Queer-By-Choice FAQ - By Gayle Madwin

The idea that someone can choose to be queer is radical enough to raise eyebrows across much of the LGBTQ community. Yet some individuals insist that choice played a significant part in their being or becoming queer. The community is not always accepting of this, perhaps fearing that some would take queer-by-choice to be representative of all queer people's experiences. This would deny the experiences of individuals that have tried very hard not to be queer, and could appear to give some credence to the methods attempted by some to make someone “straight”. (Some might take queer-by-choice to mean you can be coerced into being straight again.)

We might attack a queer-by-choice position, feeling threatened by a society wishing to deny us validity or rights. If being queer is a choice, then a homophobic society might view it as a bad choice and pressure us to choose differently. But if being queer is biological, a homophobic society might view it as a birth defect and pressure us to attempt “medical treatment”. So conversely, we might validate a queer-by-choice option to counter stigma against the queer community. Perhaps being queer is a good and desirable thing after all (and should be presented as such).

Gayle Madwin, creator of QueerByChoice.com, does not propose that direct choice played a significant role in every queer person's orientation. But she seeks acceptance and validation for those that are queer by choice, and works to raise awareness of anti-choice biases. Reprinted here from QueerByChoice.com is a FAQ introduction to queer-by-choice.

This FAQ has been trimmed and adapted for the magazine. Please visit QueerByChoice.com for the complete FAQ.

Queer-By-Choice FAQ

Q: Did you choose to start feeling same-sex attraction or just choose to start acting upon it?

A: People who believe they only chose to start acting upon same-sex attraction do not usually consider themselves queer by choice. Those of us who do consider ourselves queer by choice usually mean that we chose to start feeling same-sex attraction.

Q: When you say you "chose" it, do you just mean it's a product of your social environment?

A: No. The word "choice" indicates an element of free will, and those of us who use the word "choice" to describe our experience realize this and use the word deliberately.

A more interesting question, however, would be whether people who say "social environment" really mean "choice" as well. By what mechanism exactly does environment affect people? Don't people make choices in response to their environment? The choice is not necessarily a direct choice as in "I've decided to be queer now" (although there are certainly some people who did make direct choices like that), but environment doesn't generally seem to impose itself on some helpless victim's psyche without choices being involved. Of course you could argue that in a case of severe trauma, environment can produce post-traumatic stress syndrome without a person choosing to experience it. But if we're talking about a healthy person responding in a healthy manner to a healthy social environment, then we're usually talking about someone who's making choices in response to that environment.

Q: How can feelings ever be chosen?

A: People choose their feelings all the time. A person who is sad but who knows they need to move on with their life will often force themself to smile and think positive thoughts—and the act of doing so will gradually make them actually become happier. And a person who 30 years into an ecstatically happy relationship suddenly notices that their partner has lately started looking a lot older, fatter or more wrinkled than is really to their taste at the moment will often choose to learn to appreciate their partner's newly wrinkled and enlarged exterior for the sake of all the love and goodness that resides underneath it.

If a person does lose the ability to choose to be happy, it means that something is wrong with them: we diagnose them as clinically depressed and give them medicine to cure them and enable them to control their feelings again. When queer people protest against homophobia by saying that they can't control their feelings, isn't that practically an invitation for homophobes to try to develop a "cure"?

Q: You mean some people can just look at someone and decide whether to be attracted to them?

A:That's not exactly the kind of choice we mean. Here's another way of looking at it:

We might envision the erotic potential we're born with as a shapeless mass of water. As we experience different things throughout our lives, we build dams or dig channels to direct the flow of that water toward certain types of people—people with certain hairstyles, certain personality styles, certain accents, certain opinions, and frequently, certain genders. Sometimes we make a conscious choice to build a dam or dig a channel; other times we blindly follow directions when our parents or the media tell us that greater happiness is to be found by directing the flow toward the opposite sex. At still other times, any emotional association from an experience we've had can provide the tiny ripple that starts the water flowing in a particular direction, and from there the water might even dig its own channel deeper without our help—for example, if you've had promising beginnings with several short males with green mohawks and nose rings (even if those relationships later ended badly), then when you get introduced to another short male with a green mohawk and a nose ring, you might quite possibly be more predisposed to feel affectionate toward or "at home" with him, or to immediately wonder as soon as you see him whether this might be your next promising beginning.

