Quotes on the Personal Experience
of
Choosing to Be Queer
- [A woman on a panel said she chose to be a lesbian] and the
audience was just going crazy! "What does this mean?"
and "Well, do you still have an attraction to men?" And
she said, "No, I don't." And they said, "But
that can't be, if you had it before." And she said,
"Yeah, I used to like cheese but I don't eat cheese
anymore and I actually don't like it; it was an acquired
taste. Men were an acquired taste. I no longer have the taste for
them." People were like, "What? Oh no!" Weeping
and gnashing of teeth.
- —a queer man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- Although it might seem convenient to, I will not say that I
can't help being a homosexual—that it's biological
and predetermined chemically, or even, it's God's will
for me . . . the fact is that life is like a river and we are
like fish, or water-snakes, or the plastic rings from six-packs
and we flow and so some of us flow, as a friend of mine once
said, into a different pool so when someone says to me
"I'm sorry about AIDS Queer-bashing Police Harassment
Discrimination, but you chose to be queer," I respond, that
I've chosen to be an uppity faggot, actually, and that this
was my choice and yours, and I mention queer-faggot contributions
to the arts, education, social and sexual liberation, liberation
movements and Civil Rights movements, not forgetting uniquely
faggot educational activity like, "genderfuck," which
by the way if you haven't noticed it is really catching on,
so, yes, I can help it and helped myself to it.
- —Michael Haldeman (a.k.a. Violetta), "I'm
Quitting—and I'm Angry," Holy Titclamps,
1995
- Some of us do, in fact, choose to be queer (attraction and all) and Phil Martin damn well knows it.
- —Michael Scarce, Letter to the Editor of Columbus Alive magazine in Columbus, Ohio, USA, March 25, 1998, complaining about a column
in which gay writer Phil Martin asserted that being gay is not a choice.
- Of course, I'm that most awful of perverts. I chose, I
gleefully admit that I was heterosexual until I met the right man
and chose to indulge in my homoerotic potential. Take
that!
- —Elf Sternberg, posting on the talk.politics.misc
newsgroup, April 18, 1993
- I was straight until 21 yrs old.
- —Anonymous Deaf Woman, "Heartbroken from a
Straight Woman (Deaf)" coming-out story published on
deafqueer.org, September 3, 1996
- There's a poem by Robert Frost that's called
"The Road Not Taken," and it ends something like,
"I took the road less traveled by/And that has made all the
difference," or something like that, and really, my whole
life has been that way. I have always considered that, just
because everybody else was doing something, that didn't mean
I would do it. And when I think about it, being gay is that way,
too.
- —a gay man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- I guess I never felt that it wasn't a choice. It was an
option, I guess.
- —a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer
by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed
to.
- —Johnny Mathis, Us magazine, June 1982
- I have friends who are straight, you know. I realize it's
problematical for them because they have not been able to get out
of where I was at, at that particular trap. I think of
heterosexuality as a kind of trap. And they can't get out of
that trap. I've been known to say, "I think you would be
better off without men." And some women say to me, "I
just can't bring myself to do that." And I tell them
all, "I don't expect you to make any compromises on my
account. It's your life." But culture and society says
you sleep with men if you're a woman.
- —a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer
by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- Joey's mother used to tell him about collard greens. When
he was a child he would say, "Yuck." His mother said,
"I know, I know. But someday your tastes will change."
She said that one day she had walked into the kitchen and asked
her mother what that was that smelled so good. It turned out to
be collard greens, which she had always thought were gross
before. From that point on she loved them. The story horrified
Joey's romantic sensibility. If something that fundamental
could change—if he could be the kind of person who liked
collard greens—what else about him might be different
someday? What other person might he become? He felt the same way
now about his sexuality. Sometimes he saw a woman who appealed to
him, or while masturbating he accidentally thought about one. He
put these thoughts away, not because he had anything against
heterosexuality, but because they made him incomprehensible to
himself. He also to this day did not like collards, or any greens
for that matter.
- —Joey Manley (owner of freespeech.org), "Love Will
Tear," Blithe House Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 1, Winter
1998
- I must confess that Garber's very multiplication of
examples browbeat me into wondering whether I myself might not
have been bisexual had I lived in another era. When I was a young
man, in the sixties, before the beginning of gay liberation, I
was always in therapy trying to go straight. I was in love with
three different women over a ten-year period, and even imagined
marrying two often. But after the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 . .
