Why I’m okay with “born this way”
There has been some pushback lately against the concept of “born this way” as a rallying cry for queer people. I’d like to go on the record as a queer person who finds the idea of “born this way” very useful, even empowering. There are a couple of reasons for this; one is highly personal, and the other has to do with the way science is understood and discussed in the public sphere.
This blog entry is well written and worth the read. I completely agree that we need to embrace science, rather than ignoring it for fear that people would use it to misconstrue queerness of any kind as a “disease”. That would be like saying “hey, we found the gene for green eyes, so now we can ‘cure’ them!” Asexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality, and pansexuality are all part of the spectrum of normal sexuality.
Granted, just as many people are born in bodies that misrepresent their gender, people can also be born in bodies that misrepresent who they are in other ways. In sidneyia’s case, it seems that being in an aversive asexual body misrepresents who sidneyia is sexually and they would be much happier socially if they could at least stop being aversive. I get this. I feel trapped being stuck in an autistic body. It’s not that I feel a value judgement against being autistic, nor that sidneyia feels that all aversive aces would be better off being “cured”, it’s that these aren’t comfortable fits for us, respectively.
However, denying the genetic (and epigenetic) causes of sexual orientation in favor of pretending that we’ve each simply made a choice to be this way doesn’t further our goals to be accepted. Yes, I do agree with the sentiment, “even if it were a choice, it’s my choice, Fundies, so back the fuck off, since it’s none of your business what I do (or don’t do) in my bedroom with a consenting partner!”. But that doesn’t negate the role that science can play in explaining that, yes, there is a range of normal sexual orientations which includes some more common orientations (heterosexuality and homosexuality) and some less common (asexuality, bisexuality, and pansexuality, etc.), but they are all okay, all healthy, just as green eyes aren’t any less healthy than brown eyes.
