A lesbian challenges the premise of my “Choicer Challenge“:
I’m sure you know this, but for plenty of homos, queers, etc. there really is a choice to be made. Gay men tend to think that biology determined everything right from the very first cell division—before you were even a person—but that overlooks a lot of other people’s experiences and furthermore, it overlooks how boys are socialized to follow their dicks/desires right from the beginning. You might have made a choice so long ago you think it’s nature that did it for you. Or maybe there are some bio-homos out there. But as for me, I tried heterosexuality, but living in NYC in a time when “experimenting” was encouraged I realized I could choose something else. I recognized a future for myself in all the miserable magazine articles about women perpetually dissatisfied with their boyfriends, husbands, etc. and realized that I could pass on all that and still enjoy the lipstick and fashion (allegedly designed to help women attract men). I could have been another miserable straight women; instead I made the happy choice to be a lesbian. Not because I had to, but because I liked it. I highly recommend it, Mrs. Palin.
Perhaps boys are socialized to follow their dicks/desires from the beginning while women are socialized to defer to dicks and men’s desires from the beginning. And if that’s the case gay men may have an easier time realizing they’re gay, accepting it, and making the choice to come than gay women. But is that really the case? I recognize the unique—and destructive—ways that girls are socialized, but boys are under intense pressure to conform too. It’s not like girls are told they MUST be straight while boys are allowed to make a free choice between gay or straight.
While I agree that socialization might be part of it, I also wonder whether the difference in male/female biological response is also in play. I would imagine that it’s hard for a guy to not know whether he’s aroused or not, as his dick is right out there. For women, since our sexual response is more internal, it can take time to realize that feeling X has to do with sexual arousal.
Also, because of that, it’s easier for a woman to choose to be in a relationship where there is no desire or connection. Her partner probably won’t notice, and she might not either, if she hasn’t taught herself to listen to her self. I know gay men can choose to be with women, but I’m guessing they’re continually aware that they’re willing themselves to respond. I’m not sure that it’s the same with women, particularly women who never cultivated that self-awareness.
There’s a difference between ‘it is never a choice’ and ‘it generally isn’t a conscious choice’, but in practical terms…well, I have no conscious memory of choosing to be attracted to women and not to men.
I would take issue with the ‘follow their dicks’ notion because the mind—conscious or un—is really in charge, much as some would like to deny this to remove a sense of responsibility. It might not be the the conscious, writing (or trolling) mind, but unless someone fondles you by surprise, the first sexual stimulation you get from someone is going to be the mind’s interpretation of data from the senses.
I’m most inclined to see people as being fundamentally straight, gay, bisexual, or asexual—yes, these each represents a distribution of traits and behaviours, but I think they’re fairly-well peaked. Bisexuals can choose.
And I really think that Dan should have added to the (now Constitution-length) challenge: “If you’re worried about sinning, we can assemble a crowd of gay people to chant as one, much like the Jews in that Mel Gibson movie, ‘Let his cum be on our heads.'”
More like another closet bisexual. If you have the capability to make a “choice” you are a bisexual. =)
If you are attracted to both genders and can choose, that would be the definition of bisexual.
@3/4: I know 2 different lesbians who have no attraction for men, but still assumed that they would still marry one and be unhappy, like this pro-choice lesbian. Realising that they could instead be with a woman was a happy surprise. They were both in their twenties when they came out and had always just thought of sex as a bit of unpleasantness they had to go through to be able to have children.
I really don’t think this woman’s a bisexual, I just think she doesn’t/didn’t listen to and value her own body and her own sexual response.
Maybe it’s the lack of coffee, but doesn’t the letter writer actually confirm Dan’s hypothesis while attempting to challenge it? Her sexuality “Choice” was to be a miserable “heterosexual” or a happy lesbian. The gender performative “lipstick and fashion” is just a red herring that plays on the bootsflannelandsubarus cliche and has zilch to do with sexuality.
Besides, isn’t one of most insidious aspects of the socialization of women in American culture that it’s good to be miserable, it makes you a good heterosexual woman because, just like Marge Simpson, you’re doing the right thing for your family?
Sorry writer, but you sound like you got hoodwinked for years. I’m glad you found happiness, but everything in your letter suggests the “choice” is the same as the “choice” that Larry Craig makes every day, and that doesn’t make either one of you straight.
