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Jude “I’m sick of being labeled” Adams-Foster wasn’t avoiding calling himself gay because of internalized homophobia, or fear of being ostracized by his peers, or what Callie might say, or any of that. It was also true that he hadn’t ever liked girls that way. His avoidance of being labeled as gay wasn’t what Connor thought. It wasn’t even wanting to be seen as “Jude” instead of as a label, despite that being what he’d said on the beach that evening with Connor at the end of summer. It was something else, and he hadn’t known how to articulate it at the time.
When he’d acquiesced and told Connor, “I am super gay for you,” he was getting closer to the truth. But that time when he tried on that dress he’d found in his foster dad’s closet, some long forgotten thing that must’ve belonged to the man's ex-wife, his motivation was not exactly a gay impulse. It was a gender exploration moment. And Mariana had seen this same flavor of impulse rising up in him as he eyed her nail polish. His choice at the time to accept her offer to have her paint his nails was another early step on a path, but he really had no idea at the time where the path was leading.
At the Come As You Are LGBTQ Prom, Jude caught sight of an androgynous individual. He couldn’t quite place if they were a boy or a girl. Hesitantly, Jude meandered in the person’s general direction, not making eye contact but getting near enough that he could read the pronoun pin the person was wearing. It read “xe/xem”. The person was busy in conversation with someone who was wearing the hottest pink suit Jude had ever seen, and Jude didn’t want to interrupt. Instead, he walked back to sit alone at one of the tables with white tablecloths, starting to look up the neopronouns on his phone and learning some really eye-opening stuff.
A few months later, Jude identified as a nonbinary demisexual individual who had only ever been attracted to one person in his life. So Jude was not gay after all. Jude was not a guy attracted to guys. Jude was maybe only attracted to guys, time would tell – but Jude was not a guy. Jude no longer used he/him pronouns, for now trying out they/them. If Jude wanted to label their attraction pattern as to masculinity or towards guys, andro-demisexual would be an option Jude might toy with down the line. For now, nonbinary and demisexual covered it plenty well.
Connor wanted to be validating as soon as Jude came out to him about this newfound identity discovery. Connor thought more about his own orientation label. If he was attracted to Jude and Jude wasn’t actually a guy, then logic led Connor to realizing he was not only attracted to guys. And maybe gay wasn’t the right label for him either.
The more Connor thought about it, the more Connor realized, he truly had liked Daria a lot, in a way that was different than friendship. He’d even had a crush on Maddie and been really excited to ask her out. The confounding factor had been that he’d fallen so far for Jude that he originally assumed he must be gay. Jude was the first person he’d felt such intensely strong feelings for. The first and only person so far in his young life that he’d been in love with was a guy, so Connor originally assumed he must be gay.
The other problem for Connor was that he hadn’t really known guys could be bi, or that there were more sexual orientations for boys than just gay and straight. After Jude came out as nonbinary and demisexual, Connor took a couple of weeks for his own in-depth research into the entire queer spectrum of identities and his own self-reflection too. Connor’s conclusion was that he was pansexual, and gender didn’t influence his attraction or who he might have the ability to fall in love with as much as the person themself.
As they continued dating, Jude and Connor didn’t come out as anything other than gay to Connor’s homophobic dad. They didn’t want to deal with additional forms of queerphobia too from that man. But slowly everyone else in their lives started to be informed, one by one, and even Lena and Stef had things they learned from thanks to Jude and Connor. They slowly got better at considering Jude their child, not their son, and Jude found themself wearing the blue nail polish more and more often, feeling more and more aligned with their gender identity when they did.
For Jude’s birthday that year, Mariana tentatively asked Jude if they might want something girly as a gift. “Maybe some make-up, I know even some gay guys wear a lot of eyeliner?” she’d said. And Jude was so grateful to have her as a sister. Jude appreciated the sentiment immensely, but instead asked for some gender neutral jewelry if she could find some that she could imagine girls OR guys wearing. They had also just started growing out their hair a bit. Jude didn’t know much, but they knew they would still be exploring what kind of gender expression was the most “them” for a long time.