. I revised my thinking entirely: I decided I was completely gay
and was only making the women in my life miserable. Following a
tendency that Garber rightly criticizes, I denied the
authenticity of my earlier heterosexual feelings in the light of
my later homosexual identity. After reading Vice Versa,
I find myself willing to reinterpret the narrative of my own
personal history.
- —Edmund White, "Gender Uncertainties: Marjorie
Garber Looks at Bisexuality" (review of Marjorie
Garber's book Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism
of Everyday Life), from The New Yorker, July 17,
1995, p. 81
- [O]ne of my goals in the women's studies classroom was to
convert someone to lesbianism in the course of the year—and
I was always successful at this, just by talking about how
sexuality is a construction and heterosexuality an institution
and by simply posing the question, by asking my students: How do
you identify yourself sexually? And if they would respond:
I'm heterosexual, then I would ask: How do you know? How can
you be so sure? thus provoking them to question their sexuality
in certain fundamental ways. Result? Conversions right and
left.
- —Catherine A. F. MacGillivray, in dialogue with Calvin
Thomas, from Straight With a Twist: Queer Theory and the
Subject of Heterosexuality, edited by Calvin Thomas, p. 262,
2000
- I was not gay before I met her. I never thought about it.
Nobody could have been more confused than me. . . . I think
[that] in love, there's not sex, there's not segregation,
there's not anything, there's just LOVE, and that’s
what I feel. . . . I don't feel like I'm coming out.
I've never been in a closet. I've never had anything to
hide. I've lived my life in truth always. This was just a
natural progression toward getting more love in my life. . . . I
don't have any fear about this. This was the easiest thing in
my life I've ever done. It's fantastic. I'm the
happiest I've ever been in my whole life.
- —Anne Heche, interviewed on Oprah, April 30,
1997
- "When did you first know you were different?" the
counselor at the L.A. Free Clinic asked.
"Well," I said, "I
knew I was poor and on welfare, and that was different from lots
of kids at school, and I had a single mom, which was really
uncommon there, and we weren't Christian, which is terribly
noticeable in the South. Then later I knew I was a foster child,
and in high school, I knew I was a feminist and that caused me
all kinds of trouble, so I guess I always knew I was
different." His facial expression tells me this isn’t
what he wanted to hear, but why should I engage this idea that my
gender performance has been my most important difference in my
life? It hasn't, and I can't separate it from the class,
race, and parentage variables through which it was mediated. Does
this mean I'm not real enough for [sex change] surgery?
I've worked hard to not engage
the gay childhood narrative—I never talk about tomboyish
behavior as an antecedent to my lesbian identity, I don't
tell stories about cross-dressing or crushes on girls, and I
intentionally fuck with the assumption of it by telling people
how I used to be straight and have sex with boys like any sweet
trashy rural girl and some of it was fun. I see these narratives
as strategic, and I've always rejected the strategy that
adopts some theory of innate sexuality and forecloses the
possibility that anyone, gender troubled childhood or not, could
transgress sexual and gender norms at any time. I don't want
to participate in an idea that only some people have to engage a
struggle of learning gender norms in childhood either. So now,
faced with these questions, how do I decide whether to look back
on my life through the tranny childhood lens, tell the stories
about being a boy for Halloween, not playing with dolls? What is
the cost of participation in this selective recitation? What is
the cost of not participating?
- —Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or
Blue, p. 32, 1998
- The train will stop at this way station which might be Boston
and stay a few years and then get on the road again and stop at
another way station. In this way station you were a heterosexual;
in this way station you were a lesbian. You look back down the
tracks and you look at your past and all the events in your life
and your friends, and you're now looking at them through
lesbian eyes. So you're reinterpreting the past.
When I became a lesbian I looked
back at my life and realized that all along I had had these
signals that I was one of them too. So, when I became a political
lesbian that I thought I had chosen, had I really chosen it or
had I been one all along but repressed it? When I was writing
Borderlands I had the lesbian perspective, but my
thinking had not evolved to the place where I believed that when
you realize that you like women, that you want to have primary
relationships with women, that you want to have carnal
relationships with women, you can still make the choice to stay
with men. Many of us have done that. You can become a lesbian and
be a lesbian for twenty years and then decide that you want to be
sexual with a man. I don't know if that changes your lesbian
identity, but . . . you make a choice. If you know you're a
lesbian and you're married and have kids you say, "Okay
I'm going to be with my husband and I'll be a straight
woman as much as I can and be with my kids." Or you can say,
"I'm going to leave my husband; I'm going to come
out as a lesbian and take this path," depending on how much
courage you have. But I think that there's only certain
places where you can make that choice, and those are the places
of ambiguity, of change, where you're in nepantla—you
can go either way. Once you're on this track, you're
pretty much a lesbian and you think like a lesbian and you live
with lesbians and your community is lesbians, and the
heterosexual world is foreign and that's the path you and
I—well I don't know about you—but that's the
path I'm on.
