Publications
Partners
- Trigger warning: This story contains details of sexual abuse.
- A woman from Cape Town tells her story about refusing to believe her sexuality.
- She says her sexual awakening felt confusing due to an unwanted sexual encounter with her cousin when she was younger.
- She says it took her 30 years to finally accept her sexuality.
"No matter what, I took your virginity."
That's what my cousin, Lucy, said to me one night when we were teenagers. She asked me if I had had sex with a boy yet and I said no, but I had kissed a few. She then reminded me, at that moment, before her brother and our other cousin came back, that she had done things to me when I was a child.
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I was in shock. I suddenly had flashes of being touched in places I shouldn't have been and my body doing things of its own accord. I flushed with shame and anger, but I was also like a deer caught in headlights. I had no idea what to say or do next. I don't remember what I replied to her, but now I wish I had confronted her.
Many, many years later, as an adult, I still feel ashamed about what happened. I still wish that those things didn't happen. For years, it stopped me from accepting that just because those things were done to me, didn't mean I couldn't like women and other femme-presenting people.
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I thought it wasn't okay to think women were attractive. That breasts were appealing, and the soft skin of a femme person's thighs was sexy to me.
I couldn't say that because then it meant that what had happened to me as a child was my fault. That I let it happen because I liked it. Watching lesbian porn was a no. Admitting that I thought a woman was beautiful in more than an innocent way was something I just couldn't do.
I vehemently said to friends that I was "very straight", and they kept saying to me, "Straight people are like spaghetti. They're only straight until they're wet."
I would laugh and say that wasn't the case.
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Until the night of my 30th birthday when I had sex with a femme-presenting friend of mine, and it was amazing. It felt good and right, and even though there were small moments of fear and shame, they guided me through it and was kind and gentle.
Since then, I have started my journey with my queer identity and what that means, especially being in a relationship with a straight man. But luckily, he's supportive of me, my queerness and whatever might happen with it.
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Now, I freely admit when I find someone who isn't a cisgender man attractive. I tell my boyfriend when I talk to a cute girl, or someone posts a thirst trap on Instagram and it made me feel feelings.
I can admit that Ashley Graham turns me on and that I have a type, even if I still want to blush when I think about it. I can smile when a woman flirts with me even if my brain goes into a gay panic in a way it doesn't with straight men.
I'm learning to love my queerness because I was born this way, and what happened to me wasn't my fault, and I'm learning more and more every day that I shouldn't be ashamed.
