I asked guys when they first knew they were gay

For many young people, feelings of attraction to the same sex come along naturally without any worry as to whether or not their friends, family, future employers and religious leaders would approve. It’s not until outside factors like high school social pressure, religious intolerance and systemic homophobia come into play that these young people are led to believe those feelings aren’t normal.

I talked to a few of my gay friends about their experiences realizing they were attracted to men, if anyone had explained homosexuality to them growing up and whether or not at any time they were convinced that being gay was “wrong.”

Liam, Minnesota

“There are always inklings when you’re growing up. I mean, just little feelings. But the first major, like ‘whoaaa’ crush was in eighth grade for me. Maybe that’s a late bloomer, I don’t know. He was a cellist in my orchestra, and I just didn’t really know him before then. But then I really got to know him, and I was like, ‘Well, shit.’

“I had no idea what being gay was. No one explained it to me. I didn’t necessarily question it until I encountered the whole social stigma behind it. We can all agree that junior high is just an environment of social pressure and insecurity. I remember being in the locker room and just being uncomfortable all the time for some strange reason. I want to say around ninth or tenth grade was when I started realizing I was gay. I can’t really pinpoint it to a single event.”

“There was never really a time that I thought being gay was inherently wrong. There were definitely times I was like, ‘Boy, it certainly would be a lot easier if I weren’t.’ I sometimes wish I were quote-unquote, like huge quotation marks, “normal.” But no, I never thought it was inherently wrong.”

Casey, Kansas

“This boy in my second grade class was wearing tight Wrangler jeans and I thought he had a nice butt and I was like, ‘What is this? This is normal, I think.’ I didn’t second guess it or think it was a big deal. I would just watch him play soccer and was like, ‘Wow, he has a nice butt. I like it.’

“I lived in a conservative Mennonite community. So yeah, I pretty much grew up thinking being gay was wrong.”

Rob, North Carolina

“I remember someone asking me in fifth grade if I was gay and I said ‘yes.’ I just knew I was attracted to guys. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. There was this one guy I was attracted to in fifth grade. I’ve never thought about it that much actually. I always knew some people were attracted to one type of person and other people were attracted to another. Now it sounds like I grew up in a real lefty, bean-bag chair, tie-dye type of town.

“But weirdly, it was Raleigh, North Carolina. My parents weren’t very liberal. I’m amazed looking back that I thought you could easily be interested in any type of person. I still kind of like girls. It’s weird. I think of being gay, at least for me, as a spectrum. I would say I’m like 80% gay. There are some girls I’d turn for. I had girlfriends in middle school. I dated a girl for three months, but that was it.”

Darius, Connecticut

“I first realized I was attracted to other men at a very early age. I remember I would watch TV or a movie and find different guys to be really attractive. I don’t know how I knew it exactly. I just knew I found some guys to be hot and that I had very little interest in the opposite sex.

“No one really explained to me the concept of homosexuality. I pretty much learned what it meant to be gay through different social interactions with kids at school or family members who made it seem as if it were bad or not ‘normal.'”

“When I was younger, people’s attitudes toward gay people were negative, so that definitely hindered me from being myself at times. I came to learn that my sometimes-effeminate behavior would lead others to know or think I was gay. Overhearing the word ‘faggot’ thrown around by my classmates and family members suggested to me that people didn’t like gay people, so I spent a lot of my childhood in the ‘closet.'”

Richard, Connecticut

“I was really young when I first realized that I didn’t feel the same about girls as I did for guys. That was definitely as early as sixth grade when I had a crush on our long term substitute teacher.

“I don’t think that’s when I knew it though. I convinced myself that it didn’t mean anything, so I would say that I really knew it in ninth grade, when I had an even bigger crush on my science teacher. I would listen to the other girls talk about him, but I wouldn’t chime in because I wasn’t ‘out’ yet. I definitely knew it because I would make excuses to hang out after class to stay with him more and talk to him one-on-one, and sometimes I wouldn’t leave until he left.

“I kind of knew what being gay was, but all I knew was that people were bullied for it, and that, apparently, the Bible said it was wrong. I was brainwashed to be Christian at the time, so that messed me up for a while. I refused to believe that God would make anyone gay. People at church convinced me that it was a choice, and it actually made me very homophobic because I was so freaked out that another gay guys would think I was gay and somehow out me, even though I was convinced at the time that I was straight.

“Everything I learned about being gay was from my experiences in middle school where everyone made it seem terrible and mocked you for it. Being gay is actually a main reason that I’m no longer Christian. The way that I treated myself and others out of fear of what the Bible ‘apparently’ said was disgusting, and I have seen other gay Christians do it to me. I’ve hardly read the Bible, so I was going off of what people said, and it was wrong. They spread so much hate, so I refused to ever associate with that again.

“My family has been a lot more accepting as time has gone on. My sister tried to convince me that I would end up straight because that’s ‘how things go,’ but after knowing myself for a while, I was able to shut that down quickly. I didn’t even come out until my freshman year of college. Being asked if I was gay was my biggest fear, so I lied about it all the time.

“Now, my confidence has definitely changed. I’m definitely not afraid of it and am very open with my sexuality. I sometimes hint at it beforehand so that people aren’t wondering or anything. I’m definitely a lot happier and proud, too. I marched in pride with my college’s LGBT club, which is a big change from high school.”

Rani, Beirut, Lebanon

“I had always been attracted exclusively to men, long before I had a name for what that meant. In grade six, I discovered that there was a name for people like me and it was not the norm. People around me were generally disdainful and dismissive of queer people. It was dismissive at the very best and searingly homophobic at worst.

“For the longest time, I was convinced that I was an anomaly, that there was nobody like me and that religious intolerance – Christian and Muslim, since I was surrounded by and associated with both – rejected me.

“So, I kept it under wraps and forced myself to like girls. In grade nine, I allowed myself to like a boy in my grade who I was certain was also gay. In general, I had little psychological or emotional support beyond what I gleaned from American television.

“In grade eleven, I was inspired by Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ and Glee and decided to start coming out to people. The first two people I came out to were actually the two girls who had crushes on me. It became a little easier with each one as my support system grew.

“I had to go through another coming out process when I came to college in America. It seems so outdated to me now, especially since I have lived with the privilege of not having to worry about people knowing I was gay, and not having to concern myself with people’s heteronormative expectations.

“But I know there are little boys and girls and queer and trans children back in Lebanon who did not have the socio-emotional luxuries that I did coming to America. So, I strive to do everything in my power to be a source of support to younger Lebanese peers who are undergoing similar experiences.”