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[–]Lesbianvodkaaunt 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I feel like i’ve experienced comphet, but I wouldn’t call it a crush... more of a justification when i was younger to try and give men a chance. It didn’t work obviously. If you actually feel attracted to a man, it’s not comphet, you’re just bi. And its fine to be bi, but its not fine to use lesbians descriptors for our experiences when they don’t really apply to you. I assumed I liked men when I first started dating, every girl is supposed to like men and I didn’t hate them, so I figured I wasn’t a lesbian. It wasn’t until I actually started feeling attracted to girls that I realized that while I didn’t hate men, I didn’t want them in that way either. I feel like it can be fairly useful to explain why sometimes women try to date men, sometimes even for a long time, before realizing that they don’t actually feel any attraction to them. I typed way more than I meant to... I just really hate the appropriation of terms that only make sense in their original context.

[–][deleted] 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree with you. I think "comphet" as a concept has some validity and it probably explains why a lot of gay people, especially lesbians, start out having early heterosexual relationships before coming out. We start off assuming we're straight and that we'll eventually move past our feelings of disinterest or repulsion or whatever.

The way it gets used on LateBloomerLesbians and twitter though seems to justify being attracted to men as "comphet" - like it's some nefarious plot by men to make us drool over their ab muscles? Or, more realistically, their hairy backs and beer guts? I don't understand what's going on in these women's brains. It seems like they just genuinely feel attraction to men and blame society for forcing them to feel attracted, they're not passively going along with the expectations of heterosexuality despite not really feeling it, they're actually really feeling it but proclaiming homosexuality anyway. They're all crazy.

If this twitter was really about "comphet" the way I imagine true "comphet" is, it would be asking which celebrities lesbians pretended to have a crush on to fit in when they were younger, not which celebrities they actually had crushes on.