#public history sometimes gets a bad rep too bc it’s not like research for research’s sake and is trying to *do* something w it

[venti-death-watch]

with all his phds and all you can pretty much make dr ratio whatever you want and i know everyone does physics/math/medicine in some form and all, but that man is so fucking history humanities coded it’s like… embarrassing to see

[flying-elliska]

Hii Ellie. This is kind of a personal question and it’s totally okay if you don’t answer it. How did you come to terms with your sexuality? How or when did you know you were bi? I know that it’s not about putting tags on people or anything like that, it’s just that I’ve kind of been struggling with it and it’d be nice to read your experience if you want to share it

Ooooh anon do you have three hours ? lol. Of course I want to talk about it if it can help anyone even a little. 

The tl;dr is : in stages, I struggled a lot, and bi characters were super important to me. 

So I think as a kid/teen I always had this vague notion that ladies were very pretty, but I was not a lesbian bc I liked boys too much, and besides I had these horrible ideas in my mind about queerness being immature and yucky, it was bad. I think I pretty much did have crushes on several of my girl friends but I just didn’t understand that’s what it was, just super intense friendship and being jealous when they got boyfriends hmmmm. Also my ‘fashion folder’ was full of pics of Keira Knightley in a tank top, cause that’s the height of fashion, am I right. I also wrote a letter to a girl I met at camp telling her her voice was so soft and eyes were beautiful and full of stars...do you wanna be friends ? Lol I was so obvious I swear, but it’s funnier in hindsight. 

Then when I was 18 I met this older girl in my circle of friends who was bisexual and I thought it was really cool, but I didn’t really connect the dots. I am ashamed to say, I thought she was saying that to give herself a vibe. 

Then when I was 19 i bingewatched the series Torchwood  ( a Doctor Who spinoff) and it felt like an absolute revelation. Jack Harkness, the MC, is this incredible badass rogue time travelling adventurer from the future who charms women and men left and right without any issue about it. (I think he’s...omnisexual or something ?) But this is the first time I saw the possibility of being attracted to multiple genders as something that’s actually valid. Seems silly now but this was almost 10 yrs ago, lol. It was the dark ages in terms of queer rep back then. And it’s such an integral part of Jack’s character, and he’s just so cool and it really struck a chord with me, this idea that in the future anyone can love whoever they want. There was the idea of a society that is founded on those principles, and well, I am very political in nature I guess, and i was like. yes. i can see it now. but it remained theorethical. 

Then the year after that, Erasmus exchange and I meet this girl. Like, it was bam! in your face, I fell head over heels. Now, tbh, I don’t get attracted to people all that often, but when it came to her it was absolutely indeniable. Now, she was already with someone else, so we remained just friends and it did suck a little, but I’m not sad, because it taught me a lot about myself (and she was just such a cool person in general I’m glad I met her). I just couldn’t get past it, yeah she was cool and stuff but I didn’t just want to be her friend, I was attracted to her, I daydreamed about being in a couple with her, doing romantic stuff, etc. And it was super validating to learn she was also bi a little later down the line (she was such goals in general, god.) So then after that I was like...um am I a lesbian ? Like I do have a lot of issues with men. And so I spent a lot of time having this wishy washy thing in my head.  Also that year, I was in Amsterdam taking all those gender studies classes. And it opened up my mind in a radical way - learning about queer history, the fact that sexualities are socially constructed, feminism, activism, etc etc....it allowed me to let go of a lot of my crappy internalized prejudices. I also wrote an essay on burlesque with in field research because i ‘liked the costumes’ yeahhhh right okay. The levels of denial oh my god. ANyway. 

Then i got really, really into Supernatural for a while (sigh...it was better back then, I have to say). This was s8 and the high moment of the ‘let’s prove Dean Winchester is bi’ meta palooza on tumblr. And spending so much time hunting for clues and reading so much about people explaining their own experiences of being bisexual and not realizing it until later I was like....wait a minute....That’s just so me. Dean probs will never come out of the closet, because they’re cowards, but I certainly did, so yay, I guess. I looked over my past and I was finally able to understand. I wrote the meta of my own life. Lmao. And I was able to come out to one of my friends on the phone. I felt so fucking powerful afterwards. Then to a few other friends. And it felt good. 

Then I came back to Amsterdam and I was like, alright, time to stop being a coward and actually get involved in some real life LGBT stuff. So I joined a student association and man. It was so fucking scary. I remember, they had this meet up at a bar every month, and I actually went twice, and every time I just was too nervous to actually go inside, i stood in front of it, and I went home. So in the end I actually signed up to be a member and for the integration day, so I just forced myself to show up. And I did. It was so incredibly nervewracking. I met up with a group of students holding up a rainbow flag in front of the central station and we had these series of challenges to do - take a pic with a rainbow flag in front of one of those bible thumpers, stage a harry potter duel in public, order a starbucks drink with the name ‘Vagina Jensens’, mimick the titanic scene where they’re on the edge of the boat...it was so silly and fun and everyone was so nervous in the end, it was awesome. I ended up on the newsletter committee of that association and I had a blast, interviewing people, writing book reviews, etc...I did have complexes though, that everyone was more cool and gay aware than me lol. But it still did a lot for me and helped me come out to my family. (at a restaurant for my 25th birthday because i am a drama queen lol.). At the same time it was very...mainstream gay frat house lol. Focused on partying and drinking and being sociable in a way that can be exhausting to me, and a little light on the politics, which has always been important to me. After that I volunteered for the Eurobicon as I spoke about earlier and it was so important to me, that being bisexual is such a worthy identity to have in itself and important to me beyond being just queer, it was really cool. 

I’m not totally there yet I guess, because I find relationships in general difficult, it’s been a while, I often feel like i don’t have enough experience to call myself bi, I’m nerdy and awkward, I don’t fit the cliché of the seductive bisexual, etc etc. i sometimes think that i’m a little bit on the ace spectrum too or at least demisexual because i don’t seem to be into people as often as most of my friends, and even then it’s very emotionally-focused. I also feel very weird about gender in general so that’s also a whole other thing. And my brain is wonky and i feel it interacts with all that.  I still have moments of ‘oh what if i’m actually a lesbian ! straight ! ace !’ looool.

But less now. I’m learning to let myself just...Be. ahahahahaah. And also I have more and more bi friends and that helps a lot, to just randomly swoon over multigendered celebrities and learn to be very casual about it. 

Anyway my point is. I included all those messy (kinda embarassing) details because : getting to terms with your sexuality is fucking hard. The wow i figured it out young and then came out and it was great thing ? still not for everyone. I think a key part is, we grow up with these ideals of the perfect life, of what it means to be the protagonist of your life - and most of the time still it involves hetero couple, marriage, babies - and to look beyond that, for a while, it feels like you’re going off track, disqualifying yourself. So it’s hard. Sometimes you actually need several moments of revelation, of it sinking in. It’s fine, it’s all fine. You’ll get there. No pressure. Don’t try to fit your story into a certain pattern. It’s yours, so it’s valid.