LGBT News BBC article, "I am gay....."

I don't think I was born to love women at all. It was always guys until I was 18. Even then, I continued my interest in those of the male gender. I wonder if the influence of my father had something to do with my turning towards women. My straight sister was smart to get out early; after high school she was out of here. I on the other hand, for some important reasons, have been stuck living with my parents. Seeing the way my father treats my mother may have influenced an interest in women. But I digress.

Bottom line: "Born That Way" isn't a truth.

 

Very interesting article. It's almost like heresy to say that you aren't born with your sexuality... just about all of my friends, straight and queer, think that it's totally biological. But maybe the 'cause' of sexuality lies somewhere between being born that way and the old theories that people are gay because of absent fathers and overbearing mothers or what have you. And in the end, does it matter? Even if being gay was a choice, why would that make it wrong?
Just throwing in my two cents.

 

I believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle, the labels themselves don't have any inherent meaning beyond what we give them. So when someone identifies as homosexual or bisexual, the meaning will always be highly personal. Just because someone at some point in their lives felt attraction to men, it doesn't mean that they should identify as bisexual if they feel later on an attraction to women. It is their choice on what label they feel comfortable with and many choose to identify as homosexual instead of bisexual and their label is perfectly valid because of its subjective nature. However, trying to claim that all people who are attracted to one sex and never felt any other attraction have the potential to change does not work well. Lesbian women receive enough harassment as it is from men who view their sexuality as fluid and that don't accept the validity of their orientation. The person who wrote the article doesn't seem to take the very real problems associated with complete fluidity seriously enough and that leaves me a bit uncomfortable. Projection of your own experiences on others and making assumptions based on your needs is always a bad idea.

While I sympathize with the desire to view sexuality as completely fluid for everyone, it is not something that I personally connect with. I believe that my sexual orientation was set at birth and that it is highly unlikely that it will change and that I will suddenly feel a sexual attraction to men. Believing that sexuality is fluid can hurt a person's ability to accept their sexuality and establish a stable identity. It can cause a person to try and change their sexuality because they believe it is fluid and a choice and have prejudicial views towards LGBT people. There are very real costs to believing that sexuality is fluid and there is a reason why sexuality being a choice is one of the main ideas that anti LGBT people tend to use against us. I believe that if you have a fluid sexuality, it is important to accept that for many people sexuality really is stable and won't change in the same way as it is important to accept that for some people sexuality is fluid.

In an ideal world, the author of this article's view would be mostly positive. Everyone being bisexual does remove any stigma associated with the label. However, we don't live in an ideal world and people continue to have prejudices and act according to their needs and desires. Parents still want their children to settle down in a straight marriage and will go to great lengths to encourage that. People still believe that LGBT people are condemned to hell and will tell as such to a person who identifies as LGBT. There are huge amount of social pressures to not identify as LGBT to others, yet still people do so, because it is a part of who we are, whether or not we like it or not.

 

I think what the author is saying is that he is choosing to identify as gay even though that is not his natural orientation. He seems to be bisexual as he clearly fell in love and was able to have sex with both men and women but he feels comfortable identifying as gay and there should be nothing wrong with choosing to identify as gay. To that extent I agree, but I wonder if part of his reasoning for identifying as gay has to do with biphobia. Cynthia Nixon also stated that she chose to be gay because she dislike the bad reputation that many bisexuals face.

I feel like a lot of these articles where people say that chose to be gay are about bisexual people that disliked the label bisexual or they felt more connected with being queer and felt that the only way they could do so was by identifying as gay. This wasn't a case of a person who was straight suddenly deciding that they were going to like the same sex and be gay. It doesn't exactly work like that which is why I think the whole idea of choosing to be gay is bogus. However, you can choose how to identify which is what the article suggests. I wonder if there was less of a stigma with identifying as bisexual or if gay and lesbian people did not shame bisexuals for not being "queer enough", we wouldn't see articles such as these being published.

 

This basically.

None of what that person in the article said goes against the notion that sexual orientation is biological.

 

While I respect his decision, it sort of plays into biphobia and the idea that bisexuality doesn't exist, since "they all end up with men, anyway". Then, you have plenty of guys on this site who have come out of marriages, but will tell you that what they thought was love wasn't love at all (I disagree, and think there isn't one sort of love, but that's another topic).

It's a vicious cycle: biphobia forces bisexuals to come out as gay, which only reinforces the idea that you're either 100% on one team or another. A label is just that, a label. There's as much diversity within the gay community as there is straight. We also can't ignore how human understanding of sexuality has changed, over the ages.

I don't think it should matter whether someone is "born this way" or not. That's sort of beside the point, and making it seem like we should be defending our attractions. Even if we weren't born this way, we deserve the same rights as anyone else. For all we know, some might have well had more of a choice than others, but what matters is where we're at now...

 

I can't be arsed to read through the really long article but by changing 'gay' to straight I got "Look, I'm straight. But there is one penis other than my own that I absolutely love and adore"
Oh well, it doesn't really matter in the end. Life goes on whichever friction you prefer