Letter: People don't choose to be straight or gay, they just are
May 8, 2008
To the Editor:
As a woman who has been an out and proud bisexual since about age 15, I take offense to two points in the article about bisexual students on campus (The NEWS, May 1).
Your reporter writes, “Though occasionally someone might claim to be bisexual and then later choose to either go gay or straight, many people choose bisexuality as their true sexual identity.”
Are we honestly still living in a time when anyone thinks that people choose their sexual orientation? (Frankly, I’m surprised that a progressive paper like The Athens NEWS let a comment like this be printed!) No one “goes gay” or “goes straight,” and people don’t choose whom they are attracted to — they just are!
Has anyone heard of the Kinsey scale? I’m not going to go into great detail here; if you want to know more you can look it up. But basically, sexual orientation falls on a continuum. A very small percentage of people are 100 percent gay or 100 percent straight, and everyone else falls somewhere in between. A person can be mostly attracted to the opposite sex but occasionally to the same sex, or vice versa. That person may identify themselves as gay or straight, but in reality, most people are somewhat bisexual (even if they never act on their feelings).
Furthermore, sexuality is fluid, just like everything else in our lives. We change. We may go from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again throughout our lives, or we may stack smack in the middle. This is not choosing to go gay or go straight; it just means that what we like evolves over time. Why do we need all these labels? Why can’t we just love whom we love and be OK with that? Does everything have to be defined by gender?
The second point that bothers me is Aaron Fancey’s comment that “Of all the awareness activities I have been involved in, not one bisexual has taken a leadership position. There are not many bisexuals who are open about there sexuality.”
What planet is this guy living on? Not the same one as me. I know tons of openly bisexual people. Maybe the problem is, you see a woman in a relationship with a woman, and you assume she is a lesbian. Maybe she is also attracted to men. You see a man with a woman and you assume he is straight. Maybe he likes guys, too.
Most people don’t go around introducing themselves, “Hi, I’m Donna and this is my boyfriend. Even though I’m in a monogamous relationship with him, I’m bisexual… Just for the record.”
What if we put an end to assumptions? Better yet, what if we just started assuming that every person we meet is bisexual? According to the research of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, that’s probably the safest assumption of all, and the one that would turn out to be true most often.
Devin Aeh
Athens
Editor’s note: Good point, Devin. We could have worded that more carefully. Our writer was talking more about how people “choose” to describe themselves than how they choose their sexual orientation. I have adjusted the wording in the article as it appears on www.athensnews.com. TS
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