimorene]

Coincidentally?

[copracat]

Nope, it was more like "OMG sex girls having sex with girls yes!"

[pineapplechild]

I have the small problem that I never really had a realization I liked girls separate from the realization I liked boys. Nor did I ever really have a sexuality freakout. A coming out to family freak out? Yeah. To myself, and affecting who I dated? No.

[cimorene]

I wouldn't call that a problem.

Personally, I always was fascinated with all the queer people I knew (which was a fair number, I guess, considering the cultural environment - more than most people I know anyway) - they were like mini-celebrities to me. I thought I would surely know if I were that cool.

[pineapplechild]

Well, it does tend to mean my contributions are less helpful when these topics roll around.

[norah]

I read whatever porn I could find. I was as omnivorous in that as I turned out to be in my partner tastes. I've always hated "lesbian porn" movies, though, because of the fake tits, shaved crotches, and long fingernails. I like chicks with real tits and pubic hair and hands that wouldn't HURT IN BAD PLACES.

[northern]

I knew when I was 15 and sadly had no access to lesbian porn at that time. *After* that, I stared at my class mates in the locker room, hopefully stealthily. >.>

[cimorene]

I think I hated gym too much to really enjoy the locker room very much. On the other hand, women don't react to being looked at by women the way they do to being looked at by men. In fact, it's normal and even expected for straight women to check each other out, so I don't think anything short of pointed locker room staring would even have occasioned any comment. For me, at least, girls change clothes around each other with no embarrassment ... well, all the way through high school, outside of gym class context.

[zing_och]

The only reason I didn't tick yes on the porn question is that I didn't have the internet when I was a teen.

[anglepoiselamp]

Huh. And here I thought I was the only one who used to be clueless about this stuff. Then again, it's one of those things where it's nice *not* being a special snowflake.

I had, among other things, a cardboard box full of pictures of pretty women I'd cut out of magazines. I just liked to look at them, that's all. (Why does that sound a little creepy?)

[sookail]

*ggg* To talk about dense - it took me about five years and three deep crushes on women to actually conscioulsly realize I`m bi. The teenage years, they were weird.

Also, the long fingernails in the porn are scary and look painful, so, have avoided watching.

[j_s_cavalcante]

Hi! I think I subscribed recently, and I'm sure it's because you posted something awesome somewhere. I seem to recall it was about Star Trek. Anyway, I loved this post, because OMG-I'im-not-the-only-one? Hope it's okay if I answer it as an essay question, too. :)

This is Important Data Here, and if it'd been better understood in the past, I wouldn't have had to figure out at age 41 that I was bi. That was about 8 years ago. And mere attraction isn't what convinced me, because I'd always been wildly attracted to beauty in both sexes (and am now an artist) and also because I'd read articles, based on scientific research, that said it was common for women to be turned on by women yet still be straight (what is that, is that real data? And who gathered it; were straight men involved in that data-gathering? Hmm. :) Anyway, I believed that stuff, because I'm probably slightly more attracted to guys, so what the heck, I was straight, right? It wasn't till I was telling someone about a friendship I'd had long ago that I realized holy shit, I was in love with her and that was the reason for, you know, all the pining away and weeping and being mean to her boyfriends and stuff. (And the great irony: she's been living as a lesbian for over 20 years now, and I am married to a man.) Bi and truly didn't realize it till after 40: My life was a fannish cliché!

And I'd been writing slash for over 9 years before I had that epiphany.

So you see why it's difficult to confess this. I still feel pretty stupid about it. But you all have made me feel much better. Clearly, society is structured around us in such a way as to make this realization...less easy to come by. I dunno, I'm still trying to understand it. *sigh*

[cimorene]

Hello! I got the notification, but you didn't tell me why it was at the time. I haven't posted much about Trek recently, but maybe it was an old one.

I felt pretty dumb figuring it out at like, 19? or so? And oddly enough, I'm not even sure if I'm bi (I thought I was for years). I just identify as lesbian now (being married to a woman and only having kissed one dude, it's probably a moot point), but the fact that I'm drawn to women over men didn't even manage to penetrate my consciousness for years - not even when I started having graphic sexual fantasies about women... at any rate, I've gradually encountered other people who were equally clueless over the years, so I don't really feel so badly about it anymore. In my acquaintance, those ones up there in the comments who always knew seem to be the minority.

As far as straight women having sexual feelings for other women... what? That sounds like mumbo-jumbo synonymous with "most women are functionally bisexual". I remember reading a study years ago where they showed people of different genders and declared sexual orientations porn and measured their responses and women got turned on by all of the porn regardless of their orientation while men only got turned on if one of the participants was of the sex/gender which they were attracted to. As my mother who (as far as I'm aware) is straight said to me when I showed her the first piece of smut I was proud of writing, "Sex is just sex" (for women, at least).

[j_s_cavalcante]

Yes, yes, that was the research. Well, that was the first article. There have since been others. And I think it's mumbo-jumbo, too. But back then...I dunno why, but I just didn't connect up that I wasn't entirely straight. There were all sorts of incidents that I can look back at now and wonder how I could possibly have misunderstood, but...I made the initial, overriding assumption that I was straight, and therefore everything that happened got viewed in that light. If the data contradicted that assumption, then I discounted it or explained it away, you know?

Part of the problem of course has to have been my conservative parents, but also...bisexuality, especially female bisexuality, was pretty much invisible back then. And the few out bisexuals that I knew of were men and were considered freaks or were considered to be "experimenting" or trying to shock others (David Bowie, for instance?) and weren't taken seriously. So I certainly didn't identify with them or think I was anything like that.

Also, your mother is cool. Mine would have had kittens.

(I think I remember what the ST thing was: an old essay by K'Sal that you posted.)

[cimorene]

Yes, my mother is very cool! She's a product of 1970s feminist activism and a devotee of genre fiction. I grew up on her piles of romance novels alongside mysteries, fantasy, and sf. I doubt it would even be possible for a mother from an earlier generation than that to have quite the same outlook.

I definitely was guilty of interpreting data only in light of the assumption that everyone was straight. This is especially bothersome to me, the presumed universality of heterosexuality, because I actually knew gay and trans people including stable gay and lesbian pairs from a young age; my parents didn't do anything wrong and I was fully aware of their existence and felt that instinctive sympathy with gayness without even realizing what it meant.