Straight people sometimes have gay sex.
Okay, now that I've got your attention! I wanted to talk about sexual repulsion orientations because I feel like... understanding these really helps understand sexual behavior in a way that sexual (and romantic) attraction doesn't explain by itself.
Part 1: The overt stuff
A repulsion orientation, as it makes sense to me, is basically the dark side of the moon version of attraction--it complements your attraction, but not all people with the same attraction label have matching repulsion orientations as each other.
For example, some cis gay men are repulsed by the idea of romantic/sexual encounters with women, while others do not share that repulsion. It's not something that they are Attracted to, but it might be something that they would pursue in a certain situation (i.e. being closeted and performing heterosexuality for a beard. Or even, before understanding their sexuality, just assuming that other men also felt similarly... mild feelings for their girlfriends/wives. Or whatever Justin was doing with Daphne that one time on Queer as Folk.) For gay men who have a repulsion orientation toward women, these kinds of romantic and/or sexual interactions with women would be unthinkable.
I heard of this verbalized as an orientation itself a few years ago, on Mormon Stories of all places, and it came up in interviews where Dr. John Dehlin, who has a psychology PhD, talked to lesbian and gay ex Mormons about their experiences trying to present themselves as heterosexual because of pressures from their church. It was a really brief mention in these really long interviews, lol, but it was a fascinating new concept for me.
Though of course I heard it first from the asexual community, I hadn't yet put it together that this can be relevant to outside of it. For ace people, it's discussed as whether someone is sex-repulsed or not. Some ace people are open to having sex under the right circumstances, such as wanting to meet a partner's sexual needs or just wanting to get off, etc. However, this would be unthinkable to ace people who are sex-repulsed.
I think some allosexuals can have a hard time understanding some asexual people pursuing sex for the purpose of getting off but that not being part of their sexual attraction. But also. Wait until I tell you that some straight people do the same exact thing.
Not all straight people (#notallstraights). But there are definitely straight cis people out there who pursue gay sex as they are not repulsed by sexual encounters with the same gender, though they are not Attracted to their same gender.
I think the most visible version of this is the cis guys on grindr who list their sexuality as straight (excluding the ones just there for the trans girls, that's just heterosexuality). I know the queer tendency is to roll one's eyes at the grindr straights and think "repressed bi or gay" and I'm sure that's at play for a lot of these people. But also, I think some of these guys do in fact really understand their sexuality, but because they aren't repulsed by sexual encounters with other men, they may be open to pursuing them.
Especially because--I know, this will be shocking--sex can be fun! And I think for the grindr straights, there are advantages to gay sex. For example, gay sex may feel available to straight men in a way that straight sex doesn't. A straight man in a queer environment may feel that he can be up front with his sexual interests to men who are strangers (i.e. "hey I'm just looking for a blow job") and may have that be received positively or neutrally in a way where if he had that same interaction with a woman as a stranger, it more likely would be received very negatively (which, I mean, same). So for straight cis men who are not repulsed by other men, gay sex may be a seemingly more viable option for arranging no-strings-attached sex.
I went on to a Reddit thread about the subject, and here are some comments (in-between the other posters mocking them as gay or bi):
Transcription
Reddit user: “I’m straight and I’m on grindr. It’s full of people offering blow jobs and who am I to complain? And of course, I’ll blow him back, but out of fairness, not gayness. Just a couple totally straight attractive dudes blowing each other.”(This user sounds a bit trolly to me but I suspect what he describes is very normal for grindr straights.)
Transcription
Reddit user: “A lot of guys identify as straight but don’t really care who sucks their dick. A lot of guys identify as straight but have a strange obsession and desire for dick that is somehow separate from being into dudes.”
Paraphrased
This Reddit user describes himself as “90% straight” and says that before he got married, he sometimes became frustrated spending money dating women and being unsure if his date would include sex, so he turned to grindr. In particular, he mentions enjoying feeling pursued by men, getting taken out to parties and events, and knowing that later, “you’ll both be naked in bed no matter what… no tension or maybes!” He concludes, “As a straight man it is sooooo liberating stepping into the gay side for a visit.”So we've talked about ace people, we talked about both straight and gay cis men. I think that cis allosexual women are also doing this. Like with gay men, there are lesbians who aren't repulsed by men, and so they may be with men while in the closet and/or before realizing their attraction, and assume their mild feelings for their boyfriends/husbands is normal for everyone.
I know of at least one lesbian (interviewed on Mormon Stories as well, lol) who married a man while Mormon and then left Mormonism. Then she was like "Hey, I discovered I'm a lesbian, now I'm out and proud, but I'm going to stay with him and make it work because I love him in a different way." Which. If that's what you want to do, great! It reminds me of our ace people who are not sex-repulsed who are in relationships with non-ace partners. (Not to say I know anything about her sex life, but I digress.)
