— Coming out as queer later in life isn’t just normal—it’s a revolutionary act of self-discovery in a world that tries to keep women’s desires hidden.
By Melissa Fabello
I spend a lot of time online, especially in spaces where identity politics take center stage. And a trend I’ve seen gaining momentum since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is the complexity of coming out as queer “later in life.” Type “late in life lesbians” into the search bar on TikTok, and you’ll see what I mean.
As someone who’s known she was queer since childhood and has identified as such since middle school (#earlyinlife?), it brings me an enormous amount of joy to see so many women connecting with their authentic sense of desire—and making content about it! And while I’m grateful for some of the experiences I had in queer adolescence and early adulthood (and traumatized by others), I also reject the idea that there are better or worse times in the life span to come out.
Especially for bisexual women, who face an enormous amount of stigma both within and outside of the queer community, the message that coming out after your twenties is an anomaly can add more pressure to an already difficult self-development process. After all, bisexual people are already at an increased risk of negative mental health outcomes due to what’s called “minority stress” (that is, the experience of being marginalized), compared to both straight and other queer people.
As bisexual women struggle both with cisheteronormativity (the cultural pressure to be cisgender and straight) and the norming of monosexuality (attraction to one gender) in our society, they already can doubt the validity of their orientation. Add to this a complex and nuanced relationship with compulsory heterosexuality (the patriarchal lie that marginalized genders must depend on cis men for access to power and resources), and we have a self-concept disaster waiting to happen.
According to a 2013 survey conducted by Pew Research Center, while the majority of LGBT adults (59%) report knowing they were queer in puberty and adolescence, a full 28% say they didn’t know until their twenties or later. And this latter experience is most highly reported by bisexuals (15%, as compared to 14% of lesbians and 3% of gay men).
But why? Why are women – and especially bisexual women – more likely to come out “later in life?” Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the answer is cisheteropatriarchy (the combined influence of oppression against trans people, queer people, and gender minorities).
Women’s sexual development is different
Historically, when it comes to research, scientists have looked at how cis men operate – and then compare everyone else to that supposed baseline. Just look at how it took until recently for medicine to catch up with the fact that women experience heart attack symptoms differently! Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, gendered sexuality research is no different.
Sexual development is just one area in which we’ve made the mistake of seeing cis men as the norm.
On average, cisgender men tend to experience their sexual peak in adolescence and early adulthood – that is, through their twenties. This is when they are the most desirous of sex and confident about their sexuality. After this, sperm count tends to lower, issues like erectile dysfunction start to arise, and sexual insecurity can creep in.
Cisgender women, on the other hand, generally report an increase in sexual self-knowledge, confidence, and desire as they age into mid-life. While physiological issues with sexuality also come up for women as they get older (they literally refer to pregnancy after 35 as “geriatric,” y’all), women’s psychological experience with sexuality only improves.
One study found that by their thirties, women feel like they have the experience to be sexually confident, especially as they shed insecurities about their bodies. When are women most sexually insecure? At 25.
As women age, we tend to shed the patriarchal socialization that has plagued us our entire lives. We become more comfortable in our bodies, more knowledgeable and vocal about what brings us sexual pleasure, and more curious about our erotic authenticity: “What do we want?” becomes an important mental refrain.
That this is the point in sexual development that many women come into their queerness – a desire pushed down by cisheteropatriarchal socialization – is no surprise. At the exact moment that women, regardless of orientation, are coming into their own sexually, queer identity questions can also pop up.
Queer identity development is its own thing
For my Masters degree in Human Sexuality Education, I had to take a course dedicated to psychological and sociological development across the lifespan. How this class was (brilliantly) taught is that week to week, we would add a theory to a physical representation of the lifespan set up in our classroom. “Oh, Erikson says that from 12-18, people struggle with themes of identity and confusion? Add that to the ‘adolescence’ column!”
There are countless theories on how our minds develop over time. And the question of queer identity has its own subset of developmental theories (here are just a few). For instance, D’Augelli that queer people go through several processes in order to come into their own; the first three are shedding straight identity, developing personal queer identity, and exploring their identity in social contexts.
Guess what—straight people don’t have to do!
Similar to how we can’t look at cisgender men and assume other genders have the same experiences, we can’t assume that queer people come into their sexual identity at the same time as straight people.
Straight people have very few obstacles to developing sexual identity. This is a simple fact of straight privilege. When institutions, media, and our families of origin normalize and celebrate heterosexuality, it’s relatively easy for straight people to see themselves represented and understand something intrinsic about themselves, even if it takes time to learn the language for it.
Queer identity development takes a different route – especially because so many queer people assume that they must, too, be cis and straight within the context of cisheteronormativity. Many queer and trans people, myself included, start off believing they must fit into the world around them, until they sense the nagging thought that there has to be another way.
When we notice our difference happens at different times for different people, depending on several factors: Were you able to talk to adults you trusted about your experience? Did you grow up in a more liberal or conservative environment? What role did religion play in your upbringing? And this is just the beginning of queer identity development! According to a 1979 framework developed by researcher Vivienne Cass, once a queer person notices their difference, there are still six more stages until they’re able to synthesize this into the totality of their lives.
For all of us, queerness takes time to know and accept.
Compulsory heterosexuality sucks
Let’s talk about how society pushes women into relationships with men, even when that might not be what they truly want. This idea, called compulsory heterosexuality, is about more than just assuming everyone’s straight – it’s about how our culture steers women away from relying on each other and into marriages with men.
Often misunderstood to be the same as cisheteronormativity – or, according to some misinformed folks on TikTok, something only lesbians experience – compulsory heterosexuality is a complex web of ideas. But writer Adrienne Rich popularized the term in 1980 arguing that the feminist movement needs to better understand lesbianism – not just as a sexual orientation, but as a way of life – in order to better undermine patriarchy.
In our culture, women tend to take care of one another. In fact, research shows that women are far more likely to go to their female friends for emotional support than they are to their male partners. Think back to some of the most transformative relationships you’ve had in your life, and I’m willing to bet that female best friends come up over and over again. And yet, we are actively taught through our socialization that the key to a happy, healthy life is marriage to a cis man (citation: every fairy tale ever).
So what does this mean for how we see women as potential partners – in love or in life? Rich says that society squashes women’s desire for each other, whether that’s for friendship, love, or sex. And it affects all women, not just lesbians.
For bisexual women, it gets even trickier. Particularly for those who find themselves “later in life” already committed to long-term, monogamous relationships with men, finally coming to terms with the depth of their queerness: “Well, now what?”
On the one hand, you might want to explore your queer side, but since you are attracted to men and you’re with one, it can feel easier to just ignore that part of yourself. Not because society tells you to, but because facing it feels too hard.
And it’s this pressure to bottle up and push down your queer desires can push you further and further from accepting your bisexuality, sometimes for years.
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Combined, bisexual women’s access to their own authentic sense of desire (what feminist academics call “the erotic”) can be stunted – by no fault of their own! Bisexual women experience a deeply complex, and oftentimes painful, relationship to their queerness within cisheteropatriarchy.
So when they come out “later in life,” their newfound liberation should be celebrated, not stigmatized.
As we celebrate Bisexuality Visibility Week, let’s move beyond merely acknowledging that bisexual women are valid – but that their journey to their identity, in whatever form it takes, is valid too.
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