Now, at the particular moment that you meet someone you're attracted to, you may not have much choice about being attracted to them because in that one moment you probably don't have time to instantaneously reconstruct all the dams and channels that took many years to build. But if your reasons for having built the dams and channels in the way that you did become outdated, then over a period of time when the water level has subsided a bit, you might deliberately rebuild them in a different style—or you might unconsciously develop other emotional associations without ever really thinking about the fact that lately you're not so fixated on short males with green mohawks and nose rings as you used to be.

On the other hand, if you built your dams and channels to direct your attraction toward the same sex because your shared experience of the same gender role enables you to genuinely relate better to them in some way which is important to you, then even though you might consciously try to change and become more attracted to the opposite sex for the sake of social acceptance, your attraction to the same sex probably will not change—because the wish for social acceptance is an awfully stupid motivation for being attracted to someone, and something inside you must have realized this in order for you to feel same-sex attraction in the first place.

Q: What is an "indirect choice"?

A: It's relatively uncommon, even among people who consider themselves queer by choice, for people to be able to point to a particular time in their life when they consciously decided, "I want to be queer." Although such direct choices are certainly not unheard of, it's more common for people to initally experience their queerness as something they have no control over—and many of them have even tried to turn hetero and failed. However, the fact that they did not initially want to be queer and that their attempts to turn hetero failed does not necessarily mean that there were no indirect choices involved: it could just mean that their technique for attempting to turn hetero was wrong, and that in order to make a free choice that will feel like a choice, one has to have a lot more information about the range of choices available, and a lot less pressure about what they "ought" to choose, than most people in this society usually have. In any case, some people who have initially experienced their queerness as something they had no control over—and even some people who have tried in the past to turn hetero and failed—do decide upon further reflection later in life that their queerness actually resulted from a process of indirect choices that they made in response to a social environment that tried to limit the range of choices available to them. And since this process of indirect choices is usually difficult for people who don't consider themselves queer by choice to understand, it may be useful to examine one possible process of indirect choices in detail here.

Let's imagine someone who didn't want to be queer at first, who questioned their sexual preference only with the most extreme terror and who tried desperately to choose to be hetero but failed. Presumably, there must have been a first time that this person started to wonder if they were "queer," and a first time that they looked at a person of the same sex a little differently than they had as a child and felt something that they labeled a "queer feeling." This could have happened for any number of reasons: maybe they just accidentally stumbled onto the same-sex sexual potential that all people—at least according to many experts, from Sigmund Freud to Margaret Mead—have within them. But in any case, once they'd already had that one fleeting moment of "queer feeling," they did not have a full range of choices open to them. They did not have the choice of being a person who had never had a "queer feeling" or suspected themself of being queer. They did not have the choice of just unproblematically taking it for granted that they were heterosexual. And it is within this context of very limited choices that all their future actions take place.

 Now, this person is very much afraid of the possibility that they are queer. In fact, let's say they tried to run away from it, tried to just forget the feeling ever happened and go on with their life hoping to be hetero. But the memory of the feeling remained. Now, if you have a memory whose implications terrify you, are you going to be able to just simply forget all about it and refuse to think about it? Or are you going to lie awake every night going over and over your memory in your mind haunted by the possibilities that the memory implies? Most people in this situation would probably lie awake at night terrified, trying to figure out how to prove to themself that they were "really" hetero. But how can anyone "prove" a thing like that once and for all? Is attraction necessarily that easy to pin down and label like a butterfly in a glass case? And if you're interrupting the natural flow of your feelings to ask yourself every five minutes "Is this attraction? Am I attracted yet? Can I officially declare myself hetero now?" then it's sort of like constantly pressuring yourself to have fun. Wouldn't the pressure itself prevent you from enjoying yourself and allowing the attraction to develop?

