Ouch

I'm sitting in my Sociology class and today is sexuality day. Now, I've dealt with class discussions of LGBT issues before, but always in my Gender Studies class. In that class, it's very clear that you can believe what you want to, but you better be nice about it. In sociology, because we deal with these issues so rarely, those ground rules aren't set.

While talking about "them," Dr. SocTeacher asked everyone why we thought that gay people would think that being gay is biological. This girl a few rows back answered, quite venomously, "Because they think they were born that way."

When we addressed this issue in Gender Studies, the class couldn't really come to a consensus. I know that my sexual orientation is not a choice. I'm not sure it's biological and I hope I'm right, lest the patriarchy try to gene therapy LGBT kids out of existence. Was I "born this way"? Hell if I know. I know it was already decided long before I was conscious of the politics of sexuality. Which is to say, I knew I liked girls before I knew that it was "wrong" and before I even knew what it meant to "like" someone. I cannot remember any time in my existence in which I wasn't conscious of it.

That said, I know people who don't feel this way. I know a handful of people who never thought about the gaybies until they fell for someone. I know some people who are attracted to both sexes but actively choose to only pursue attraction to one or the other. (I think that's related to how we treat middle teamers in our community, but I'll get to that in another post.)

Where the homo-ness comes from, though, doesn't matter. What matters is how society treats us. The only reason we look for a source of LGBT-ness is to justify the discrimination.

(Shit, now he's talking about prostitution and the whole class has the giggles. Because rape is funny, remember? After all "prostitutes are a sexual outlet!" Grr.)