- —Gloria Anzaldúa, interviewed by AnnLouise
Keating October 25-26, 1991, published in Frontiers,
September 22, 1993
- The male party line concerning Lesbians is that women become
Lesbians out of reaction to men. This is a pathetic illustration
of the male ego's inflated proportions. I became a Lesbian
because of women, because women are beautiful, strong, and
compassionate.
- —Rita Mae Brown
- Although I have been married and have two sons, I was a late
bloomer and decided in my late 20s or early 30s that being a
lesbian was OK and that, for me, it is a choice.
- —Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey
conducted by The Advocate, July 2001
- When I became homosexual I felt free of a great amount of
bullshit. I know that people are shackled by a lot of things that
they don't believe in, that aren't in their interest to
pursue. They pursue them because of the enormous social pressures
that play on people, and one of those things is heterosexuality.
People don't want to get involved in other people's lives
in the straight world, Men don't—they can't.
They're afraid of sex. . . . Homosexuality is very positive
in people's lives because they can become free of a lot of
conventional social imagery that rules them, chains them down,
that directs their lives. They can get outside that. It's the
first step. Becoming gay is an opening-up process to people: they
feel they can be more honest and more real.
- —Mark Liebergall, The Ninth Street Center
Journal, Vol. 2, 1974
- And if desire is something that you learn . . . just like
heterosexuality was taught us, you know, you're supposed to
like this little boy if you're a little girl. . . . If desire
is something that you're not born with, something that you
acquire—that sexual hunger to connect, to touch somebody,
to be touched by somebody—if that can be learned, it can
also be unlearned and relearned. So that if there are political
lesbians out there (a lot of political lesbians came out in the
seventies because that was a viable alternative), there were
other lesbians like Cherrie [Moraga] who at a very early age were
attracted, lusting, after women. With both types, there was a
resistance to the teaching that we should desire men. But with
people like Cherrie, that took on a very emotional kind of
manifestation very early on. They got turned on by girls. And
with the political lesbian you were a lesbian in your head first
and then you started looking at women differently because of
these theories about sexuality: Is sexuality learned? Is
heterosexuality learned? Is lesbianism learned? And through the
theory you got to the body and the emotion and the closeness with
women.
After [my book]
Borderlands came out I got to thinking that yes, some of
us do choose. It's a very conscious thing: "I'm
going to give up men; I'm going to go to women; I'm going
to come out of the closet and declare my lesbianism." With
other people, it's very unconscious. They don't even know
they've made the choice. They think it's just natural to
be a lesbian or to be a heterosexual woman, but there have been
all these processes and decisions made all along the way that
you're not even aware of, that you don't remember. Okay
so here we are now in 1991, and I don't think a person is
born queer; I don't think every person is born queer. I think
there may be some genetic propensity towards most things: music,
having a good ear for music. I don't know if there are any
queer genes, but if there are they'll be discovered. So some
of it might be biological; some of it might be learned; and some
of it might be chosen. My position will probably change in a year
or two, but that's where I'm at with it.
- —Gloria Anzaldúa, interviewed by AnnLouise
Keating October 25-26, 1991, published in Frontiers,
September 22, 1993
- But I think that one has to: one, make the distinction
between desire and love. Desire may be a catalyst for love, and
it may not be. And so I think that it's actually much more
easy for us to choose who to love and how to love than who to
desire, because I think there's a certain quality of mystery
in all our lives that is still centered around desire. I think
it's useful that we've had so much focus on the social
construction of desire because I think it does enable us to
realize the role the mind plays in desire and that it is
possible, to the degree that you can alter states of
consciousness, to alter the nature of your desire. Now the
question is how many of us are really so in tune with ourselves
that we are capable of altering our states of consciousness, and
I think that most of us don't live at that level of holistic
awareness of our senses and of our intellectual understanding in
order to be able to do that. But it's certainly
possible.
