This needed to be said and the connotations associated with choice need to be recognized.
From Tranifesto:
I just finished watching a new indie gay and lesbian film that had an interesting premise, but I felt like I was back in the ’70s, with the word “homosexual” being thrown around all the time, even by the gay and lesbian characters, and this little gem coming from one of the young lesbian characters when talking to her father:
“I didn’t choose to be this way. I’ve always been this way. I’d be straight if I could. My life would be so much easier.”
I get really tired of this argument, which makes straight the default — and the desirable — way to be, and gay or lesbian the undesirable and unchosen way to be — a way that was forced on certain unfortunate people as a mistake of birth. After all, who wouldn’t want to be straight if they could?
I don’t know anyone who would prefer their sexuality be anything other than what it is, but I have heard this statement in a broad, assuming sense and I’m not sure the speaker realized their implications. Sometimes someone else has to explain something in such a way (as above) for one to rethink.
-CJ
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