Were you previously homophobic before realising your orientation?

well i wasn't homophobic i liked gay men too much but i didn't like lesbians even though i realised now that i actually am one..and now i love them

 

I think that for me, homophobic would have been the understatement of the century. I went to a church for a bit that protested at all events with the signs that said "god hates gays". I'd be one of the little kids holding the signs. My parents had many friends in the LGBT community, and I always felt uncomfortable around them growing up. I don't think that my parents ever knew the extent of my homophobia. (They did not go to church with me.) That was one of the things that I really had to overcome before I came out.

 

I just had some weird dumb kid stuff about gay guys and stuff I'd just absorbed from adults for a bit. Then I had an irrational fear of lesbians and I would go on a little about how weird I found them. Not like I was terrorising anyone or looking to take away rights or thought they should go to hell. I was just uncomfortable.

 

I used to think lesbianism was gross because I imagined women I wasn't attracted to and thought that's what WSW looked like. And there was a lot of fear of people thinking I was gay so I would have a disgusted tone if someone implied I was. I mostly struggled with internalized homophobia (and internalized biphobia to a slightly lesser extent). Then I realized you could like women and still mostly only like feminine ones.

But to answer your question in less space, not really, but definitely not at all after I accepted myself.

 

Yep, I mostly grew up in Nigeria, I was super religious and all. It changed when I moved back to the UK. I self-loath now though.

 

I wasn't blatantly homophobic but I wasn't the most aware or educated person either. Even if I didn't outright show any hatred, nor was I ever fully against anything LGBT+, there were a lot of things I didn't understand, and I probably said some things when I was younger which I didn't realise was problematic at the time.
However I don't recall ever being very expressively homophobic, and I think my attitude was generally "I don't really have anything against it" even when I didn't understand a lot of things.

Now look where I am :lol:

 

That's also me too.

I remember this one time (which cringes the fuck out of me) that I called a friend "gay" and he fought back so much that I nearly got in trouble with school authorities. That was kind of the turning point for me.

Now looking back at that incident, I really wanted to do everything to get rid of that part of me that shames LGBT's for breakfast. When I realized that something was off with me, I tried to hide it from everybody because I feared the same response that I gave off to that friend.

But hey, I'm out of school, and I'm out to that same friend I called gay. He said he knew. We've always talked anyway, but nowadays, our conversations are spiced up with our same-sex interests.

 

I've never considered myself to be homophobic. I do not hate or fear gay people. I'm a Christian, and I have certain beliefs about what the Bible teaches concerning homosexuality. That teaching has never for a minute given me an incentive to hate or fear. In fact, it has taught me to love more like Christ does.