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.
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.