There aren't many people who are fortunate enough to have lived their lives first as gay men and later as lesbian women. Alison* is one of them.
"Seriously, I used to be a rake-thin, femme, fag bottom, and now I'm a curvy, andro dyke, mostly top," she told Broadly. "What the fuck?"
Growing up, Alison was slight and slender, something she frequently bragged about "to the confusion of her boy peers," as she recalled. When she started puberty, she began to struggle with feelings of discomfort in and anxiety about her body—she was terrified of becoming big, muscular, and masculine like her older brother, whom she described as "a very shitty misogynist."
Fearing the psychological and physical discomfort that puberty would bring, Alison turned to "drugs that DARE taught me would stunt your growth," which she took in an attempt to ensure her body would remain small. At the time, she just saw herself as a particularly femme gay guy; though she was undoubtedly attracted to men, she had difficulty relating to them. "I found guys hot, but I also found a lot of them repellant in terms of personality or maturity," she said, noting that most of her friends growing up were women. "I was raised by a feminist mother, so almost all dudes and their misogyny were a complete turn-off."
It wasn't until college that Alison realized that she identified as a woman. A few months into her transition, she realized she was attracted to women as well.
Read more on Broadly
Advertisement