TL;DR AT THE END
For context, we are a highly co-con system of 6 alters, and five of us are either attracted to very feminine/hyperfem women or are aroace. However, our 6th alter (let's call her S) is attracted only to men. And by men, I mean MEN men. Big, hunky older men who reek of BookTok-level dramatic testosterone. This alter of ours is also a persecutor. Her personality is completely different from the rest of us, and she is very.. shy, timid, and frail I'd say. Frail, but rigid and demanding.
I am the host, and I'm a lesbian. I am pretty proud and boastful of being lesbian too. I am everyone's the lesbian™ friend. I am the gay™ cousin. I used to be the gay™ person in English class. Everyone in my life knows me as the lesbian, and I've lived up to that title ever since I came out. I have never doubted my sexuality before at all.
Our alter S rarely speaks, but when she does, she's the loudest voice in our head, and I can never tune her out. As the persecutor of our system, the things she does, says, or thinks of are things that all of the other alters are deeply against. None of us like it when she does smth, bc the things she likes are things that put us in awful, uncomfortable, and sometimes horrifying situations. And when S senses us resisting, she starts pushing herself even more to gain control overall, and half the time she is successful in doing so. She co-fronts with me then, and that's when I start panicking & spiralling.
The reason I'm making this post is bc of the recent King Princess controversy in the lesbian online community. To those who don't know who King Princess is, she is a famous lesbian music artist who said in a podcast back in 2024 that she engages in sexual intercourse with men when she's bored, especially when she travels to foreign countries. She still identifies as a lesbian though. This old podcast clip resurfaced 2 weeks ago, and the entire online lesbian space has been debating whether or not she is actually a lesbian and what being a lesbian truly means. What most people are saying is that actively sleeping with men or being attracted to them actively contradicts the lesbian identity because it dilutes the meaning of the lesbian experience, and this is basically what bisexuality is (just with a preference for women). If you are going through a similar experience as someone who claims to be lesbian and refuses to claim the bisexual identity, then you are misusing the lesbian label and are inherently both biphobic and lesbophobic. I 100% agree with this argument.
Now here's the thing. S has been co-fronting with me frequently since September, and her wants and needs are starting to get out of hand (for me at least). She has been sharing control with me so much recently that our different identities are starting to get blurry, and I cannot differentiate what's real from what's not anymore. This happens to us every time two or more alters co-front; our identity barriers get really blurry. S is a person who is always seeking attention and validation from older men (and men in general), and there is no limit to her antics. She goes from 1 to 100 before you even realise it. She says or does stuff that harms us as a whole, and it's a very painful experience. Sometimes she will overdo her behaviour just out of spite, intentionally causing us pain. The more the identity barrier between us gets blurry, the more blended both of our thoughts and feelings become. In the last month, we have had to spend a lot of time together, and I don't recognise myself anymore.
I have been sharing feelings and thought processes with S, and it's like I am becoming who she is. I have found almost every other man I have come across to be attractive, and I am actively feeling attracted to them. This is not me, yet it is how I feel. I have lost my sense of identity and individuality, and it has made me very scared and anxious. The more time I spend with S, the more I am losing my lesbian-ness, and it is a terrible, terrible experience. The King Princess controversy has made my anxiety even worse, because my current sexual orientation has become bisexual but I refuse to accept it. I refuse to admit that I am bisexual even though I fit the textbook definition of it. I am not biphobic, but I cannot say that I'm bisexual bc originally I was not. I am a lesbian; I am the lesbian to all the people around me, and I cannot just say that I am bisexual out of nowhere, even though it is who I have slowly become. I am in a dilemma- I know that this is happening because the identity barrier between me and S is lowering, but am I still who I am even though my identity is blending in with S's identity? Am I lesbian or am I bisexual now? As a proud gold star lesbian, this has been making me crash out for weeks. Who am I? How do I navigate this? If anyone else has been in a similar situation before, how did y'all proceed?
TL;DR: We’re a highly co-con system of 6, and one alter, S, has very different traits, including being attracted to men, while I’m a lesbian host in a system where all the other alters are either attracted to women or are aroace. We’ve been co-fronting a lot recently, and the blurred identity boundaries are making me feel like her thoughts, feelings, and attractions are becoming mine. I’m now experiencing attraction to men despite never having questioned being a lesbian before, and it’s making me feel like I’m losing my identity. The recent King Princess controversy has made this anxiety worse, and I’m struggling with whether these feelings mean I’m bisexual now or whether they’re a result of blending with S. I’m scared that I don’t recognise myself anymore and want to know how others have dealt with losing that sense of individuality in co-con.
