LGBTQ stories

Angela Stahl.

"The summer before my freshman year of high school, I attended a softball camp at the local college," says Angela Stahl, a sophomore student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. "During the camp, I started to grow close to two girls. I admired them for their skill level; they were way better than I was. As the days grew on, I started to become confused as to whether I felt so frazzled around these girls because they were older than me and I respected and admired their athletic abilities, or if I had a crush on one of them."

Though she'd never considered dating a girl at this point in her life, Angela says that she began to realize she would be comfortable in a relationship with a girl and really wanted to give it a shot.

"Practice for the school softball team started a few weeks later, and I started to grow close to the girls on the team," she says. "The majority of my team identified as either bisexual or lesbian. Homosexuality was the norm. As a crush developed for one of the players on my team, I felt the time had come to tell my friends and family that I felt I should identify as . I told my mom first. Her response, which I will remember forever, was, 'Whatever makes your peaches tingle.'

"My dad jokingly requested that I date more girls so that he wouldn't have to worry about a teen pregnancy. My girl friends had no problem with my sexuality, and the dynamic didn't change."

Telling the men in her life about her sexuality, on the other hand, yielded a different reaction.
"When I told the boys, it seemed to break down a barrier in our friendship, and we could bond in more ways now than we could before," Angela says. "If anything, my social status went up, because, at that point in time, my peers viewed bisexuality as, 'more likely to be open to threesomes,' which wasn't actually true. But I was okay with the positive attention at the time.

"Once I told all my friends, I felt the need to play the part. I was aiming to be the stereotypical butch. I wore my hair back and stopped wearing makeup and used cologne instead of perfume.

"After dating my first girlfriend, Kristen, I became comfortable with my new identity. I came to the realization that I didn't have to dress or act in any particular way; I just needed to continue to act like myself. My experience was very easy because of all the support I had around me. My school had a large and involved GSA and a permanent transsexual substitute.

"Once I got to college, I realized that the term pansexual suited my preference more appropriately," Angela says. "I personally think that labeling myself for my sexuality is strange. However, I understand that everyone does not think the way that I do, and some people need to be able to categorize people in order to understand them. For this reason, I continue to label my sexuality."