I went through a similar experience. I had assumed I was straight after being raised in an area where “gay” was just an insult and there wasn’t a single out student in my high school. I ended up going to a PFLAG meeting in college, and afterword realized that there was no reason I couldn’t enjoy sex with a woman. A tongue is a tongue, right? After that, I became aware of being attracted to female friends, and I sampled and enjoying naked woman porn. My interpretation isn’t that I chose, though. I think I always had the predilection to be bisexual, but that my same-sex attractions were repressed by my upbringing. I reinterpreted those feelings as friendship and repressed any sexual component.
It sounds like she’s more attracted to the type of relationship than the body of the person she would be in it with. It certainly seems possible that she’s being honest and got to choose. Most people just aren’t that fluid.
“boys are socialized to follow their dicks/desires right from the beginning. “
That is ri-dick-ulous. Boys are socialized to be straight and conform to expectations. If it was a choice, most people would choose to be straight because it is easier.
I agree with her that the whole rigid-biological-destiny model is one that much more closely resembles men’s experiences than women’s. As to choice, well, whatever makes you feel like you have autonomy, I guess.
Again, this is desire vs. behavior: if she really is making a choice between multiple possible alternatives in terms of sex-partner gender, then her desire is (at least potentially) bi- or pan-sexual, while her behavior is gay/lesbian. Self-label as whatever you like, letter-writer; based on my definitions of categories, you’re a bisexual who chooses to only have sex with women. What you’re choosing is your behavior; you’re not choosing your potential to be sexually attracted to both men and women (or you’re not actually sexually attracted to men, in which case you’re still not making a choice about your desire). I think what’s clouding this issue is that somehow there’s this idea that behavior always matches attraction always matches desire always matches fantasy etc., despite that fact that we obviously know that this isn’t the case (e.g. all of the closeted gay people who actually don’t engage in same-gender sexual encounters, or, more generally, all of the people who find someone sexually attractive, desire to engage in sexual behavior with that person, and don’t do so because the other person isn’t interested and they’re not rapists). Sexuality is the product of a constellation of factors (which is why I find the primary gender-based identification somewhat odd), most of which are not consciously determined (‘choices’), which makes it untrue to say that ‘sexuality’ is a choice.
There is a choice – the negative choice to live a miserable closeted life in a relationship with someone to whom you are not attracted, or the positive choice to come out as gay or bi & be in relationships with people to whom you are attracted.
The choice that we don’t have is to choose to whom we are attracted.
If this woman is saying that she “chose” not to be miserable in a doomed heterosexual marriage then her “choice” was whether or not to stay closeted, not who she would be attracted to.
This is kind of a weird definition of “choice.” Of course the “happy choice” is going to be the one you’re predisposed to. I don’t think anybody is biologically predisposed to one sexuality or another and goes through life hating it.
“Oh god, why do I have to be attracted to men when I hate them! Vaginas make me retch but I want ever so much to be aroused by them instead!”
You could power a small town off of the cognitive dissonance.
I would agree with those above that if you experience the election of your sexual orientation as a “choice” then you were bisexual to start with. Though there certainly is more plasticity in female sexuality, there’s no evidence that a straight woman can “decide” to become a lesbian and henceforth be attracted to females and no longer to males.
Considering my upbringing, surrounded as I was by gay folks and blissfully unaware that homophobia even existed (I’m sure it did even in gay old San Fran, but being straight I was obvlivious to it) the most natural “choice” for me would have been bisexuality. At around age 13, I asked myself if girls would be a possibility and my brain came back with a resounding “No”. Nothing has changed in the decades since.
As for boys being “socialized to follow their dicks/desires right from the beginning” that is pure bullshit. Oh sure boys are allowed to be openly sexual and “follow their dicks”…just as long as their dicks are following twats. If their dicks are following other dicks and they have the misfortune of that being noticable when they are young, they will be brutally put down in a way many girls that age who are “tomboys” (who may or may not be straight) can hardly imagine, most of the time.
This has been up for over an hour and still nothing from Seattle’s Blue Lovechild? Weird.
your house of cards is falling down danny
hahaha what? I thought that political lesbian bullshit was dead decades ago.
She’s as delusional as the christfags who think they chose to be straight. She’s a lesbian, but she thinks she’s so smart that she’s obviously decided to be a lesbian since it was so convenient for her. She’s not that smart.
I agree that where choice comes in is behavior. Some people, possibly a great many people, have at least some capacity to desire both men and women. They can choose what to do with that capacity, but I do not see how having that capacity was a conscious choice.
