Mistakes

[AFennecfox]

I’m in high school and I was meeting with my schools GSA today, we talked a bit about projects and then were just hanging out. My friend who is the same gender as me hugged me and I must have looked pretty uncomfortable, bc someone said kind of jokingly “And then the only straight person here.”

 That was followed by a lot of awkward silence and me telling them I’m aro.

I don’t try to hide my identity. I have aro + aroallo striped keychains on my backpack, and some of my friends know (including the friend who was hugging me- she was definitely not doing that as a romantic gesture). But I guess, to a lot of people, I look “straight”. I dress pretty traditionally femme and I’m not interested in other girls, therefore I must be straight. And I’m a quiet, kind of awkward person in group settings, so I think people were assuming I was uncomfortable with talking about queer stuff.

 The thing that’s bothering me isn’t that people were mistaking my identity. If I haven’t directly told them, I wouldn’t expect them to know. I’m just really put off/wierded out by the idea that everyone sees me in a way that is so different from how I see myself. I feel like I got to watch myself from outside my body. What is it that I’m doing that’s making literally everyone see me like this?

thank you for dealing with my angsty teenage ramblings :)

[roboticanary]

no worries.

It does seem frustrating to say the least that any look of discomfort hugging a same gender friend immideately leads to the idea that you must be straight. I think that is a fairly common idea to other people due to them being uncomfortable though, unfortunately. It would be very tough being a shy or socially awkward lesbian/bisexual/etc in that atmosphere.

not sure if there is anything in specific you are doing other than just not looking comfortable when someone randomly decides to hug you, and people are like that sometimes.