- —bell hooks, "An Interview with bell hooks: The
Ripple Talks with One of America's Leading Feminists" by
Marlene Smith & Julie Petrarca, Washington Ripple,
Vol. 9 No. 2, March 1995
- I am 46 years old. I am female. I was married for 26 years
and have three children and two grandchildren. In my case it was
definitely a choice. When I was 35 or so, I met this woman, and
we became friends. In the manner of teenagers, and at her
suggestion, we decided to "experiment" sexually. I
laugh now, to think back on it. I was petrified at the thought,
but one day I looked at her and said, "OK, kiss me." We
looked at each other and laughed, and she did. My response was,
"Well, what the hell, the sky didn't fall! Do it
again." . . . I made the choice to be a lesbian. I have
found that sexually it is the right choice for me. I have been
very lucky in that my children are totally accepting of my choice
of lifestyle and my ex-husband is one of my best friends.
- —Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey
conducted by The Advocate, July 2001
- PoetryAndTruths: How did you induce the
change in thought processes? How can you be certain you are not
attracted to the oppositte sex anymore?
KrazyHippie: I'll answer your questions
separately.
1. If I have to say I was born one
way, I'd say I was born neutral. A lot of people say they
knew when they were like 6 b/c they remember their first crush
etc. I didn't really have those feelings back then. I feel
like I wasn't born one way or the other, but that I was
socialized into being straight because that was the assumption
unless you went through some major "identity crisis"
that led you to believe otherwise, and obviously that wasn't
the desirable way to be. So I was straight because it was
easiest.
And yes, I was genuinely attracted
to men at that point. But I had never considered my other option.
I had one sexual relationship with a male, and that developed out
of love (I STILL love him). We were together 6 years, and had sex
a year after starting to date. (We had started to date at 16 and
18.) I definitely enjoyed sex with him. Loved it. Couldn't
get enough of it.
Then I went to a women's
college. Because there were no male options, and because I was
breaking out of my parents' mold and becoming a lot more
liberal, I opened my mind. It was as simple as that, except that
it took a few years to do completely. I just started allowing
myself to consider women that way. To look at a woman I found
attractive and not just say "oh, I just admire her
beauty," but to let myself take it further and imagine what
it would feel like to touch her, kiss her. It freaked me out at
first, but eventually it became something I craved, and I
developed crushes on women regularly. I still liked men, though,
and considered myself bisexual, while still identifying as queer
by choice because previously I would have been able to fully
enjoy being with just men, and it was only my own conscious
choices to consider women in the same way that led me to be
bisexual.
This is such a stereotype, but I
have to tell the truth: I became more and more of a rabid
feminist, and the more strongly I despised the patriarchy and
felt empowered in being a woman, the more I hated the thought of
heterosexual sex. I despised the penis and everything it stood
for. I felt so strong and empowered being a woman that I began to
love women in a whole new way and add this to my physical
attraction for them. Similarly, I began to DISlike men as a whole
for who they were, and that led me to be less physically
attracted to them. I made an exception for my partner because I
had been with him for years, loved him deeply, and he was a rabid
feminist himself.
Our relationship ended a few months
ago due to other issues (he doesn't know I'm gay) and
I've had sex with women since then. I love it SO MUCH and
find it enjoyable on a completely different level. Even though
there isn't the love and history there that there was with
him, I still get so much more out of it—which is really
saying something. I am freed of the feeling of submitting to a
man by letting him get sexual pleasure out of my body, and I feel
empowered by giving pleasure to women instead.
2. I don't desire to ever be
with a man again, plain and simple. Not physically, and not
emotionally. Are men attractive to me? They can be. A few. But
not as frequently as women, not in as many variations as women
(they have to be pretty damn near "perfect" while I
accept all kinds of differences as beautiful and unique in
women), and most importantly, I don't want to touch them.
Hey, he's pretty good-looking...but I don't want him to
take his clothes off. And the thought of a penis honestly makes
me want to throw up.
So yeah, I consider it a choice.
Not in the sense that I woke up one day and decided to be gay
(although some queer-by-choice folk do, and that's perfectly
fine too) but it went along with an entire restructuring of my
belief system. I don't feel I was gay and just wasn't
out—when I was straight, I was really straight. But now
I'm really gay—no matter what my reasons for it, I love
and want women and only women. Human beings are just very complex
like that, no matter how we try to fit them into boxes that we
can understand better. :)
I hope this helps you understand at
least where I'm coming from, even though I can't speak
for all queer-by-choice because our experiences are so vastly
different.