Similarly, I only desire women. And yet, I could choose to behave in a way that is contrary to that desire (and likely be profoundly miserable). So I would agree with the non-choicers that *being* gay/straight/bi is not a choice. Whether or not you live your life in a way that is concordant with your desires is a different matter altogether.
On this issue of socialization, I think one major difference (at least for people of my generation and older — this may not be so true today) is that girls were more socialized to think of sex, and sexual gratification, as less important than most other aspects of a relationship.
I still say that the problem is “you”—for example, the stereotypical L.U.G. who knows she _should_ be attracted to women, but eventually finds that she isn’t, the closeted person in a straight marriage whose social persona is at odds (or at least not helping) their desiring self, the fan-boy’s self who wants to screw shoggoths but has been told repeatedly that it better not let anyone else knowt…. The self that does the talking(or writing is not identical to any of them, has intensely false perceptions of them in places, and so on.
(Pardon me for ranting: business reasons required that I act like a notional extrovert for forty minutes in a corporate office when all I really want to do is hole up in my home to read, alone with my spouse and animals and audio equipment like a decent person. Alienating labour: of rights, of life, of self.)
If all women who were perpetually impressed with the phallo-phobic screeds of certain women’s magazines turned immediately and permanently into lesbianism, it seems reasonable to assume the dating outlook for straight men would improve dramatically.
To further Dan’s point, I feel that the incredible pressures placed on boys and men to meet some sort of “real man” standard actually lead to many of the unfortunate pressures on women. Any woman who is unwilling to recognize that is a terrible feminist. And really insensitive. And kind of a jerk.
I’m sure those kids are killing themselves due to bullying because it is just so EASY for them to be gay. /snark
What a load of hooey. And I’m a not-by-choice-but-born-that-way-lesbian.
If I could choose to be a lesbian I would, because I’m certainly miserable as a straight woman. I’m not immune, intellectually at least, to the charms of pussy and boobs, but sadly for me, 1) I hate women (as opposed to people who happen to be female), and 2) it’s not sex for me if there’s not a penis in it. I wish it weren’t that way.
OK, I choose not to eat seafood–becuase I am nauseated by the mere aroma of fish! I do not choose to dislike seafood. My wife once forced me to try Salmon. I agreed with her that IT DIDN’T KILL ME, but it was horrible. I can’t just choose to like seafood. I wish I could like seafood–it would be a lot easier, plus it would be healthy for me! But I HATE IT! I could, of course, “choose” to eat excrement (if, says, there were a gun to my head). I can’t choose to like it. (I supposed the gun could inspire me to pretend that I like it.) Similarly, I have chosen sexual partners based on what I like or dislike. I can’t choose which gender I like! (For the record, I have no problem with other people loving seafood–as long as they don’t force me to eat and/or smell it!)
Yay! Another stupid opinion from a stupid person. This (stupid loudmouths who disagree or agree on the wrong things) and aids are why I don’t have rights. Oh, so now when I generalize from an isolated experience it’s wrong?
The whole “choice” issue gets muddled because people don’t understand what it means to be gay. Gayness is an ATTRACTION. It is NOT a behavior. That is why it is possible for someone who is celibate to self-identify as gay. What this letter writer CHOSE was to ACT on her innate desires. So, YES, people CHOOSE which behavior to engage in. Behavior, however, does not a gay make. It is the innate attraction that makes someone gay and that is NOT a choice.
Life is a series a choices, both conscious and subconscious ones, many in response to experiences and external factors. Much like evolution, the develpoment of personality and perferences is haphazard. While people may be genetically predisposed to certain outcomes, predisposition does not necessarily guarantee a specific outcome. For me it is really depressing for life to be more a matter of predestination than an exercise in free will. Too many use predestination or genetics as an excuse for their failings as human beings (just like a lot of republicans) A lot of people, nyself included at times, like to blame fate or others rather than take personal responsibility. Just general observations not specific to anyone’s sexuality. Each person is unique and I don’t know anyone well enough, except for maybe myself, to make any statement about who and what they are
Freewill isn’t a scientific concept. There’s good reason for that. As Quine said, two thousand years talking about freewill, and we’re no closer to answering the question. So much for freewill. Freewill does exist, just not the way any of you think it does. For example, how can one have freewill if it’s been proven that people make most evaluative decisions a full four to six seconds before they’re aware that they made them?
And secondly, you can’t really disambiguate sexual orientation from talk of sexual activity without being arbitrary. But that doesn’t=choice. Sexual orientation isn’t a choice…it’s called science.
