A billion years ago, back when I was a tender and naive young college student, I attended a workshop led by a lesbian activist. The details of the workshop itself are unimportant; I honestly don’t remember the bulk of what she said. Indeed, the main thing that stuck with me was her insistence that “sexual orientation” was a better phrasing than “sexual preference.”
The former, she noted, framed sexuality as something fixed and rooted, a way we are born and will stay. The latter, on the other hand, was wishy washy: I may prefer chocolate ice cream, but if it’s not available, I’ll content myself with vanilla. To frame sexuality in such a way was to offer up the possibility that one didn’t have to go with one’s preference, that queers could be persuaded to go with their second favorite option, if it worked better for society.
That logic always bothered me, for reasons that, I realize now, were probably rooted in my bisexuality. What’s wrong with having a preference, you know? And why shouldn’t that preference be honored and respected? I may be attracted to many genders, but if partnering with one gender in particular makes me happiest, then why shouldn’t I have the right to pursue that — dare I say it — preferred gender? Why should I be forced to make do with anything else?
This ties in, of course, to the whole idea of “choice,” too. Monosexuals are fond of telling people that one’s sexuality is not a choice. And on the one hand, sure, but on the other hand… really? Nobody chooses their inborn attractions, but we do choose to act on them. We do choose our identities. Indeed, there are plenty of people with bisexual attractions who choose to be straight or gay or lesbian, who choose to align with one particular camp because that is where they find the most happiness, diverse attractions be damned.
Anyway. I was thinking about this earlier today, after reading a passage from a decades old essay urging cis queers to recognize that their discomfort with trans people was merely a manifestation of internalized homophobia, one that could not be combatted until trans people were uplifted and celebrated within the community. I’m sure there is truth to this — I’m old enough to remember when cis queers routinely cut trans people out of anti-discrimination legislation out of a fear that the trans community was a bridge too far for the straights to accept — but it also makes me wonder if there’s a similar dynamic at play with bisexuals. What if queer biphobia is not about us and our actions, but rather about what monosexual queers fear embracing the bisexuals will lead people to think about them?
It seems obvious to me that this all circles back to that whole choice thing. If bisexuals exist, if bisexuals are celebrated and upheld within the queer community, does that not reopen this question of choice? The mere recognition of bisexuality injects uncertainty into everyone’s identity: who’s to say that all those gays and lesbians aren’t secretly bi, and if they are, why shouldn’t they be forced to live “normal” heterosexual lives, right?
Except of course this reasoning ignores that bisexuals do not want to be forced straight. Many bisexuals are utterly uninterested in living hetero lives, attractions be damned — and indeed, a good part of why so many of us were involved in early gay activism was because we wanted the ability to choose who we get to partner with, rather than being forced to cut off a major part of ourselves due to social mores. Many bisexuals want to be able to have a “sexual preference,” and for that preference to be respected simply because it feels good — without some whole song and dance about how this one specific attraction is hardcoded into our DNA and without the freedom to express it we will simply die.
Which, you know, I wish more monosexual queers could embrace. A “preference” is not lightweight. It is not wishy washy. It is not some easily undermined stance. Indeed, taking a stand for our right to pursue our preferences — for our right to determine for ourselves what happiness looks like — is a much stronger argument than any “born this way” nonsense. We shouldn’t be arguing that we’re in our relationships because we simply have no other choice. We should argue that we are in them because the freedom to choose is how we find fulfillment.
Brilliant, just brilliant. Thanks for this.
Part of the issue with the "it's an identity not a choice" framing is that it tacitly accepts the homophobic framing that there is a clearly better choice that people would be choosing but whoops, they can't. This framing has the benefit of mapping pretty well to the experiences of some queer people in homophobic families (the story of "if I could choose to be straight, my community wouldn't reject me, I'm not trying to be rejected, therefore this isn't a choice.")
I would hope that by now we could move on to criticizing the heteronormativity behind this argument, but as your newsletter has demonstrated there are endless terrible takes regurgitating it instead.