When you’re a lesbian, there are certain things you’ve either already heard from straight people, or expect to hear. Like when people ask you who the boy is in the relationship, or they ask why you hate men so much, or why like girls who “look like men” when you could have a “real man?"

All are excruciating to hear and while they’re uncomfortable to answer, most of the time you can roll your eyes about it later and tell all your other lesbian friends and laugh it off. It’s annoying to be treated like a walking open submission box, where people ask you any and all of their sexuality-based questions, but usually they're easy enough to answer and get over.

I say “usually” because words can often be violent, just as easily as they can be shrug-worthy. Words can be condescending and invalidating and humiliating and rage-provoking. Certain questions phrased a certain way can feel like an attack on who you are.

Take, for example, the question I was asked in my Black Odyssey class earlier this week. We were talking about identity and somehow the LGBTQ community and the issues of labels came up. One guy in my class was saying how labels aren’t important and that they just drive us further apart. I don’t usually take it upon myself to come out in the middle of a class discussion, but this time I did for two reasons: One, people were talking about this issue as if no person in the room fell under the LGBTQ umbrella, and two, I had an answer for this guy.

So I said that I’m a lesbian and choose to use a label rather than just say, “I am exclusively attracted to girls” because the latter is a mouthful, whereas the former is not. It’s a word, an identifier, that a lot of women use to describe their sexuality. It creates community.

Instead of accepting my answer and moving on, the guy decided to look me straight in the eye and ask, with the smuggest expression on his face, “So how do you really know you’re a lesbian? Maybe you just haven’t met the right man yet. Sexuality is fluid, you know.”

I didn’t have a chance to answer his highly offensive and invasive and ridiculous question the way I wanted to, only because I was seeing red and really did not trust my mouth to say anything logical or kind. I was too angry. I’m still angry, but it’s subsided a bit and now I’m finding the words.

There are three things wrong with what this kid said to me. Other than it being a completely unnecessary response that had very little to do with the topic on hand -- we were talking about labels, not our coming out stories -- it was also an awful thing to ask a lesbian. So here’s the way I wanted to answer:

“How do you know you’re a lesbian?” is a hard question to ask. It’s like asking how do I know I'm a size 9 shoe, or how do I know that my favorite color is purple. It’s as simple and as complicated as saying, “I am exclusively attracted to women.” For some people, that response is good enough, but for others, it isn’t, and when it isn’t, they keep challenging you like they’re trying to prove that you’re not actually a lesbian because of variable x. It’s a "gotcha" technique. A double-edged sword.

Hearing that question feels a bit like being talked down to, like I’m too stupid to understand myself and the sexuality spectrum, and do I really know what I’m talking about? Yes, I do know what I’m talking about. Stop treating me like a child.

I don’t think I need to explain why “Maybe you just haven’t found the right man yet” it a disgusting thing to say to a lesbian. But then, I'm afraid, almost every lesbian I know has had this told to her, so I’ll clarify for anyone who is still confused: Lesbians are lesbians. Telling a lesbian she hasn’t found the right man yet invalidates her sexuality and makes it seem like all lesbians aren’t really lesbians because why would you like other girls when there are guys?

And, for full disclosure, I spent a long time trying to label my sexuality. I spent a long time accepting the lesbian label. To me, it felt like a curse word, something I shouldn’t say, let alone identify with. So to be told that I’m not really a lesbian because I haven’t met the right man yet after years of struggling and to say that I am not attracted to men, is, at the very least, uncomfortable. It’s on par with telling a kid that they’re too young to know their sexuality. Invalidation is harmful and violent and another way for people to express their homophobia.

When I told my friends this story, one of them said, “It seems like people only bring up the fluidity of sexuality when they’re talking to lesbians because they want them to be open to men." The more I think about it, the more I realize how true that is. This is another experience that I found which most of my lesbian friends can relate to, but my other non-lesbian friends don’t. The topic of fluid sexuality really does come up when we want lesbians to be open to dating men, because for some reason, the idea that dating a girl can be enough for a girl confuses some people. And again, it’s invalidating. Of course, for some people, sexuality is fluid, but for others, it’s not. I know girls who used to identify as bisexual but then identified as a lesbian and vice versa, and those experiences are completely valid. Some peoples’ sexualities do fluctuate and that’s fine. But others’ don’t. Mine does not. I accepted a long time ago that I’m not attracted to men. I never have been. I never will be. And whether or not a girl identifies as a different label in the past or future, the point is that if she identifies as a lesbian now, you don’t go and question it. You wouldn’t go around and question a straight person about their sexuality. This is no different.

So, to the guy in my class who had the nerve to say this to me, you didn’t say anything thought-provoking or profound that made me go back to my dorm and really consider my attraction. Your words were violent and homophobic and nothing that hundreds of lesbians who have come before me have not heard. Your “witty” response only reaffirmed that I love girls and only girls. I am a lesbian and that’s the beginning and end of it. And it is enough.