- —KrazyHippie and PoetryAndTruths, from the Lesbian
LiveJournal Community, April 6, 2006
- For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make
against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She
goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality.
Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I
made the choice to be queer (for some it is genetically
inherent). It's an interesting path, one that continually
slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the
indigenous, the instincts. In and out of my head. It makes for
loquería, the crazies. It is a path of knowledge—one
of knowing (and learning) the history of oppression of our raza.
It is a way of balancing, of mitigating duality.
- —Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera:
The New Mestiza, 1987
- [Why are we gay?]
All of the above.
Some queers are born . . .
with more decisive hormones than
other people.
Some queers are abused . . .
into believing that they're
homo.
Some queers choose . . .
to rebel against society.
Some queers lack . . .
the parental norm, leaving them
searching for that father/mother figure.
Some queers . . .
are horny.
Whatever, who cares?
We are happy.
We are proud.
We are productive.
- —Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey
conducted by The Advocate, July 2001
- We know, thanks to the research of Carla Golden, Arlene
Stein, and others, that by and large the divide between
heterosexual and homosexual in women is less absolute [than in
men]. This research finds that there are "primary
lesbians," who always knew that they were attracted to women
and were never attracted to men, and "elective
lesbians," those who came out during the women's
movement or afterwards, those who have a sense of making a more
active choice or who go back and forth, depending not on the
gender of the lover, but the particular personal qualities of a
particular woman or man: Tom, yes, John, no, Susan, yes, Tamara,
no.
- —Nancy J. Chodorow, speech for the American
Psychoanalytic Foundation, February 1999
- There's a big controversy now: Is lesbianism hereditary?
People are trying to find a genetic predisposition to being gay.
I think part of this is positive in that researchers are trying
to tell the establishment, "Don't try to cure
homosexuality. They were born this way. A certain percent of the
population is going to be this way, no matter what you
do."
But even if they're right, what
about those for whom it's not hereditary? Many women say
it's a choice. They have chosen lesbianism because of
positive experiences with women. . . .Why are we so afraid to say
we chose it? It's so scary to take that chance and say,
"I am choosing it. It's really what I want to do.
It's not because my DNA is making me. DNA be damned, I think
I'll be a lesbian."
- —JoAnn Loulan, Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves
and Each Other, p. 35
- Society came to get me and with its flags and helmets and
promises of power, tried to make me a Manword against my wishes
and in contrast to my own special words, but I fought it and so
far I'm winning because I made choices, even when Society
tried to make me do it somebody else's "moral" and
"right" way, just words, I chose to be hetero and then
I changed my mind, tried to be homo, those, too just words and
then I realized what I really am at least for now is a faggot, a
powerful weapon word and one which scares and annoys a lot of
people, but it's the nature of my relationship to
Society.
- —Michael Haldeman (a.k.a. Violetta), "I'm
Quitting—and I'm Angry," Holy Titclamps,
1995
- I did a show last night and I polled my audience. They all
think [Anne Heche] is a gold digger, but I don't. Why
can't someone look across a room and fall in love with a
woman even if they've never had a lesbian affair before?
We've done such a great job of convincing everyone that
we're condemned to be born with this gay gene and so forth,
but there's a great deal of fluidity and change in that.
- —Kate Clinton, San Francisco Bay Times,
California, May 29, 1997
- I personally don't believe I was "born this
way." (In fact, when I'm feeling hostile, I've been
known to tell right-wingers that I'm a successfully
"cured" hetero.) Until I was in my early thirties, I
fell in love with men, took pleasure in sleeping with them, and
even married one. But like most women, I experienced most of my
closest emotional relationships with female friends. The only
thing that made me different was that at some point I got curious
about lesbian feminist claims that it was possible to combine
that intense female intimacy with good sex. The good sex part
turned out to be vastly easier than I anticipated. Even so, there
was no immediate biological reason to stop having sex
with men or to start living as a lesbian. Coming out was, for me,
a conscious decision—every step of the way.
