Born This Way?

Posted by: Skye Blue Tags: queer, sexual fluidity, sexuality Posted date: March 24, 2012 | 2 Comments

When people are oppressed for having same sex partners it is understandable that we self identify and band together for support. But I believe that people have mistakenly made this social construct into a kind of race or disease in the campaign to try to reduce being blamed for who we love.”Born this way” has an overtone of apology. It seems to be the need to explain a fault. And with this I disagree. Our sexual preferences may have their beginning before our conscious awareness, but so do most of our likes and dislikes. Why do I love peanut butter, and the smell of rice cooking, and the colour turquoise? Who knows. What does it matter? – The Wayward One

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Those of you who are news junkies like me and who also have with a keen interest in any stories that have thing to do with sexuality undoubtedly noticed the shit storm that landed on Ms. Cynthia Nixon (you know, Miranda from SATC) in late January when she told the NY times that:

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

People in the LGBT community who stand firmly on the nature side of the homosexuality debate got angry – even enraged. So much so that, within days, Nixon felt compelled to amend her previous statement with:

My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify:

While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship. – As quoted in The Advocate.com

As all of this unfolded I was dumbfounded. How is it that, in a community currently fighting like hell to get all the basic civil rights afforded to the their heternormative counterparts in America, were so unwilling to allow someone the space to – as Nixon so aptly put it – define her own gayness? Why are so many people in the LGBT community trying to tightly regulate who can be in or out of certain subcategories within it?

As a black woman who has been ‘black checked’ (i.e. called out and sometimes unceremoniously pushed out of certain people’s ‘in group’ for not being black enough in my proclivities, attitudes, behaviour and even where I choose to live) more times than I can count, it felt all too familiar. Following this story as people took the piss out of Nixon for stating her own truth, being happy and extremely proud to be who she is, having carved out her own path as a gay woman, was really disheartening. I mean, why is it that those of us who are so often othered (i.e. ‘minorities’ of any kind – ethnic, religious, sexual, etc.) are so unwilling to allow people within our group – particularly those perceived to be on its margins – to just be themselves? Do we all have to fit into an easily defined box? And if so, who does that really benefit? Us?

I am not “fluid” in my sexuality, and neither are most of my lesbian friends. But I do know some women and men who identify as gay or lesbian who have changed back and forth in their identity, and sometimes identify as bisexual. Why should it matter what we call ourselves? If the haters don’t give a hoot about why or how we got this way, we should never try to limit who gets to fit into our community. –Tracy Baim

Please note I am well aware that any derailment of the LGBT community’s efforts to have people accept the argument that homosexuality is all about biology has huge social and political ramifications. As Tracy Baim pointed out (in the article quoted above), those factions that are against the queer community generally want to “cure” or worse yet “kill” its members. So, it’s very easy to see why having the idea that all LGBT folk are “born this way”, thereby making it an fundamental characteristic of who someone is – one that can’t be fixed with a pill – is so important to so many. Nevertheless, forcing members of the community who genuinely believe that choice or ‘nurture’ is the way they came to belong in a group, one they are proud to be a part of, to deny their truth is just as divisive and unproductive as the black checking I’ve experienced upon encountering members of my community who tell me I’m not black enough because of the way that I talk or the music I listen to. What’s more, doing so isn’t going to make anyone in the anti-gay camp appreciate the queer community more, or make the community itself stronger and more unified. So again I ask: who the hell is this benefiting?

If nothing else, the controversy Nixon’s comments stirred up make it abundantly clear that a lot of people, regardless of where they sit on the Kinsey scale, find the mere idea of sexual fluidity threatening. A fact that highlights our society’s need for more dialogue about sexuality in all its forms. Especially when it comes to its fluidity.