Is it common for people to question their sexuality?

It’s actually really common. Although many people assume that we’re born with a fixed sexual orientation, actually recent research has found that most people’s sexuality is fluid, meaning that it changes over the course of their lives. For example, we might have been attracted to one gender for our whole lives but experience an attraction to somebody of another gender. This might start us questioning how we identify our sexuality going forward.

It’s also important to remember that sexuality isn’t just about what gender or genders we’re attracted to. It’s also about the amount of sexual attraction we experience (from none to high), the kinds of sex we enjoy, the types of people we find attractive, the roles we like to take sexually (more active or passive, submissive or dominant), and many other things. All of these aspects of our sexuality can change over time meaning that we might start to question what our sexuality is, or how we identify it.

Can this happen at any time in your life?

Absolutely. Most people experience some changes in their sexuality over the course of their lives, for example in the age of the people they’re attracted to, the amount of sex they want to have, or the types of things that turn them on. Our sexuality can be impacted by our physical and mental health, the amount of energy we have, the people we hang out with, who we’re in relationships with, and the messages about sex that are around us in our communities and cultures. All of those things change over time as well.

Why might someone question their sexuality?

Some common reasons for questioning our sexuality include:

• Finding that we’re attracted to someone who is quite different to our usual attractions (e.g. a different gender, physical appearance, or background)
• A friend, colleague or family member coming out as a different sexuality which can make us realise that it might apply to us too
• Learning about a sexuality we were previously unfamiliar with in the media or from a friend. This can give us a sudden sense of realisation: ‘oh maybe I could be that,’ ‘that label might apply to me.’
• Watching porn, reading erotica, or having a fantasy and realising we’re turned on by something that we didn’t used to be turned on by, or which we just hadn’t thought about before.

What should you do if you think you might be gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer etc?

First of all it’s really important to remember that whatever your sexuality is – and however you decide to label it – is absolutely fine. Sadly we live in a culture which gives us the idea that it’s more ‘normal’ or ‘better’ to be straight than it is to be gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc. Actually, recent research suggests that at least as many young people are on the spectrum from ‘exclusively heterosexual’ to ‘exclusively homosexual’ than are at the ‘exclusive heterosexual’ end of that spectrum. Also more people have some kind of kinky sexual desires than don’t. And many people are on the asexual spectrum. Even if your sexuality is very rare or unusual, it’s still completely legitimate, so long as you only act on it consensually (that’s also true for common sexualities too of course!)

If you think you might be a different sexuality than the one you thought you were then it’s a great idea to do some self-exploration. Give yourself time to reflect on your sexuality and how you might like to label it, if at all. Journalling, engaging with ethical porn (and paying for it!), reading erotica, and fantasising are all great ways to do self-exploration.

It can also be really helpful to get support from other people who are in these sexual communities. There are online groups, meet-up groups, and community resources for all of these sexualities, as well as books and videos online. Check this stuff out but do remember that nobody should be pressurising you to label yourself in any way, or to come out unless that feels good to you. Go gently and take your time.

Is there a way to know?

Sexuality is a complex, constantly changing and evolving, thing so there’s no way to be sure whether you are ‘really’ straight, gay, bi, pansexual, asexual, demisexual, submissive, etc. It’s much more about whether those words – or others – feel like a good fit for you. It’s fine to just call yourself ‘questioning’ for as long as that feels right, or simply not to label yourself. It’s also fine to use one label for a while, and then change it if it stops feeling like such a good fit.

The main thing to remember is that it is perfectly legitimate to have whatever attractions and desires you have sexually, so long as you only act upon them consensually. If that feels like a struggle for you – or if these questions are causing you distress – then it’s worth getting some professional help from a therapist or counsellor. The Pink Therapy list in the UK is a good one for therapists who specialise in this area. The Kink Aware Professionals and Poly Friendly Professionals lists online are also useful international resources.

What would you recommend for people who think they might be but aren’t sure – any resources, books, practical tips?

I’m writing a book called How To Understand Your Sexuality next year which will hopefully be helpful! Meanwhile BishUK and Scarleteen are excellent resources for younger people questioning their sexuality, and contain useful material for people of all ages too. 