@1 Not only that, but women are often raised with the *expectation* that the sex won’t be all that, or that it’s pretty *usual* to have an indifferent-to-negative reaction to sex. Throw in the not-uncommon difficulty of actually having an orgasm, even through masturbation and you’ve got all kinds of different issues for women to grapple with. In fact, both men and women seem to expect the desire for sex (particularly for the wife) WILL go away after a few years or after babies, etc.
Men also get all kinds of pressure, of course — none of the above is to say they don’t. But the results of societal pressure on gay men seems to be to produce the homophobic right wing / religious nut case than the silently unhappy married woman who might or might not make a break for it in middle age. (My college girlfriend, who made this “choice” back then and got herself the husband and 2.5 kids died in a car accident in what I’m pretty sure was suicide at 35.)
As for this “Bisexuals can choose.” I really want to take that apart at some point. Because in my experience, I don’t “choose” who I fall in love with, even though the pool of such people includes both men and women. I never set out to choose a lover from a particular sex. I don’t sit down and think, “OK I’ve had enough dick for a while, let’s hunt down some boobies for a change.” I mean, honestly. Maybe some bisexual people work that way, but it really just doesn’t feel like that to me.
Anyway, carry on, y’all. Just a minor digression there.
And if that’s the case gay men may have an easier time realizing they’re gay, accepting it, and making the choice to come than gay women.
Ha.
@21: Thank you.
“Oh, look at Johnny, he’s screwing our dog! He’s following his penis! What a marvelous child!”
Sorry writer, boys are not encouraged to follow their dicks from the beginning. Boys are pressured to pursue girls.
And just like @25 said, it’s the attraction that is important, not the behavior. The behavior can be chosen. Of course John Cummins can choose to suck Dan Savage’s dong, and if he can’t, that is a criticism of free will and whether anything is a choice.
What is important is whether the desire is there, and writer, the desire was there for you, the only choice you made was to act on it.
@28
http://tinyurl.com/44hgufo
@17 – there will always be “political lesbians,” as long as there is such a thing as a) sexism and b) bisexual women that can round up to lesbian, partly as a response to a). I don’t think either of those are going away anytime soon.
Note: the kind of “bisexuality” that allows you to actually *fall in love* with someone of either gender – that’s almost exclusively a female property. It just is.
@29: I know a bisexual woman who chose to only date men because she wanted to marry a man. She refused to date women that she had feelings for, because she knew that falling in love and having a serious relationship with a woman would keep her from her goal.
In my mind, that always seemed like a sad diminishment of possibility for love, but it was her choice.
If the letter writer really wanted to demonstrate the point that sexuality is a choice, she would have “chosen” to increase her attraction to men so that she could be happy with either sex. Instead, all this does is proves our collective point: the only “choice” you have is whether or not to give into the attractions that you didn’t choose. So while a gay person can choose the closet or a bi person can swear off men, neither person can choose away their genuine attractions.
I think there are really two things at work here:
1) Male and female sexuality is different.
A lot of the people who are especially objecting to the letter writer seem to be men. They think that she can’t possibly be telling the truth because it is so different from their own truth. There is a tangent available here because the letter writer is guilty of the same thing with her “socialization” nonsense. Just as the male readers project their inability to choose their sexuality on her, she projects her ability to choose on them.
2) The choicer challenge is flawed from the outset.
What man really thinks homosexuality is a choice other than the ones who are actively trying to avoid that choice? In other words, the choicers are pretty much all gay or bisexual. Would it really be that surprising if one of them were able to maintain a hard on while sucking your dick? I think I might be more impressed if they were able to stay hard while eating pussy.
tl;dr – Men can’t chose sexuality, some women can, Choicers are all fags.
Uh, I’m bisexual, and I never made any sort of choice about that. I had my first crushes on boys and girls at the ages of 4 and 7, respectively, and I first learned about the concept of bisexuality at 14. It was really distressing for me the year before I learned about bisexuality–my hormones were running rampant, I was having sex dreams about female friends, and I couldn’t figure out that there were bisexual people. I thought something was deeply wrong with me, and that I was the only one out there, or something. Mostly I was unhappy and confused. (I was really sheltered as a kid.)
Then I went to an arts high school. And suddenly everything fell into place.
I vehemently disagree with anyone who calls it a choice.
Thank you, BEG @29. That’s much more true to my experiences than all of these people saying that bisexuals get to choose. Does anyone chose who they’re attracted to? Or whether the person returns their attraction? Sure, I choose not to go making out with people who don’t want to make out with me… But is that really a choice? I tend to think of a choice as containing two or more viable options. Otherwise it doesn’t really feel like a choice to me.
