Why do lesbians take longer to realise they’re gay?

If you’re a member of the LGBT+ community, or conceivably even just a tremendously good ally, you might be well accustomed with the phrase “compulsory heterosexuality”. Maybe you’ve used it to explain why you felt coerced into dating another gender in college, or you’ve muttered it as you passed by a small babe wearing a garmet emblazoned with the words “lady killer” or something equally fatuous.

It’s a term often used to express how straightness is enforced by patriarchal society, and a frequent topic of discourse among queer folk. What isn’t often talked about, however, is how compulsory heterosexuality can intersect with misogyny to make life particularly puzzling for lesbians.

Although substantial data is hard to come by, the amount of men who knew that they were gay from a young age often seems shockingly higher than that of women. There are even articles and studies that suggest that queer boys commonly experience same-gender attraction for the first time during adolescence or their early teen years, while girls generally don’t until young adulthood — a highly unlikely concept that most lesbians would scoff at.

There’s no such thing as being too young to be queer, but there is such a thing as being too young to comprehend compulsory heterosexuality, and it’s harder on gals than it is on guys.