And what about cis straight women? I feel like the most obvious area where straight women not-repulsed-by-sex-with-women make themselves known is those who agree to participate in threesomes orchestrated for the benefit of a straight man. (Why we don't have corresponding narratives about threesomes with two men at anywhere near a similar rate is just proof that the patriarchy is boring.)
I suspect straight cis women are also pursuing lesbian sex by itself in similar ways to the grindr straights--one of the best pop culture discussions of this is Reneé Rapp's song "Pretty Girls" where she sings that literally "all the pretty girls" become interested in gay sex after a couple drinks but by the morning "act like it never happened in another world". ("It's a blessing and it's a curse.")
Of course, like with our grindr straights, some of these women are bi or maybe even gay and aren't ready to face that in the harsh light of the morning, but not ALL of them--some of the women engaging in this behavior could also be explained by a straight woman seeking out some adventurous, no-strings sex just to get off and have fun, again, just like our grindr straights.
What is the difference between pursuing sex just to get off, and pursuing sex because you are Attracted to that person? It looks the same from the outside! I think kind of a helpful (but uh demoralizing and sad) way to picture the difference is imagining someone purchasing a sex toy at a store--they are not Attracted to the toy but they are making choices and taking actions in order to get off.
Part 1.5: An aside
To talk about the actual repulsion part of the repulsion orientation for a minute, it makes sense that this intrinsic feeling of repulsion was an origin for homophobia.
Of course, since homophobia became uh culturally dominant in most Christian cultures, and now at least where I am in the US, homophobia is a political and religious signifier for having certain identities ("I'm such a good Christian that I'm homophobic!") it obviously now doesn't correspond at all to one's repulsion orientation.
And of course, people who do have repulsion for romantic or sexual contact with one or another gender don't have to make it anyone else's problem.
Honestly, I think part of the confusion about the behavior from the not-Attracted-but-not-repulsed crowd is that we assume that people are repulsed if it's a gender outside of their sexual orientation. For example, on the internet nowadays, people are often tired of straight actors playing gay, but on the internet when I was a youth 15 or so years ago, the vibe was very much "Oh, wow, so brave and benevolent of this straight man to put aside his feelings [of presumed repulsion] and kiss a man on camera!"
And of course, people who are repulsed by certain genders do sometimes have relationships with them as well for a while (i.e. bearding, etc.) and to that I say good luck to them!! ☹️
Part 2/2: The less overt stuff
Uh. So. I don't know of any hard facts about this. But I think that for some people, depending on their personalities/hangups and lots of other factors, it can be really hard to distinguish between "not repulsion" and Attraction. Particularly if sex is involved, and they're having fun having the sex. I think what can happen is people enjoy getting off, and enjoy building closeness with another person, and may actually... present themselves as Attracted to that person when in reality they're uh, wasting that other person's time.
ASK ME HOW I KNOW. OKAY, HI, I'M THE PROBLEM, IT'S ME.
I was in a ten-month relationship with another man (another trans man), and looking back, I think both of us were functionally straight bros hanging out on weekends swapping handjobs. I had these experiences where I was looking at him across the room getting dressed and just feeling confused because I didn't really feel anything. I'm not entirely sure how that went on for so long. But I was 20, it was my first relationship, and I didn't know how things were supposed to feel. And I think there was a part of me that made an exception for him and loved him in some way even if later... I figured out that wasn't what I wanted.
On his side of things... I was identifying as non-binary Or Something when we started dating, and he told me that because he was pan, I could transition any direction and it would be fine with him. Maybe that really is the truth. I don't know. It's his brain and not mine. But the data that to me, points toward a disinterest in men, is that he specifically said he was disinterested in cis men, and had a string of ex girlfriends but never dated any man who hadn't transitioned on him, which was me and one guy prior. Literally the last time I saw him before we broke up, he gave me my first shot of testosterone. There were other unprovable intangible things, related to the "bros who hang out on weekends and swap handjobs" vibe.
To bring back the sex toy narrative, it never felt like I was using him (though I did sometimes feel used--maybe he did too.) I thought this was a normal relationship. My understanding was murky and complicated because of my affection for him that I decided was love.
I imagine that this kind of problem of misunderstanding one's own sexuality could happen for people who aren't having sex, but they imagine that they'd be "fine" having sex with a certain gender, and then conclude that that is a gender that they are Attracted to. (Not to say that experience is required for people figuring out their sexuality!! Obviously not!! I had a lot of Experiences that didn't help me at all! I'm just saying!! Being "fine" with having sex with someone is different from Attraction!)
I think that it would be great to talk more about this concept publicly as a way to understand other people's behavior. I think comp het (in the sense commonly used on social media, to refer to a subconscious, society-induced preference in bi or gay people to pursue/prioritize cis-heterosexual-appearing relationships) is a fascinating concept and I think absolutely motivates a lot of people's behavior, but I think people sometimes assume it in places where it isn't the best explanation. Assuming comp het too quickly can lead you to conclude that everyone who has ever done something a little gay is really gay or bi, and then when they spend the rest of their life calling themselves straight, others doubt that label and think of them as succumbing to comp het.