@35: …Ugh. I guess that would be technically possible, but ugh. The idea honestly only occurred to me once, and the feeling of self-disgust and loathing that accompanied it made me gag. (It was when I was fifteen and living with homophobic parents who were convinced I was choosing the wrong lifestyle. I remember exactly where I was: in the bathroom, washing my face because I’d been crying again. I looked down into the water and thought about how much easier life would be if I were straight, and then I nearly threw up in the sink. It was like my whole body convulsed and screamed NO at me. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but that’s the only way I can describe it.) What she did would not be a viable option for me.
i.e., you can choose to be a closeted homosexual with little happiness and with a detrimental influence on those around you, or you can choose to be an open homosexual, fully-realized and embracing the potential for a real, authentic life, and to the benefit of those around you and in your larger cultural framework. So yes, it is a choice.
@37 — beautifully said. perfect.
@38: I think that — at least until she found her husband — her choice was as damaging to her as being a closeted gay would have been. Cutting herself off from those she could connect with, being afraid of falling in love… so awful.
Now that she’s married, I think she’s largely experiencing something similar to most monogamous people who marry. She meets people she’s attracted to, can acknowledge the attraction, but is clear that her choice of monogamy is her priority. She’s actually more free to recognize her attraction to women, because she’s not arbitrarily refusing relationships with them.
My friend came up with an excellent model, I’d like to know what sloggers think of it.
So we all know the Kinsey scale right?
with 0 being 100% straight and 6 being 100% gay and nothing in between? Here’s his scale:
Sexuality at birth: 0(straightest)-6(gayest)
Society’s push to be straight: 0(very strong)-6(very weak)
Life experiences: 0(experiences push towards straight)-6(experiences push towards gay)
So for him, he feels like he’s ‘naturally’ a Kinsey 4, but living in London (with low societal push to be straight) and bad experiences with women and many good experiences with men led him into his current long-term relationship with another man. So he feels like he’s now a 5 or 6. Of course, you can’t really reduce the ‘push’ of society or experiences to math, but he feels like those are the three influences on orientation. He thinks there are ‘true 0s’ and ‘true 6s’ who can’t be pushed no matter what effects from society or life experience, but that the 1-5s can be pushed this way or that way by society and their own experiences. That view makes sense to me.
I don’t see why it has to be so binary. It’s either a choice or it’s innate! It’s entirely one way for women and entirely another for men! People aren’t ants. It’s not that neat and tidy for most of us. People change over the course of their lives, and every individual is a little different. Most of it is innate for most of us (including bisexuality), but there’s still choice involved. And it may tilt a little bit one way for men and a little more the other for women, but it’s not a binary – men one way, women the other.
And, if anything, she kind of has it backwards about societal expectations: culturally, there is still a huge degree of prejudice against guys experimenting with one another, yet it’s considered “hot” for girls, at least while they’re in college. (Then they’re supposed to stop that, and go have miserable sexless relationships so they can pop out babies, but I digress).
I will say, I do know a hell of a lot more lesbians who were in straight marriages for years before coming out than I do gay men who were. And I do think that has a lot to do with weird acculturated beliefs about how sex is supposed to be a lower priority for women, so they’re more likely to stay in relationships that are sexually unsatisfying until the kids are grown.
(The 2nd paragraph above should read, “have miserable sexless relationships AFTER they pop out babies.” Otherwise, it’d be immaculate conception, and that’s generally not a societal expectation.)
@42 — once again, you’re talking about BEHAVIOR, not attraction. Sure, 1-5s can be “pushed” to BEHAVE in one way or another. But their orientation (whether it’s a 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6) is innate.
Let’s make it easier. Do you like lima beans? I don’t. I didn’t CHOOSE not to like lima beans, I just don’t like them. Could I be persuaded to eat them if someone gave me a million dollars? Sure. But that doesn’t make me a lima bean lover.
Well, that settles that. This woman chose to dyke out when she could have ridden the beef bus all her life. Case closed. Every gay person chose to be gay. “maybe there are some bio-homos out there” but the rest of you ass clowns should just stick to tuna taco’s and quit bitching about your supposed rights.
@25 – “Gayness is an ATTRACTION. It is NOT a behavior.”
