Am I A Lesbian? & Compulsory Heterosexuality

Happy Lesbian Visibility Week! We’re so happy to be back talking all things compulsory heterosexuality and realising you’re a lesbian and we’re joined by the most (!) guests we’ve ever had to hear about their experiences.

We start the episode discussing Adrienne Rich’s theory of compulsory heterosexuality, the lesbian masterdoc and how it can help you if you’re wondering how to know if you’re a lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or it’s just compulsory heterosexuality. We tell our own experiences unpacking whether we really like men before welcoming Dani, Emily and Cassie to discuss their experiences realising they were into women.

They tell us what it was like to come to terms with being gay in their own time, from their first ‘I think I’m a lesbian’ to then coming out to friends and family and whether that was a difficult experience or not. They unpack how they feel about their sexuality now, whether people in their lives responded well and how they unlearned compulsory heterosexuality, plus the difficult distinction between being bisexual or suffering from the affliction of compulsory heterosexuality.

We also discuss: learning you’re lesbian through Orange is the New Black (a surprisingly common experience), not telling your dad you’re gay (another common one), how to ‘look’ lesbian (if there’s really a way), the importance of representation and what they’d tell themselves as baby gays. Thank you so much to Dani, Emily and Cassie for joining us in probably the most chaotic episode to record and edit we’ve ever done.

Apologies to you, our lovely listeners, if the sound is dodgy at times (we tried our best but guess what?! after three years we still don’t know how to record!!) but, thanks to our guests, this episode is really an excellent one to listen to if you’re at all questioning your sexuality. Have an amazing Lesbian Visibility Week 2023 and we will be back very soon with another episode.

As always if you have anything you’d like to share with us or any questions, you can do so on our website, on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook @sextraspodcast or email us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com. If you enjoyed please leave a review/ rating and subscribe and we’ll see you very soon with another episode!

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

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