|
 by Julie Bindel.
Being gay is a personal choice, says Julie Bindel – and claiming otherwise is detrimental to our fight for equality.
It is almost 40 years since homosexuality was removed from the list of recognised mental disorders. Scientists are still, however, hell-bent on finding a ‘cause’, rather than accepting that we can make positive choices about our sexuality.
Six years ago we were told, via The Daily Mail, that women who take slimming and thyroid pills during pregnancy are significantly more likely to produce children who will grow up to be lesbian.
Such studies have been going on for over a century in the fruitless pursuit of a cure for homosexuality. The Nazis figured that if they could discover the genetic basis of what makes us different it would be possible to detect these differences in foetuses, and then abort them.
In 1991 Simon LeVay, a gay neuroscientist, claimed that gay men’s brains were “more like women’s”. My favorite study, however, is the one which ‘discovered’ that girls with older brothers are more likely to become lezzers because they have occupied a womb where a male fetus has gone before. All we lesbians are then is normal women with an extra dose of testosterone. Talk about pandering to reactionary stereotypes of gender.
Why are so many of us, then, wedded to the idea that there is a gay gene? We are, in the main, indoctrinated with the idea that no one in their right mind would choose a life in which they would suffer terrible discrimination, stigma and violence. But countless numbers of us make a positive choice to be lesbians.
If we are ‘born that way’ how do we explain identical twins, where one is straight and the other not? What about those women and men who are happily heterosexual until they meet and fall for someone of the same sex, such as Stephanie Theobald and Jake Arnott? Do bisexuals have their own gene? What about those who primarily identify as BDSM? Child abusers? Criminals?
Kids who are raised by gay or lesbian parents are no more likely to be gay or lesbian themselves, so how come we don’t pass the gay gene on to children? I know a fair few lesbians and gay men who have conceived a child together, and they are certainly the sort of folk who would be open to their children coming out!
There is no evidence that we are born gay, however long we have ‘known’ we were that way. So what if you had a crush on a girl when you were a toddler? It is perfectly natural to be interested in either sex until it is knocked out of you due to homophobic socialisation and the desire to keep women in their place by marrying them off to the nearest man.
Every woman is capable of dipping her toe in the sea of lezzerism. Come on in girls, you will love it. And don’t worry – you don’t need a special gene to join the club.
Now have your say! Please comment below... the best comments will be in g3 next month.
 |
I think it must be an 'abnormal gene'. Just like how some children can e.g - start playing the guitar and be good at it, or be a good artist. Some people just have things genetically inside them for no reason that neuroscientists haven't figured out yet.
(Also I guess there's a few straight women who hate men, who would love to make the choice to be a lesbian - maybe they connect to women on an emotional level, but the sexual attraction isn't there. They can't just choose to be a lesbian any more than i can just choose to like men)
If you mean we've made a choice to live life as an out lesbian, then i agree - that's a positive choice and right now, i feel good being a gay woman but i think it's fine to one the one hand say that someone is born gay and it's not their choice, but they've chosen to be happy and accept that. It is empowering to say that you have decided to be brave enough to be the sexuality that you've always been.