Being gay is a part of who you are! It's not a choice... it's a part of all the pieces that make someone unique. It's frustrating that we have to keep going over that in 2018! But let's. And within the marginalized community is a another marginalized community.

Redditor _Barbhara asked _Blind gay people of Reddit, how did you know you were gay? That is a loaded question. And it means a lot to a lot of people. And the stories are worth the read.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE BLIND TO WE'RE ALL THE SAME.

A common misconception about being gay is that the awareness of being gay is any different than the awareness of being straight.

Here's how I know I'm straight (I'm a guy). At a certain age, I started feeling differently around girls. I liked to look at them in a certain way. I liked to hear their voices, and to be around them. I liked to dance with them and hold their hands. I liked to kiss them and hug them, and talk on the phone to them well into the night. In "serious" relationships, I would feel like there just wasn't enough time, because we each had to go to our respective homes, instead of just staying up all night and talking, which was all we wanted to do.

Eventually I learned that this was what it was like to be straight. But I never thought of it as being straight. It was just how I was.

My son is gay. And all I can hope is that he has the opportunity to feel the same things while he's young as I did at his age. And I don't care who he feels that way about, nearly as much as some people think I should.

"I knew that I was very different from the other kids, and I felt horribly lonely. I didn't fit in with the sighted kids, but what was worse, I didn't fit in with the blind kids, either. All the boys were interested in sports and rough games. I wasn't. Some talked about girls, but because I was blind from birth, and because nobody ever talked to me about sex, I had no idea what was being discussed. I am ashamed to say that I didn't even know the difference between girls and boys, except that girls were usually nicer to me, and yet, I felt a strange feeling when hugging a male student.

When I was 15 years old, a girl explained to me how babies were born. "You're very stupid!" Harriet told me. "Don't you know anything?" I wanted to ask more questions. What was all this talk about "erections?" But I knew that if I admitted how little I knew, I'd be laughed at, so I kept quiet. I could not ask my mother. She never talked about such things, and I knew she would only be upset and tell me not to ask so many questions. So, I ordered books in braille about sex, and read them, and had a vague understanding.

What is surprising, and very important, is that I began to realize that I was attracted to other boys and men, and not to women. I realized that I had a strange feeling when close to people of my own sex that I did not have when I was with women. I somehow knew that this was not the way it should be, and never mentioned it to anyone."

Watch the film "The Way He Looks", beautiful story about a blind gay teen and his love for a classmate.

I couldn't see myself being straight.

I've been blind since birth and extremely gay. You know when you see someone and are attracted to them? It's kind of like that but I can't see.

People are attracted to voices, personality, pheromones and physical touch. What kind of bodies do you want to feel? Etc. Sexuality is not strictly visual. But I'm a woman so maybe the male experience is much different

I felt around.

And now I want to know the answer to a question I never fathomed existing.

Hi, this is Bob, the fellow who wrote the article about being blind and gay. A friend is helping me navigate the website. I have a few things to say. First of all, I want to thank the person who put my article on this website. I wrote the article quite a long time ago and was surprised to suddenly receive a few emails from people who had recently read my article. I was also very touched by the interest my article attracted. I originally wrote the article hoping to make new friends and contacts. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Many people read the article and liked it but they didn't keep in touch with me. Now that the article has appeared again, I am hoping to meet some new people.

My situation has stayed pretty much the same. I no longer have a guide dog and I'm quite a bit older :) I am now 67 years old.

Some have suggested that my situation proves that being gay is not a choice. I agree with this 100%. When I was 11 or 12, I didn't really understand the difference between boys and girls. To me, they were the same except that men turned me on and women didn't. I did not know about body parts and yet, I was attracted to my same sex. Because of my unique situation, I can tell you that being gay is not a choice.

