Cynthia Nixon recently gave a speech and then a follow-up interview about being gay as being a choice. She’s onto something that the gay mainstream doesn’t seem to get. She explains (Huffington Post):
“Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”
The logic of homophobia demands a closet, demands a psychological or biological etiology for queerness, and mainstream gay activism falls right into this logic (e.g., “born this way”). Instead, we need to fight for autonomy, and the ability to make choices about one’s life.
Have you seen Sullivan’s Virtually Normal? I read it in an undergrad co-cultural comm class, so it’s a bit dated. But he does a really great job of laying out different positions about the nature of identity, with a particular focus on sexuality. It helped me understand how people with whom I completely disagree would justify their position and it led to a really productive classroom conversation. 🙂
I haven’t read Virtually Normal, in part because it would probably piss me off, based on how eviscerated it’s been by critics whose viewpoints I find affinity with (Michael Warner, especially). Sullivan’s conservative stances generally make me ill. But if I have time, it’s something I do want to read.
Yeah, I didn’t agree with a lot of what he had to say, either. He presents four positions, ranging from far-left to far-right. I had a hard time reading some of it, but I do think it helped me to get a better grasp of what’s at stake for the people with whom I disagree. I don’t agree with those positions any more than I did before I read the book, but I do find myself a bit less “WTF, how could anyone possibly think that?!?”
I don’t know if “positions” are as important to understand as “cultural logics” or “rhetorics” — you might check out Lisa Duggan’s essay “Queering the State” that approaches the rhetoric of various groups and categorizes it (which I think gets at why communication is hard amongst groups rather than positions). Also, Duggan’s categories refuse the left-right continuum (perhaps not explicitly), a continuum that I don’t think is really helpful when we consider queer issues (or many issues).