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Feb. 23rd, 2018 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI wrote this in response to a Facebook 'memory' from five years ago, which I will reproduce below my new text.
My thoughts from five years ago are pretty close to my thoughts now, except that I identify as queer (the best umbrella term available to me) rather than bisexual. Bisexual feels too limiting to me; too tied to a gender binary.
I'm frequently a real contrarian. Someone says that sexual orientation isn't a choice, and I think about the ways in which it is a choice, or something very like it, for me. And about the ways in which those categories are essentially social constructions anyway and are only given meaning by the people who are attached to them. About how I'd never given any thought to whether I might be something other than straight until the first person to express any interest in my happened to share a gender with me and my reaction was to think for a while and logically decide it didn't make any sense to exclude half the population as potential partners because of something as arbitrary as gender. (This was before I became really aware of non-binary gender, so I was still thinking within that framework.)
Someone shares that meme about how asking two women in a relationship which one is the man is like asking two chopsticks (or rather はし [hashi] because I kind of hate that Englishism) which one is the fork, and I think of all the ways that it really isn't that simple. It would be wonderful if relationships could exist outside externally imposed heteronormativity, but that's really not easy, nor desirable for everyone. I think of some of queer academic literature I've read like Dr. Mignon Moore's "Lipstick or Timberlands? Meanings of Gender Presentation in Black Lesbian Communities" about gender presentation among African-American lesbians and think about the butch/femme dynamic that exists in some such communities. It seems to me that the increasing acceptance of genderfluidity only makes that sort of analysis more applicable. (Not that I'm at the forefront of this area by any means!)
That's easy for me to do, given my relative position of privilege compared to many people who are dealing with these issues. But I guess it just comes down to the fact that nothing is as simple as you think it is. Nothing.
But I think the most important part of the choice vs. inherent characteristic argument is this: If we argue that being gay (or whatever thing you want to put here) is ok because it's not a choice, we imply that for people for whom it *is* a choice, or for whom it feels like a choice, it is not okay. If we state that being gay is not a 'phase', how does that affect people whose sexual preference is somewhat fluid and changing?
It really shouldn't matter. It continues to matter because we allow it to.
My thoughts from five years ago are pretty close to my thoughts now, except that I identify as queer (the best umbrella term available to me) rather than bisexual. Bisexual feels too limiting to me; too tied to a gender binary.
I'm frequently a real contrarian. Someone says that sexual orientation isn't a choice, and I think about the ways in which it is a choice, or something very like it, for me. And about the ways in which those categories are essentially social constructions anyway and are only given meaning by the people who are attached to them. About how I'd never given any thought to whether I might be something other than straight until the first person to express any interest in my happened to share a gender with me and my reaction was to think for a while and logically decide it didn't make any sense to exclude half the population as potential partners because of something as arbitrary as gender. (This was before I became really aware of non-binary gender, so I was still thinking within that framework.)
Someone shares that meme about how asking two women in a relationship which one is the man is like asking two chopsticks (or rather はし [hashi] because I kind of hate that Englishism) which one is the fork, and I think of all the ways that it really isn't that simple. It would be wonderful if relationships could exist outside externally imposed heteronormativity, but that's really not easy, nor desirable for everyone. I think of some of queer academic literature I've read like Dr. Mignon Moore's "Lipstick or Timberlands? Meanings of Gender Presentation in Black Lesbian Communities" about gender presentation among African-American lesbians and think about the butch/femme dynamic that exists in some such communities. It seems to me that the increasing acceptance of genderfluidity only makes that sort of analysis more applicable. (Not that I'm at the forefront of this area by any means!)
That's easy for me to do, given my relative position of privilege compared to many people who are dealing with these issues. But I guess it just comes down to the fact that nothing is as simple as you think it is. Nothing.
But I think the most important part of the choice vs. inherent characteristic argument is this: If we argue that being gay (or whatever thing you want to put here) is ok because it's not a choice, we imply that for people for whom it *is* a choice, or for whom it feels like a choice, it is not okay. If we state that being gay is not a 'phase', how does that affect people whose sexual preference is somewhat fluid and changing?
It really shouldn't matter. It continues to matter because we allow it to.
I'm up and off to school to do more homework! But first, more meme commentary. It says:
"Myth: Being gay is a phase. If being gay is a phase, maybe being straight is a phase too."
This is something I've thought about, as a bisexual person. Maybe being gay *can* be a phase, in the sense that a person's sexuality can shift through time. Perhaps there's a genetic component to whether someone has the capacity for sexual attraction to particular genders or not, and perhaps there is some choice to the matter as well. It's a structure vs. agency debate, and I don't know which one has primacy.
In fact, there's an argument that I like that the very existence of the reified categories 'gay' and 'straight' are exclusionary and have the effect of privileging false dichotomies of gender and sex. (I still need to write more about my current thoughts on gender when I have time.)
But in the end, it doesn't matter. Not one bit. Whether it's genetic predetermination or conscious choice, it shouldn't be anybody's business but your own. If we argue that being gay is ok because it's not a choice, we imply that for people for whom it *is* a choice are not okay. If we state that being gay is not a 'phase', how does that affect people whose sexual preference is somewhat fluid and changing?
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Date: 2018-02-23 02:04 pm (UTC)