You might also find these zines helpful to work through:

Mapping Your Sexuality

Make Your Own Sex Manual

Justin Hancock and I talk about these themes often on our podcast at megjohnandjustin.com.

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Why is the notion that genetics might be responsible for our sexual orientations so popular with some LGBTQ people?

I think a big part of the reason is that wider culture tends to regard things that are genetic, or biological in any way, as more real. The idea that we are ‘born gay’ and that it is in our genes is tempting because it contradicts the homophobic notion that people choose to be gay, or are socialised into it, and could (and should) therefore be otherwise. Gay rights activism has often been based on trying to prove that lesbian and gay people are just as legitimate as heterosexual people and therefore deserving of equal treatment. So you can see why the idea that being gay is genetic might be popular.

However there are some big problems with this approach:

1. It buys into the idea that things that are ‘natural’ are more legitimate than things that are chosen or social. That presents a problem, for example, for those feminists who chose to be lesbian as a political point, or for anybody whose experience of being gay is not something they’ve always known from as young as they can remember.
2. We know that sexuality – like most aspects of human experience – is both fluid (changing over time) and biopsychosocial. That means that our sexualities are the result of an array of biological, psychological and social factors, all mixed together in a complex way. There aren’t single genes for even very simple things like height or eye colour, so it is very unlikely that there would be for sexuality. Also epigenetics shows us that genes interact with our environment: life experiences can determine whether genes are ‘switched off’ or ‘switched on’. It may well be that our genetic make-up tilts us in certain directions in all kinds of ways, but as soon as we are born, our biology interacts with the culture we’re born into – the social messages we receive, our experiences, and the ways we make sense of them – in all kinds of ways. This make it impossible to tease out what is ‘nature’ and what is ‘nurture’. It leaves each individual with a unique constellation that makes up their own particularly sexuality.
3. The Surrey psychologist Peter Hegarty has found that believing in a biological basis of sexuality does not make people less homophobic, so arguing for LGBT rights on this basis is unlikely to work.

Being LGBT is not only okay if it is ‘natural’ or genetic to be so, it is okay regardless of why a person is LGBT, and to suggest otherwise is to buy into some pretty troubling assumptions.

Why does the focus on the search for the “gay gene” let down bi people in particular?

A lot of the people who argue for a gay gene do so on the basis that sexuality is binary (people are either gay or they are straight). For example the authors of the book Born Gay made exactly this point, and it is part of the reason that there has been a lot of research suggesting that bisexual people don’t really exist (which even the researchers who conducted that research now dispute).

So the search for a gay gene is implicated in bisexual erasure, which we know to be a big part of why bisexual people experience even higher levels of mental health problems than lesbian and gay people.

An alternative model of human sexuality is that, as with most aspects of human experience, it is on more of a continuum. The Kinsey scale is one (albeit over-simplified) example of such a model.

The idea that sexuality and gender are diverse and fluid has a lot more room in it for bisexuality and for all the other people who don’t experience themselves in a binary manner, or don’t experience their sexuality as being all about the gender they’re attracted to. Suddenly instead of there being a small percentage of LGBT people, we can see that people as a whole are gender and sexually diverse, and that at least a third of people experience their sexual and/or gender as somehow beyond the binary.

Might there be such thing as a “bi gene”? Would looking for that too make things more fair?

As with the gay gene it would be very unlikely that there was a single gene for bisexuality, and also given the biopsychosocial nature of sexuality, I would see it as rather problematic to just focus on the biological part. There’s something political about all this research which focuses on genes and on brains (most of which is far more funded than other kinds of research). It seems to be based on the assumption that we need to prove that we are real in order to be treated fairly. And it is based on the assumption that we need to explain why people are gay or bisexual, in a way that we never do in relation to heterosexuality.

I’m not saying that we should never research the biological elements of human experience. It is certainly part of the picture. But we do need to consider why we focus on it to the exclusion of other elements.

Sexuality is diverse thing. We are attracted to all different kinds of people (not just on the basis of gender), we enjoy a wide variety of sexual practices, we take on different roles, we have different fantasies. Perhaps instead of focusing on how to explain one small aspect of human sexuality, we could expand out to capture the full diversity of it in a way that might really let people know that their sexuality was just as acceptable as anybody else’s.

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