Feminism also played a big role. When you were being called gay what you were really being called out on was being feminine and not suppressing your self enough. Patriarchy also hurts men as much as it hurts women. The early gay movements were very aware of their oppression coming from patriarchy. The two have been separated out a bit in modern thinking as you can't have solidarity between different oppressed people. But yeah men embracing their emotions and not having to be stoic machines in modern society owes alot to feminism.

These liberatory movements wanted everyone to be free not just themselves. They believed it would help everyone. It's not an accident or unintentional that they have helped you.

OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.

so you suck dick and are a cute twink yet somehow aren't queer

Not calling you out or anything Im just doing my duty and posting the correct emojis

OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.

Nah, that sounds pretty bi. Bi is incredibly broad, literally just “not exclusively hetero and not exclusively homo”. If you enjoyed hooking up with dudes, congrats you’re bi!

I made a comment recently about how I think most people have the capacity to be bi, even if they end up “straight”.

Trans and Queer Liberation is Liberation for all.

OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there, but it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi.

It's ok I already stole the valor for you, here you go

(let me not doxx myself and say more)

not to be that guy but a lot of us were bad at sports, I dont think thats gonna get you doxxed

Me reading this post: I dunno you sound kinda a lot like me when I was like "oh yes I've touched many a dick but I'm totally straight I promise."

Me at the end of the post: Oh and there it is. If you hooked up with a couple of dudes and it was consenting and you're like "yeah I'd do that again" then you're queer enough. Welcome to it. Literally every queer person feels imposter syndrome. This is just part of the experience. Some worse than others. You don't have to be actively touching multiple types of genitals at the same time to be queer. You don't have to be attracted to everyone to be queer. There are lots of genders out there besides "men" and "women" too, if you've ever met someone who doesn't go by she or he and is confusingly hot anyway, yep, that's queer too. That's mostly my experience anyway.

Anyway I for one give you permission to call yourself bi or queer or whatever label you want to use. You're not gonna hurt anyone by saying you're bi. You can use straight too if you want I don't want to take that away from you. I just want to let you know what the way you're talking now sounds like you're a baby queer maybe thinking about starting that journey. Be true to yourself you deserve it.

TrashFuture once described school in the 1990s as one kid announcing that if you don't drink from a puddle you're gay and then every other kid lining up to drink from the heterosexuality puddle. I distinctly remember that puddle. Even as a cishet guy, that casually reactionary environment was so repressive that at best I could hope to be in an arms race with the other boys to prove I can drink the most puddle water. My grandparents bred flowers and even that- being two generations removed from liking flowers- was a puddle for 90%~ of the other boys who knew me. They just assumed I was gay and lumped me in with the female cliques, who also assumed I was gay because I must like flowers.

But now I'm a plant scientist with a home full of flowers who's good with women. They're probably still desperately drinking from the puddle if they didn't also find communities which radically break from cis-heteronormativity. Nothing threatens me more as a cishet male than masculinity.

OK, I have hooked up with a few dudes here and there

Definitely not bi, no sirree

Maybe you old comrades remember, but schools in the 90s were full of homophobia.

Oh yeah, it definitely was. Basically the way normal trans people are marginalized and abused today is how normal queer people were marginalized and abused back then. And the smaller the community one grew up in, the worse it was.

it feels like stolen valour to call myself bi

It isn't, all it takes is being into people of your own gender and people of other genders. That's literally all there is to it. You wouldn't even have to hook up with them, people can be in lifelong monogamous relationships with a person that only has one gender and still be bi. That's valid. Being bi may actually be the most common sexual orientation out there, at the very least it's super fucking common, and we should just normalize that fact.

Edit: That's not to say you have an obligation to call yourself bi, if you identitfy with the straight label it's ok. Just saying that you have every right to call yourself bi if that's what you want to.

"Is this a post about me?"

Maybe you old comrades remember, but schools in the 90s were full of homophobia

Graduated in 2017 & nothing has changed lol

Where I grew up if you weren't an aggressive wrestler fanboy ready to thrown down at random then you must be gay. Some boys put up a facade just to avoid the witch hunting. I didn't bother. Didn't care for that stuff at all. By high school I was considered defacto gay.

I know which raging conservative men are in the closet. I know because they thought I must be into secret gay sex with them. Some of them attempted to forcefully. One of them had moderate social media popularity for a while as a local evangelical community leader. I think most people believe it's a stereotype that is to say exaggerated but from my experience it isn't at all.

The amount of people who thought I was gay at my previous job because I didn't make obscene comments or passes at women coming to the department or my female coworkers, was so damn high. Like I straight up got asked if I was gay during a hangout once - this is despite there being a fucking sex pest the same year I started as a student worker, so it blew me away. My wife, on our first date, thought I was gay cause I complimented her nails and I was respectful. I just had no game. Which a) how fucking low is the bar for gayness. b) The fact, it was more accepted to be gay or queer at the time and I didn't have to worry that my shyness and lack of interest in shitting where I eat, into a reason for harassment and bullying. I am constantly blown away by that.

As a cis straight (like a 2 in the kinsey scale) dude, I am shocked that doing even the bare minimum around the house, for my wife, or my kids, will put me in the "he is not like other guys"; my wife has had so many comments from older women like "your husband is so different". Which can both, go to your head, and just make you depressed as hell - like lady, what the fuck is your experience and expectation of men? I am very thankful for gender theory and literature I've read about patriarchy and trying to be a better guy. I have a very lovely relationship with my children, that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Dick n butt! GAE!!1!!1! Dick n mouf?! Less GAE. Heckin man smooch? GAE x∞!!! (You're bisexual enough, you'll probably do more bi shit later down the line)

Maybe you old comrades remember, but schools in the 90s were full of homophobia. "That's so gay" criticised any action that deviated from some masculine ideal. I got this multiple times a day, and I learned to stifle my personality to avoid the rebuke of my male non-friends. I'm not even complaining, there's so so many that had it way worse than I did.

Still working on getting out of it and actually expressing any of my personality since then

Also tried dating gay men as people told me I was and I would get hit on semi-regularly by gay people, but never got very far. I imagine it is similar for gay people who do straight dating for a bit.

I feel this sentiment resonates with how I've feel for a while, including the struggle with norms associated with strict traditional male gender roles. I also feel many people facing that struggle such as we feel grateful to those queer comrades that came before us or are today still doing the important work of building a world where everyone can live, love, and express themselves as they please. It is heartening to see what progress has been done, though there are still many battles ahead to be fought and won to fully secure the freedoms of queer people everywhere.