Was reminded that my sexuality is still seen as a fetish or something taboo :(

Recently, I've been trying to put myself out there to get more involved with my hobby. This includes participating in the community surrounding said hobby and working on coping with my social anxiety. It's a pretty open-minded group, so I actually felt pretty comfortable about being out as queer and being more interested in femmes and how my partner is also genderqueer.

Having grown up in a very religious area, I have internalized a lot of homophobia, including feeling like my presence is predatory and creepy, so I usually try to make myself as small as possible. I actually have made a few new queer friends through this hobby group, so I was feeling a bit less shy about hiding parts of myself that I notice my straight counterparts don't feel the need to hide at all.

Then at an event, the conversation about having a daughter who turned out to be a lesbian came up. One person said she wouldn't care if her daughter was gay and had actually assumed her daughter was, but another woman there who I had been starting to become friends looked shocked and said she could never understand why a child would share such a thing with their parents, that she would pretend to understand, but would never understand or accept it on the inside.

It made me feel a little self-conscious... like, what if it would be better to be straight. I don't feel like I can be open with this person anymore and now I worry what some people's real views are in this group. It's already hard for me to open up, and I'm grateful I've made some friends, but I don't want to be friends with someone who will find my existence as shocking or unnatural....

Anyways, I just needed to get that off my chest. ***, it's nothing compared to some of the things I've had to put up with. I've been called slurs, ostracized, and been fetishized in unwanted ways, but for some reason the whole incident really stuck with me.Maybe it's because I finally let myself get comfortable with a group of people but realize I don't really know them all that well?