Nor am I an aberration, at least
among women. Virtually every self-identified gay man I've
ever met has been convinced that his sexuality is a biological
given, but lesbians are a mixed bag
- —Lindsy Van Gelder, "The 'Born That Way'
Trap," Ms., 1991
- I don't know . . . I find the idea that it's all
biological and there's no choice in the matter somewhat
dismal. "All your behavior is plotted out by your DNA. Try
and look surprised." I don't think anything is that
simple. Sexual identity is forged by years of experience and
sensations along a spectrum of possibile feelings one has, or at
least that's how I experienced it with a man I fell in love
with a few years back. Ultimately, I really feel that I did
choose to live the life I lead. Not because being gay is wrong or
evil, but because while I intellectually can love a man, I
don't feel the same way about them that I do about women.
Which might be genetic, or it might be due to years of being told
I'm supposed to feel that way, or it might even be a rational
choice I made. I'd like to see us get to a place where we
didn't really worry about this.
- —Ezrael, in a post to the Metafilter
Meta-Meta-Meta-Madness Community 'Blog, May 26, 2000
- I tend to think that choice is all-important, freedom of
choice. I feel less and less sympathetic with psychological
theories of causality, even ordinary Freudian ones, that, you
know, we suffer from our pasts, and are compelled by them. I sort
of believe in this possibility of infinite instantaneous
liberation from any kind of past, in a moment of absolute choice.
And I think that we reiterate these choices on a day-by-day
basis. So that we make ourselves gay every time we do something
gay. And should, you know, the mood come over us, I think that
you or I could walk out of here and go out to a straight singles
bar and you know, be neck and neck by tomorrow morning with
people who've been at it for years. So I'm not a
determinist.
- —a gay man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- I received an e-mail [that] basically said, "Queer by
Choice is a double-edged sword. If people can choose to be queer,
why can't queers choose to be straight?" This question
pissed me off tremendously. Why, you might ask? Because, duh, I
chose to be queer. That's the friggin' reality
of it. If that has bad political ramifications well then so be
it. We cannot friggin' change reality for goddamned politics.
It angers me that someone could even try to deny me my
own reality. I have yet to say of queers, "oh well, they
just can't be born that way because that implies
it's a disability." or whatever. Frankly, I don't
really give a shit. But don't come shove politics down my
throat like that will change the reality that I consciously chose
to be queer when I was thirteen.
- —Eve Shalom, "Common Sense (or Lack
Thereof)," diary entry on glass.poetess.org, May 31,
2000
- I'm not going to spend a lot of time forgiving myself or
forgiving anybody else because I started out straight, damn it.
Okay? I say to people, "You're going to have to take me
as I am. I am converted, if you wish, okay? I used to be
straight, now I'm gay. I'm sorry if it would make you
happy that I was born this way, but I wasn't."
- —a gay woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- A homosexual is someone who has chosen to let himself love a
person of the same sex: and I made that decision myself. So the
responsibility is all my own.
- —Kenzaburo Oe, Kojinteki Na Taiken [A Personal
Matter], 1964; translated from Japanese by John Nathan,
1968
- I've been gay since I was about 24.
- —Julie McCrossin, quoted in "From Geek Girl to
Good News Girl: Good News Week and
Life Matters—the
Words as Much as the Shows They
Represent—Sum Up the Ebullient
Julie McCrossin" by Johanna Leggatt, The Sydney Morning
Herald, August 27, 2000
- I didn't know that I was a lesbian, but I wanted
to be one. . . . I worked at it. I was like wanting the
possibility. So I started working on the lesbian paper, and going
to concerts and the coffeehouse.
- —a lesbian, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- I reserve the right to live my life this way.
- I don't give a damn when I hear people say
- I'll pay the price that others pay
- 'cause it's worth it. Yes, it's worth giving
all.
- —The Pet Shop Boys, "Was It Worth It?"
1991
- "I'm scared, too," she continued. "If
I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight.
It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick
of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to
be discriminated against as a lesbian."
- —Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues, p. 151,
1993
- Why am I a lesbian? Because that is what I want to
be. . . . I am not in the least embittered by the fact that I
prefer physical relationships with one of my own sex.
- —Anonymous, "Why Am I a Lesbian?" The
Ladder, 1960
- [E]ven though I was normally homophobic prior to this choice,
I didn't really understand the ramifications of being queer
til my mother actually thought I was . . . soo . . .
that's how someone can choose the horrible, horrible life of
being queer. And, besides, I'd already become a feminist a
year or so prior to my choice & decided I never wanted to
marry a man. I figured I would just live a sad and lonely life.
It was a godsend for me to find out that being lesbian was
actually an option. Oh, and for the record, no, when I chose to
be queer I did not do so due to any book or anything. I
did so because I wanted to do so. I had no idea it was a
"political statement" or anything else. I was a
feminist, and I saw it [as] pretty obvious that being lesbian was
the only way I could live freely in my personal life.