You’re not taking sexism into account and the ways it interacts with queerness. I can see how your assertion could be appropriate for the queer male experience, because sexism is used to threaten men with the loss of privilege over the slightest display of the queer or the feminine. Men don’t have to prove their queerness. It’s taken for granted that there’s enough stigma around the label to keep posers away. Even if a boy does some sexual experimenting and runs away the next day, that blowjob was enough to prove his “real” sexuality. He’s just too scared to come out of the closet. His true sexuality lies in his attraction.
While there is also loss of privilege for women who fall from heterosexuality, it’s not the same as it is for men. We have no gender privilege to protect. Femme-femme lesbian couplings are sexually objectified by straight men, so there is more leeway for women to experiment with sexuality. There are women who kiss other women for straight male attention, who fuck other women in threesomes to please their husband/boyfriend.
Femme queer women are not seen as a threat to male sexuality, or in competition with men. At worst, we are perhaps confused; in need of a good fuck from the magical straight-making penis. Much of the privilege women receive from heterosexuality is attached to marriage-and-babies. There is a lot of encouragement for us to end up in that lifestyle if we can stomach the idea at all, thus lending unfortunate legitimacy to the magical penis notion.
Due to the above, if a woman fucks another woman and then runs away the next day, she is seen as “really” straight. Her true sexuality lies in her behavior.
I am a queer woman who has been with both men and women. I present femme, and that means I am told I don’t “look” queer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to prove my sexuality to friends who didn’t believe me because they’d never seen me kissing a woman. I’ve been shamed out of the Wild Rose because I was wearing lipstick and heels and I turned down one unattractive butch woman’s shitty come-on line. Now that I live with a woman, I’m seen as a lesbian, and when I mention ex-boyfriends in conversation with new acquaintances, I’m frequently met with an expression of surprise.
I could have chosen straightness through my behavior, by dating only men. It would have been the path of least resistance. It wouldn’t have meant a life of misery, exactly. I could have continued on with my childhood habit of becoming best friends with every girl I crushed on, forming and breaking sexless romantic Victorian lady relationships every few years.
[This might be what the writer meant by socialized male sexuality (“boys are socialized to follow their dicks/desires”). Women are encouraged to sublimate sexual desire in favor of other perks (such as not being called a whore), so sublimating our sexual desires in any relationship is normal. If a man is sublimating his desire, he at least knows that something is wrong.]
The queer-isn’t-a-choice argument is far from perfect. It lends credibility to “hate the sin, not the sinner” Christians and creepy eugenicists who want to find and eliminate the gay gene. Worse, it relies on the assumption that being gay is inherently disgusting and sinful and forever painful. Who would choose THAT?
When you argue that queer-isn’t-a-choice, you’re creating ammunition against people who aren’t a 0 or a 6 on the Kinsey scale. That’s why there are so few of us in the open, standing alongside you. Many of us choose a side because we don’t want to get attacked by both.
It’s not that all queer people are queer because we can’t help it. It’s that there’s NOTHING WRONG with queer people.
@43 Whoa! Way to communicate my argument way more succinctly. Internet high fives!
Re: The “boys are encouraged to follow their dicks” argument. I read it to mean that boys tend to be socialized in a way that encourages and glorifies their sexual natures. Yes, it’s true that they aren’t encouraged to pursue other boys. But boys tend to pay attention to and revel in their desires in a way that lots of girls do not (although I hope that’s changing). So for boys, homosexual desires may be harder to ignore. Couple that with the comparatively obvious nature of their arousal and that girls can pretty easily have sex they’re not into… and well, I think it’s an interesting theory.
@9:
More like “All men would choose to be straight to AVOID BEING BEATEN TO DEATH”. It’s not like there are significant *dis*incentives for men to be gay.
Senience isn’t quantifiable, but it exists none the less. Free will and choice are inherent in sentience. We are not hard wired like nonsentient animals, we can choose to be whatever we can imagine. We are self aware.
If you would’ve been miserable being “straight”…. then the only choice you made was with respect to lifestyle, not desire. I’m a little confused here.
Dear Lesbian with a choice,
You’re bi.
Sincerely,
A bi woman who knows what she is.
Here’s what troubles me. Don’t these rigidly defined sexuality categories all depend on a pretty rigid gender binary? Doesn’t the idea that everyone is “fundamentally straight, gay, bisexual, or asexual” (@2) seem to ignore the existence and potential desirability of transgender people and genderqueer people? The very word “bisexual” seems to suggest that there are exactly two sexes from which to choose, but of course that’s not true. So are we talking about what kind of genitals you like to touch, or what kind of pheromones you like to smell, or what style of self-presentation you find alluring, or what kind of chests and hips you like to ogle, or what kind of mannerisms you like to flirt with, or which socially-scripted power dynamics you enjoy, or what are we even talking about here? You know?