(Of course, that's when people aren't describing these behaviors as queer-baiting, which... grinds teeth These are two concepts that have opposite logic ("You're really gay!" "You're really straight!") but what they have in common, particularly when deployed at public figures, is that people are mad these figures are not in a public same-gender relationships. Which you can't demand of people. Though to be honest, I haven't seen people embrace labeling real people as "queer baiting" since like 2022 Twitter. I hope it is dead and that we all learned our lesson. (Unlike the queer baiting thing, there is validity to comp het, but it can't be used to demand same-gender public relationships from people, of course.))
Honestly, I think the idea that everyone who has ever done something a little gay is really gay or bi, while very fun, also has a bit of a homophobic underbelly? The idea is very, "Well, no one would ever DO this if you didn't really WANT this" and like. Hey, the queers are having a good time! Sometimes straight people may want to hang and see what all the fuss is about! Is it annoying when straight people confuse themselves, drop in and waste ten months of your one short and precious life and then vanish off to heterosexual-land? Yeah, of fucking course!
But also, I think "really straight" people trying out same-gender sex or relationships is valid. Like I would much rather live in a world where straight people feel comfortable giving same-gender sex or relationships a try than a world where bi people are scared of the same thing. I'm sure that it's super frustrating to find yourself in a relationship where your partner isn't really Attracted to you (Believe me! I know!), but like, that can also happen even if their understanding of their sexuality is totally right.
Like, I also wasted a lot of MY OWN time doubting my attraction to women and didn't seriously pursue them long after I first suspected I was attracted to them because I was worried that my attraction to them wasn't real and I'd be bothering some nice woman and then abandoning her. But it was the real thing!! And then I wasted the time of some men! (The one guy I talked about isn't the only example, he was just the one I was in the most denial about. I dated a bunch of guys Real Platonically.)
(And of course sexualities change, which I know we LGBTQIA people have a hard time talking about because we've handcuffed ourselves to "born this way" for political reasons. Changing sexualities can also be an explanation for similar behavior where people pursue certain genders and then stop. There's a part of me that wondered if my sexuality did change, though looking back, I think there is evidence of my disinterest in men goes back even to my adolescence, but who knows, it's certainly complicated. This essay is too long and we don't have time for this either!)
I think it's good for people to try to be in touch with our own happiness and then go and pursue that happiness, whether that's trying new fun things, understanding our orientations, or advocating for ourselves when we're dissatisfied with the kind of love we're getting from our partner.
The end. I would love to hear from you about your own experiences, whether it’s pursuing things outside of what’s expected for your attraction orientation or struggling with the difference between Attraction and feeling "fine" with certain people. I also want to hear about your run-ins with the not-Attracted-but-not-repulsed crowd in your romantic/sexual life, whether they said it up front or if you suspected it later. (Feel free to send me an anonymous ask!)
Post-Posting Addendum
7/17: One thing I wanted to add (particularly after getting some good critical feedback from @shel!) is that in thinking about this, repulsion of any kind toward sexual/romantic contact with a certain gender is enough on its own to make it so that person would not have these kinds of label-defying experiences I described above. That repulsion doesn't *have* to be this phenomenon I'm talking about here, of a hypothetical sexual repulsion orientation. If someone is repulsed from sexual/romantic contact with a certain gender (that they're *not* attracted to, if they're repulsed by genders they're attracted to, that's a different conversation) for reasons like trauma, homophobia, societal expectations, etc., like, the effect is the same, where they're not going to be open to these kinds of scenarios described above. And of course, people may not know where their repulsion comes from. Why do we feel anything we feel? Who knows!The thing that to me points toward this repulsion orientation existing as a kind of possible inborn trait, separate from society-induced repulsion, is that there are lots of cis gay people who describe having these repulsion experiences. To me, there is no reason why Society would prep them to have those repulsions in the way that it may, through homophobia, induce many people to be repulsed by contact with their same gender. That, to me, feels like "nature" from the "nature vs. nurture" dynamic.
(Shel points out that this could possibly be deployed as a way to validate their identity, of "I absolutely cannot do heterosexuality the way you, straight people, want me to because of my repulsion" and I think that definitely could happen... but I suspect that's not everybody. I do think that it is real and inborn for many people, as the "dark side of the moon" complement to their attraction orientation. I don't know that for sure, I'm not a researcher, I'm just a guy on the internet, but that makes sense to me.)
Anyway, I am writing this addendum with a drink in hand after work which is always dangerous, and I reserve the right to come back to this and edit it, lol, as I feel that more things need to be clarified.
