[Nat]

As a person who spent a long time in contemplation before any action was taken outside of "straight" behavior - never having kissed another woman before the age of 27 - I didn't feel the right to identify as anything other than possibly bisexual until I had moved beyond crushes and imaginings and dreams and contemplations and into the "reality" of physicality.

Now I look back at all that time I denied myself to myself not simply because I was ashamed but because I didn't let myself identify more accurately without the *proof* I felt the physical/sexual would have given (and eventually did give) me.

Because I lived in a "straight" marriage, I felt voiceless when talking about my own sexuality/orientation. A girl or woman who has only been with men talking about not knowing if she's a lesbian - who listens to her or respects what identity she forms? I shut myself up.

And though I do get tired of women I perceive as straight talking to me about how they might be lesbian or wish they were lesbian or hate men or blah blah blah, I don't want to deny anybody the right to identify as queer no matter what state their lives are in.

I'd rather I hadn't silenced myself - feeling the need to manifest sexually my desires before allowing myself a claim to any real queer identity.

I have never been a thing like June Cleaver. She represents much of what I see as society's expectations of me as a female person.

I could totally get into some Lucy/Ethel slash though.