I get it that people generally aren’t attracted to everyone. Heck, I’m “bisexual,” and I’m still not attracted to everyone. Seems to me sexual tastes are pretty complex, and pretty personal. And probably the factors I listed above, among many others, weigh differently for different folks. Maybe for some folks the shape of genitals is of top importance, while for other folks it’s really about the hairstyle more than any other factor. I don’t know. But I don’t totally understand folks’ investment in policing the categories, or in parsing out which tastes come from our genes as opposed to some other source.
Wouldn’t we all be better off simply holding our ground that it’s none of anyone’s business to tell anyone else whom to desire?
@45 but that’s the thing, I think it DOES affect a lot of people, right to their core. I know 7 former lesbians in straight relationships, and 5 former bi now gay men. This scale was made up by my formerly bi now gay friend. They’re all really, really in love with their current partners, have changed their taste in porn, etc. I think that there’s a lot of things we don’t know about orientation yet, and I do think that these things DO have an effect on people. To take your lima bean example I’ll counter with my kimchi example. Kimchi smells disgusting looks disgusting and tastes disgusting the first time you try it. But I kept trying it, and I didn’t hate it so much. Now I FREAKING LOVE Kimchi and I can’t eat it enough. I didn’t just change my behaviour, I also changed my preferences. I also think there are some people who will always hate kimchi or always love kimchi, no matter what. But I think there’s a large number of people who’s taste is affected by their experience and exposure to it.
If she could be happy with men and women, I’d definitely agree that’s she’s bi. But she specifically states that shed be miserable with a man. No possibility for happiness. Either she’s completely a lesbian, or she’s an incredibly sexless cynic.
I *could* choose to be a lesbian. My community has more lesbian women than straight. I’ve tried it on for size. I like women well enough. I could start a relationship. But I would also be miserable, because I lust after and love men. Women just don’t excite me. I enjoy being touched, no matter the gender, but men are what cause the floodgates to open. The sight of them, the smell of them, it’s just a way more visceral reaction than my aesthetic appreciation of women. So while I could choose my behavior, I can’t choose what turns me on, which makes me fairly certain it’s not a real choice of equal options.
@34 Those are fake bi.
But as for me, I tried heterosexuality, but living in NYC in a time when “experimenting” was encouraged I realized I could choose something else.
A woman saying that she “tried heterosexuality” doesn’t sound to me like one who is, or was, fundamentally attracted to men. It seems fairly plausible her fundamental attraction is to women and that was an attraction she either didn’t understand or was denying.
This is not to say that no one can make a choice. I remember reading an article in Rolling Stone many years ago where the author was interviewing gay men and lesbians in San Francisco. A couple of the women said they had been fundamentally attracted to men but because of a series of abusive relationships with men they became pessimistic about ever finding a relationship with a good man and made the choice to be with a woman. Interestingly, these women also told the author that they were reluctant to have him/her put that in the article because they said most lesbians and all gay men they knew did not choose to be with a same-sex partner and they were afraid that including their stories would give ammunition to the being-gay-is-a-choice crowd.
I find the whole “choice” thing overemphasized. I mean, it is an interesting question to ask whether gays are born that way or actually are the product of external circumstances (let’s also not forget the possibility that both are right — they may be gays who were born gays and gays who became gay). I’d certainly like to know the answer.
But frankly, why is it so terribly important? I mean, even if being gay were always a conscious choice, it’s still a legitimate choice which an honorable person can make — like his/her choice of career to pursue, or religion, or philosophy, or his/her literary preferences, etc. Even if gay is a choice, I don’t see why this makes it more ‘attackable’ (unless we “need” the gay-gene to argue against the right wing — which I don’t really think we need at all.)
Ditto if being gay is an ‘unconscious’ choice, or the result of external factors (like one’s native language). Ditto also if being gay is something you’re born with.
I mean, the main point to me is simply that gays don’t harm anybody by simply being gay (unless you buy into fundamentalist religious arguments, but that’s a totally different can of worms). This being true, what possible difference could it make for the legitimacy of being gay whether or not it’s a choice, a “lifestyle”, a natural urge, a genetic tendency, a fashion, etc.?
@59 true…and since gay people bring money into the local economy…we should be pushing MORE people to be gay!
