That time of year thou mayst in me be hard

I strongly identify with the tendency Jon perceives in himself. It operates most fundamentally in my understanding of sexuality: my experience has never included the desire to mate intimately with a female, sexually or otherwise. Over time, this led to an implicit tendency to think of women as asexual creatures. I am a male, and my experience of sexuality is that males -- and only males, with very few exceptions -- are sexually exciting. I honestly don't think it was until I came out to myself as gay around age 14, that it occurred to me that girls and women could be capable of sexual attraction. There had never been any need to think of them as sexual beings in my male-attracted-to-males worldview. To this day, it remains an intellectual understanding, not a visceral one.

Gender identity and sexuality are of course different, but they're not unrelated. I wonder to what extent the close connection for Jon and me (and other gay men?) between sexual energy and socialization among the genders is related, causally or otherwise, to gay identity.