Sexual orientation is not a choice: that is scientifically proven.
But so aren’t other things, like being a woman, being Swedish or liking broccoli. Yet, have you ever heard anyone say “I like broccoli, but it’s not my choice, I was born this way”?
LGBTQ+ people have a long history of being discriminated against. We are cut away from our families, we endure workplace harassment, we lie about our private lives and hide our partners just so we don’t suffer negative consequences. Sometimes, we have to deal with people calling us “freaks”, “deviants” or “anti-natural”. And often, we reply with the most obvious truth:
“sexual orientation is not a choice”
Right, it’s not. But saying it as a defense mechanism makes it feel like we’re saying “we are queer, but it’s not our fault”. No, it’s not our fault because there is no fault to be had! There is nothing wrong with loving people of the same gender. Why are we excusing ourselves for something that was never wrong in the first place?
It’s as if we were helpless creatures, succumbing to the laws of the universe. Like this is something that happened to us and we have no control over it, whatsoever. But we do.
The American Pshychological Association states that “although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed”. As they say, it can’t be changed, but we could decide not act on it — we have a choice.
We could choose to be miserable people, living fake lives and missing out on one of the greatest joys of being alive: to love and be loved.
We could choose a life untrue to who we are. We could choose to be miserable daughters, sons, partners (of someone we’re not attracted to), parents, friends, workers, citizens. Maybe then the homophobes would be happy, having a society full of sad and frustrated people.
Or we can choose to embrace who we are. We can love the people we are attracted to. We can be happy, loved and fulfilled. We can own being queer the same way we own every other part of our beings. We can say we love women with the same ease that we say we love broccoli: with a smile on our faces and the confidence of someone who knows and loves who they are.
I didn’t choose to be a lesbian, but I chose to embrace who I am. And that is something I will never apologize for.
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Previously Published on medium
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