I would like to mention the fact that there are many blind people who once had sight and became blind later in life. Their situation is very different from mine because they grew up sighted. There are some blind people who lost their sight at an early age, but again, they have memories that I do not have. I am among a small minority of blind people who have never seen at all. People sometimes ask me, "Do you see dark? Do you see black?" The answer is no, because I don't know what black is, I don't know what light is, I don't know what colors are. So when I meet someone, what I go by is their voice, their smell, their kindness, and their willingness to help me when needed. Probably one advantage of being blind and gay is that I get to walk with all my friends arm in arm and nobody says anything. Sometimes, I will even hold a person's hand. But since I am blind, no one questions why :)

I want to encourage you to communicate with me and to feel free to ask questions. But I want something more! I want you to try to get to know me and not just think of me as a source of information about an unusual topic. What I mean is this: many people have read my article, they tell me they liked it, they say they've never thought about a person in my situation, they thank me for writing it, but then, nothing happens. I know I won't have something in common with every person on this site, but I want to encourage you to ask not only about my situation, but to tell me about your situation. Again, I am truly grateful for the wonderful responses I have received and I look forward to getting to know more about you. I will stop for now, as my poor friend is probably getting tired of typing.

Warm hugs to you all, Bob

I had a friend who was gay and blind, what struck me the most is how he was fearless about going to dates from grindr. It was very hard for him to choose who to talk with on it because people rely so much on photos on this app and sometimes doesn't even write something about them in the bio. So he chatted with some guys found the one with he connected to, then send a photo and meet the guy in a metro station and wait for the guy to find him. It would always scare me, but he never had bad situations, only some guy who never showed up, or some who didn't like the fact he was blind, because he didn't always tell in fear of immediate rejection. I helped him choose a good photo for grindr, and secretly photoshop it a little to remove a small imperfection. I always loved to be the one who guide him within a group of friends, he takes your lower arm to follow you and I would describe what I saw and tell him the cute guys I would see.

He told me that the only advantage of being blind that its boyfriend could pass for its guide and take its hand and people would never say anything or give strange look compared to two sighted guys.

I asked him how did he knows he was gay, and it was along the lines that he discovered he would prefer to be affectionate with men, prefer men's voice and company. He was very open about it with its blind friends, and Internet and forums clearly helped him a lot.

Not blind, but I imagine I would know I was gay because I would find a man's voice sexier than a woman's. I would imagine I would get to know other guys and have crushes on them , since you don't need to see someone to get to know them through conversation and eventually find their personality attractive.

My brother was born blind and has come out as gay recently (he's 21). As other people on here have mentioned, there's much more to sexual attraction than just visual aspects. As he explained to me, in middle school and high school he just started to notice that he was more attracted to boys than girls- their deeper voices, assertiveness, and masculine scent. He also found people who were interested in "boy" stuff like sports, guns, video games, etc. to be more interesting and attractive than people who were into the stereotypical things females like. He actually went to a high school for the blind and was on the wrestling team there (ha yes there is such a thing) his junior and senior years. As funny as it sounds, it was there he fully discovered his affection for other males once he became physical with them on the wrestling mat.

As a blind gay person, I can answer this because I was legally blind and now I am totally blind.

For all of the questions about attractions, I encourage all of you to read the good dates on myblog and that will answer a lot of your questions.

In all other aspects, this question is stupid to be honest. That's how I knew what sex I was attracted to because I found the idea of a male body, male voice, male hair, sexually arousing.

When I was legally blind I liked the build of men and the touch of a man's body and hands. I like muscles on a man and I liked, when I could see some, men with tans because they also were easier to see, but that's beside the point.

For me, voice and hands are very much my defining basis. There's little things I evaluate like how hairy a guy is or how tall he is, I like men who are taller than I am, by the way, if his face has a nice shape, and yes, I do feel faces but it's when I know them a bit longer and when I want to learn more about this very hot sounding man I am attracted to. I don't go about feeling dudes faces randomly and every time I meet a person.

This is true for me now, but it was also true when I was legally blind. Since I can't look at pictures anymore, I have to depend on solely how they execute their thoughts in an email or text message or anywhere online. Written communication is a huge factor in my dating decisions. If you can't hold my interest with sentences and paragraphs and you'd rather just write one worded replies to my messages, chances are, you won't go out with me. I won't ask you to go out with me. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but I am firm when it comes to my tastes. If you can't articulate a complete thought or an idea in an email or Facebook post, chances are I will lose interest in you very quickly.

But basically, my attractions hinge on the voice, the body build and how that appears to my touch, and how well you can verbally and textually communicate.

Theory: Braille tape, stating their gender, on their penis.

But there's more to attraction than visual appeal.

Sound of their voice, their actual personalities and traits, and even the feel of other's bodies is probably what defines it for blind people.

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