I’m a Bisexual woman, who started off identifying as heterosexual until my first mega crush on a girl hit me like a tonne of bricks. Anyway, discovering I had it in me to like women was like having my world opened up, and I totally embraced it.
I agree with the idea that when you’re Bi, you have somewhat of a choice, to a degree. And I just want to add a little theory to the mix which relates to the effect NOT having a choice has on straight women’s judgement.
I can’t help but think I have a privileged position of objectivity which I don’t think straight women have.
I think straight women, due to their inability to ditch men entirely, without ditching also the possibility of being in a relationship, are put in a position where they need to trick themselves into not seeing men’s flaws. I used to do the same thing when I saw men as my only option. I would look for the good in men, even if it wasn’t there.
Now that I know I don’t need a man to know love, I can see things more clearly. Meanwhile, I look around at the straight women around me and watch as they make concessions for men’s bad behavior all the time.
@61 because all lesbians are shining examples of human beings? Lesbians can be douchebags, too. I know several lesbian identified women I know who are now in hetero relationships that are still mainly attracted to women, but can’t stand being in a relationship with women. I know three guys who used to date women but now date exclusively men for the same reason!
You shouldn’t put up with bad behaviour in anyone. There are a lot of really wonderful guys AND girls out there, and douchebags in every pile as well. Your friends shouldn’t settle for bad behaviour, but you don’t have to date women to find a good partner.
@61 That’s such a lousy and arrogant rationalization.
@62 & @63. Ok, I can accept there are wonderful and douchey people in every pile. But it appears to me that the hetero arrangement is fraught with conflict because of common differences between women and men. Take out the social & economic forces which push men and women together, and I think many more people would choose a same sex partner over an opposite sex partner if they were wired 50/50 as Bisexual.
Many straight women are not emotionally suited to being with men, but they adapt. When faced with the option of competing for the rare men who don’t fit the negative male stereotypes, or settling with what they can get, they often settle. They adapt themselves to a situation which robs them of much happiness. As a result, these women have shorter life expectancies than their single and lesbian counterparts.
It doesn’t matter if queerness is a “choice” or not. If not, hoo-rah, it’s innate identity. If so, hoo-rah, it’s a *good* choice. Bottom line: Hoo-rah.
@64: Some say fraught with difficulties, other say invigorated with the opportunity for personal growth and change. Difference isn’t always scary and potentially damaging. Learning how to appreciate and negotiate difference can make us all into happier, less judgemental, more interesting people.
Sorry, but this writer sounds like a bisexual misandrist whose sexuality is nothing but a shallow, sneering affectation. I’m sure being gay was a choice for you, based at least partially on your media-driven contempt for men, but for most of us (gay and straight, men and women) sexual identity mostly is driven by sexuality. I’m sure that lesbian-as-critique thing makes you feel really righteous, but but to me you just sound like an alt., counterculture version of narrow-minded conservative asshole. I respect your right to choose to date/screw whoever you want to, but don’t try to fit everyone into your mold.
@59: well said!
@64 Ask your doctor to adjust your medication, because it ain’t right.
@47, why do femmes always have to prove their sexuality? I think it should be the butch ones. Here’s why…
If a guy presents as uber-macho, we think he’s trying too hard to prove masculinity/heterosexuality. Ex. he spends all his time at the gym bulking up, has barbed wire tattoo and a giant pickup truck with bumper nutz and a No Fear sticker. But if you have an uber-butch lesbian, everyone looks at her as a model lesbian even though I think it’s a “lady doth protest too much” situation, just like the macho man. I don’t think they want dick but I do think they’re trying too hard to prove lesbo-cred.
I feel the non-butch are more authentic because they’re not going out of their way to prove anything to anyone. They just exist. They’re also less likely to portray as victims of the heteronormativepatriarcharape culture.
For those who say the butch are natural, I don’t think that is the case for most. I was mistaken for a boy until I was 8, wear makeup once a week and spend exactly two minutes brushing my hair out, which my girlfriend cuts for me. Contrast to butch lesbians I know who match their belt to shoes and spend hours perfecting their butchy spike with frosted tips, a cut that cost them 3 hours and $150 at the salon. Being gay is genetic but Mom Jeans and spiky haircuts are not. They’re an affectation and they don’t make you a lesbian… liking pussy does. But yet I’M the poser who just needs the right dick simply because I have long hair and wear flattering jeans.
Ex 2: who’s a more authentic Cure fan: guy A with a goth “look” or guy B with a Mariners T-shirt and jeans. I’d choose the latter because he realizes you don’t have to wear all black just to like the Cure.