In our efforts to raise awareness of queer by choice issues, we've found a number of recurring wrong assumptions about what queer by choice people are usually like. We've put together the list below to try to correct the misunderstandings. Please bear in mind that all of the statements below are merely generalizations, and there are always exceptions. For personal stories of what individual queer by choice people are like, try reading the profiles of members of the QueerByChoice Mailing List.
Myth #1: We must be
homophobic and ashamed of being queer.
Reality: Most of us are very happy about being
queer—after all, we chose to be.
Myth #2: We must all have
fantastically open-minded families who made it easy, joyous and
pain-free to tell them we've turned gay.
Reality: Our parents seem to be about equally
homophobic, on the average, as other parents are. And in a
society as homophobic as ours, not many people who are looking
for the "easiest" or most "pain-free" path
are likely to choose a queer path, no matter how
open-minded our individual families may be. But even though most
of us don't find queerness to be the easiest path,
we may still choose it because we feel it's the
noblest path. Many of us feel that our choice was and is
a deeply political and moral act of protest against having
homophobic social norms imposed on us.
Myth #3: You've never
met anyone who felt their queerness was a choice.
Reality: Anyone who says "I've never met a
queer by choice person before in my life" is making just as
ignorant a statement as those who say "I've never met a
queer person before in my life." Of course
you've met some of us—we comprise about 8% of the queer
community, according to the 1997 Internet
Survey of Queer and Questioning Youth conducted by OutProud
and Oasis Magazine. We are everywhere around
you—you just didn't recognize us as queer by choice. We
usually do not wear stickers on our foreheads saying "I
chose to be queer." Many of us are very active members of
the queer community, but unless someone brings up the topic of
choice in our presence or specifically asks us if we had a
choice, most of our queer friends may never even find out that we
consider ourselves queer by choice. In fact, most of us are well
aware of the hostile reactions that some members of the queer
community have toward any mention of choice, and as a result,
many of us are downright uncomfortable talking about our choices
with our queer friends until we know them well enough to be very
sure that talking about our experience of choice won't cause
them to attack us.
Myth #4: We must be planning
to choose to be hetero again someday.
Reality: The majority of us seem to remain queer all our
lives once we have chosen to be—although switching back and
forth between types of queerness (bisexuality and homosexuality)
seems to be a little more common than becoming hetero is, perhaps
because becoming hetero might shake up our sense of self a bit
more than we're comfortable with, and deprive us of the joys
of the queer community. There are also some of us who don't
even believe it's possible to un-choose our
queerness—that once a person has discovered the joys of
same-sex love, no one could possibly give it up. In any case,
anyone who voluntarily comes out to anyone is almost by
definition making a commitment to having queerness always remain
an important part of their lives on some level. Once the word
gets out, no one is likely to be able to erase the memories of
everyone who knows they once considered themself queer.
Myth #5: The word
"choice" must mean that we sat down one day and
decided, "I think I'll turn queer
now."
Reality: Some of us did indeed
do exactly that—see Gayle Madwin's
QueerByChoice Member Profile for an example. But many others
among us originally came out as queer believing that we had no
choice, and only later looked back and realized that even if we
didn't make a direct choice to become queer, we believe that
our queerness came about as the result of lots of little indirect choices that we've made
throughout our lives.
Myth #6: When we call our
queerness a choice, that must mean we're not really queer at
all but just het people who are choosing to fake
queerness.
Reality: Saying that we've
chosen to be queer is nothing like saying we're
"not really queer, just pretending to be." Most of us
find it extremely offensive to be accused of not being "real
queers." Certainly the homophobes of the world would not
consider the fact that we had a choice to make us any less queer.
Many of us are also active in queer organizations and fight
alongside all our fellow queers for the cause of queer
rights.
Myth #7: When we call our
queerness a choice, that must mean we're really
bisexual.
Reality: Some of us are certainly bisexual, but others
of us will tell you that we are not attracted to the opposite sex
in the least. Some of us may have experienced attraction to the
opposite sex in the past and ceased to do so, but others of us
state in no uncertain terms that we have never
experienced the slightest attraction to the opposite sex in all
our lives. What we all have in common, however, is that we feel
that our attraction or non-attraction results from choices we
have made and/or continue to make.
Myth #8: We all
believe __(fill in the blank)__
about biological theories of queerness.
Reality: Some of us believe that we were born with a
tendency toward being queer (or toward being hetero) but also had
a degree of choice in the matter. Others of us believe that some
people are born queer, or with a tendency toward queerness, but
that we were not born with any tendencies toward any
sexual preference or gender identity. And still others of us
believe that it's impossible for anyone to be born with any
tendency toward a particular sexual preference or gender
identity.
Myth #9: Everyone who
considers their queerness a choice is aware of this
website's existence or is acquainted with other queer by
choice people.
Reality: Just as many people come out as queer without
ever having met anyone who they knew to be queer, many people
also choose to be queer without ever having met anyone who they
knew to be queer by choice. (For example, QueerByChoice list
founder Gayle Madwin chose to be queer without ever having
knowingly met anyone who was queer at all, much less queer by
choice.) This is important because a person who has never met
anyone except themself who considers their queerness a choice may
be extremely unprepared to defend their experience of
choice against attacks from their parents, much less from PFLAG
or other organizations with a history of publicly denying the
possibility of choice. Many teenagers may not even have
sufficient eloquence to explain their choice to their parents or
PFLAG members if they're not in a hostile
environment, much less to express the hurt that they feel if
PFLAG or other supposedly supportive "experts" tell
their parents lies about how they had no choice about their
sexual preference. If a person is attempting to express their
experience of choice but does not have the necessary resources to
show their parents that they aren't the only one who feels
this way, it is imperative to provide them with
resources such as this website, any of the websites listed on our
Choice Links page, or a book such
as Vera Whisman's Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and
the Politics of Identity or Claudia Card's Lesbian
Choices that could help both them and their parents
understand that they're not the only one who has ever
experienced their queerness as a choice—nor are their
parents the only parents whose children have come out as queer by
choice.
For personal stories of what individual queer by choice people are like, try reading the profiles of members of the QueerByChoice Mailing List.