- —Eve Shalom, "Common Sense (or Lack
Thereof)," diary entry on glass.poetess.org, May 31,
2000
- "Why did he call you sir? Doesn't he know you're
a girl?" . . . "He knew I was a girl. He was picking on
me 'cause I'm different." I anticipated her next
question. "I don't look like your mom. I look different
from a lot of other girls. Some people don't like that, they
don't think it's right." Kim knitted her eybrows.
"Then why don't you wear dresses and let your hair grow
long, like other girls?" . . . "I don't want to
change," I told her. "I think girls and boys should be
able to be any way they want to be without getting picked
on."
- —Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues, p. 166,
1993
- Let me share from my own life. For me, my coming
out—which was an explicit choice for women, and entailed
ending a heterosexual marriage—was also a choice to be more
politically engaged. This included everything, all dimensions,
not just gay groups. I quickly (in under a year) became involved
with a host of feminist/lesbian/anti-violence/environmental
groups. . . . I made an anti-Persian Gulf War statement during my
first year at Pomona College, which was less than two years after
I had started to come out publicly. As the first shots were being
fired, I stated that being an out lesbian compelled me to say
that we could not merely oppose the war, but that we had to say
what we stood for, and to struggle for that on all fronts. What I
can tell you, with utter certainty from my own life, is that the
courage and vision that I needed to say that, came from the
totality of recognizing who I was as a lesbian, and what that
meant. The range of meanings I gleaned, as a movement forward,
from the creativity of my own sexuality, included that a) the
world was structured in such a way that society tried to prevent
affection, touch, and human response, b) that sentimentality
alone was not philosophically sufficient, but c) passion about
the world was a necessary part of the struggle, and while d) all
oppressions were linked, they were not identical, e) yet all
oppressions had to be fought at once, and f) movements for
freedom were not about unanimity but about creativity.
There's more I could say, but what it ultimately means is
that for me, and for many other queers, coming out reveals
much more than just a road to personal happiness and
contentment.
- —Jennifer Pen, letter to the editor, Queer
Notions, Vol. 2, October 15, 1996
- There are heterosexual married women coming out of marriages
and coming out as lesbians today [but whereas] in the past these
women might have discovered radical feminism and chosen to join a
movement for deep social change, they now look around and say
something like: "All these other heterosexual women seem to
be able to tolerate the conditions of male/female gender
relations in our society, but I can't. There must be
something wrong with me. I must be a lesbian. I must have been a
lesbian all along. It's not that the condition of women under
heterosexist patriarchy is unacceptable for any human being,
it's just that I was a lesbian." The "problem that
has no name" has been renamed "I must have been a
lesbian all along." This way of thinking prevents these
women from seeing the connections between themselves and other
women. This makes becoming a lesbian an individual solution and
divides lesbians from straight women. To create social change in
the world outside of lesbian-only spaces, the coalition between
lesbian and straight feminists must remain solid. We need to know
that any woman can decide to become a lesbian.
- —Jennie Ruby, "Is the Lesbian Future
Feminist?" off our backs: a women's news
journal, Vol. 26,October 1, 1996
- I think a lot of women are straight because the choice of
being a lesbian is too difficult, being made too difficult by
society. So I think a lot of women overlook their inclinations
that are telling them they want to be with women, but they're
saying no, they can't be, because it's too
difficult.
- —a lesbian, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- I think women have so few choices. Sometimes we think we do,
and it's not really a choice. Because I think many, many
women are straight because of economics. I think for them
marriage is a way of survival. And they may not realize this, but
I think it's true.
- —a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer
by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion.
- —Margaret Mead
- I was really tired of playing games with men. . . . And
finally one day I said, "You know what, I just want a
person, a human being." And finally the words came to me,
"You want a person? You didn't say you wanted a man, did
you? Not a man? What is it for God's sake?" You know,
"Could it be a woman?"
- —a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer
by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- A lot of people are so lonely, they're unhappy, they say,
"I need someone to love me," but they never think about
their own sex. They look for the perfect man or the perfect
woman, when that person, quote unquote, could be sitting
right next to them. But because of whatever stereotypes or biases
they have, they don't look. They think that that perfect
person is going to be in the opposite sex. That's not the
case sometimes.
- —a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer
by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- But I always have and still do consider myself queer. To me,
being queer isn't who you're sleeping with; it's just
an idea that sexuality isn't gender-based, that it's
love-based.
- —Ani DiFranco, in response to lesbian organizations who
criticized her for loving a male, Entertainment Weekly,
May 2, 1997
- I've always thought to myself that surely the most
well-adjusted person in the world must be a bisexual who feels
comfortable in his or her bisexuality, so that whoever comes
along, who attracts you, is someone that you want to be attracted
to, and that you're not bound to be attracted to one
gender or another.
- —a queer man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality:
the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man;
either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or
obligation.
- —Simone de Beauvoir
- By nature all human beings are psychically
bisexual—capable of loving a person of either sex.
- —American Medicine, 1914
- I would think really that people are innately bisexual,
and—wait! That would mean you had a choice!
- —a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer
by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- Or how about the argument, admittedly more common in the U.S.
than here, that we are all "born this way"? This sounds
like a plea that we are handicapped and deserve pity for our sad
misfortune. More to the point, it's painting sexuality with a
broad sweep of the brush. Personally, after a number of
relationships with women I chose to be gay so that I could be
fulfilled in love. My partner says he had no choice and has been
aware of that since pre-puberty. Desire is complex and such
oversimplifications as "it's all genetic" merely
[serve] to discount the real-life experience of human beings. . .
. If we all choose to be gay (which we clearly all do not),
we'd still have the right to have our choices respected.
We'd still have the right to have our love and lust respected
and accommodated within social and legal structures.
- —Gareth Kirkby, then managing editor of the Vancouver
queer newspaper Xtra! West, writing in Xtra!
West, August 20, 1998
- Remember that most of the line about homosex being one's
nature, not a choice, was articulated as a response to brutal
repression. "It's not our fault!" gay activists
began to declaim a century ago, when queers first began to
organize in Germany and England. "We didn't choose this,
so don't punish us for it!" One hundred years later,
it's time for us to abandon this defensive posture and walk
upright on the earth. Maybe you didn't choose to be
gay—that's fine. But I did.
- —Donna Minkowitz, "Recruit, Recruit,
Recruit!" The Advocate, December 29, 1992
- A punch toy volunteer, a weakling on its knee,
- Is all you want to hear and all you want to see.
- Romantically, you'd martyr me and miss this story's
point:
- It is my strength, my destiny—this is the role that I
have chosen.
- —R. E. M., "Falls to Climb," 1998
- Can one be "ex-gay?" A year or so ago I would have
answered a simple "of course not" to this seemingly
simple question. In the second issue of Whosoever, we
even presented the question as "Ex-Gays? There are
None." Now, I'm not so sure. Surprisingly, it was Rev.
Mel White who made me rethink the answer to this question. I
asked him, in a rather derisive manner, about "ex-gay
ministries" and their work, and those who now claim to be
"ex-gay." His response was, "maybe they are, who
am I to say?" After his long struggle with his homosexuality
and especially his journey through some ex-gay therapies, I was
surprised by his answer. He clarified saying, "some people
say they've chosen to be gay, and I have to respect
that."
- —Candace Chellew, "Am I Ex-Straight? Ex-Gays and
the Ethics of Labels," Whosoever: An Online Magazine for
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Christians, Vo. 2,
No. 2, September/October 1997
- Heterosexual people can change their sexual identity
too. I *chose* to be a lesbian, and know lots of other
women who have done the same thing. It is _heterosexuality_
which is promoted and enforced, by harassment, abuse and bashing
of lesbians and gays.
- —Jenny Rankine, the New Zealand lesbian activist who
organized the queer-rights protest against the Human Rights
Commision office in Auckland, New Zealand, responding on the
Public Questions List (an e-mail mailing list) to a person who
was advocating therapy to "cure" queerness, February
1999
- I know that people do [choose to be gay]. I have friends who
have. I didn't used to before, but now I sort of feel I can
accept the idea that one could turn gay.
- —a gay man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by
Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity,
1996
- Nature leaves undefined the object of sexual desire. The
gender of that object has been imposed socially. . . . As kids,
we refused to capitulate to demands that we smother our feeling
toward each other. Somewhere we found the strength to resist
being indoctrinated, and we should count that among our
assets.
- —Carl Wittman, "Refugees From Amerika: A Gay
Manifesto," 1970
-
© 1999-2017 by Gayle Madwin. All rights reserved.