So at this point this person is getting very scared indeed. All the uncertainty and inability to "prove" to their own satisfaction that they are hetero may very likely cause them to (reluctantly) explore, in far more depth than most people ever do, the question of whether or not they can feel attracted to people of the same sex. And what are they going to do with the feelings they discover? If attraction is an at all nebulous concept, won't their fear make it difficult for them to prove to their own satisfaction that their feelings for the same sex are not "attraction"—just as their fear also makes it difficult for them to prove to their own satisfaction that their feelings for the opposite sex are "attraction"? How can they ever "prove" to themself once and for all that they're really heterosexual and not just refusing to face their queerness? They can't—because they don't trust themself to be objective when they're trying to lay claim to being something that they so desperately do want to be. Whereas if they lay claim to being queer, it's much easier to trust themself to be objective—because after all, they know they've been fighting desperately to resist that conclusion, so if they finally give in to it, then that conclusion has a ring of "objectivity" that calling themself hetero can never have.

Most people who go through this process probably never stop to question the reasons why it's impossible to "prove" to themselves once and for all that they're hetero—to realize: hey, there aren't any absolutely clear-cut criteria laid out for heterosexuality in the first place. However, most people who go through this process do eventually at some point realize that it is impossible to "prove" to themself once and for all that they are hetero, and that continuing to try to do so dooms them to a life ruled by overpowering fears that maybe they're really not hetero. They realize that the only way to stop these fears from ruling their life is to face them and say, "Yes, I am queer," and start getting used to it. So at that point one could say they're making a choice—but it is not a free choice, because all the fear and pressure they're dealing with has restricted their options so much that the option of continuing to try to prove themself "heterosexual" really is unlivable. So it does not feel like a choice. And since it does not feel like a choice, it doesn't make much sense for anyone to go around telling them they ought to use the word "choice" to describe it unless they themselves want to use that word. However, for the people who've been through this process who do want to use the word "choice" to describe it, it also doesn't make much sense for others to go around telling us that we're not allowed to call it a choice.

Q: Hasn't queerness been proven to be genetic?

A: First of all, no professional scientist in the last 40 years has even claimed to have found any evidence that queerness is always genetic in all cases. Even the highly publicized identical twin studies by Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard, which were so often touted as evidence for a "gay gene," never found that any more than 52% of the identical twins of queer people were queer. The other 48% of identical twins of queer men were not queer. This leaves at least 48% of the queer community unaccounted for by genetic theories. Is it so hard to imagine that a few of those 48% might want to lay claim to having made a choice?

 It's also very possible to argue (although certainly not all queer by choice people would argue this) that even the 52% of identical twins of queer people who were also queer themselves can be accounted for by entirely nonbiological causes. Identical twins are exposed to extremely similar social environments and besides, in a world where queerness is so widely believed to be genetic, if your identical twin comes out to you as queer then that's got to drastically increase your likelihood of intensely questioning your sexual preference, and which in turn must surely increase the likelihood of discovering same-sex attractions which you might never have discovered if your identical twin hadn't caused you to look for them.

Q: Could you choose to turn hetero if you wanted to?

A: Saying that people can choose to become queer does not necessarily imply that people can also choose to become hetero. It might be that in a society where girls and boys are raised to have so little in common, exclusive homosexuality is really the healthiest option for any of us, in which case anyone who's already discovered the joys of same-sex attraction could hardly be expected to ever develop much interest in dealing with all the inequalities and communication difficulties of opposite-sex attraction. Or it might be that bisexuality is the natural state of all people, in which case discovering our ability to feel same-sex (or opposite-sex) attraction would be much easier than trying to repress that attraction after we've discovered it.

Some queer by choice people do believe it's possible to choose to turn hetero—which most definitely does not mean we'd ever care to do it! Others of us believe it's not possible. Some of us simply have no opinion on (or interest in) the subject.

But even if we could block out our same-sex attraction and develop exclusively hetero attraction again, what would be the point? In most people's minds, heterosexuality is something like virginity: once you've experienced being a nonheterosexual, they're not going to let you get away with reclaiming your former hetero privileges even if you do want to reclaim them. Hetness and queerness are not really defined symmetrically as "attraction to the other sex" and "attraction to the same sex." Instead, you might say that hetness is defined as the state of "never having been attracted to the same sex" and queerness is defined as the state of "ever having been attracted to the same sex." So at least in that sense, no queer can go back to being a hetero any more than we can go back to being a virgin.

Q: Does saying queerness can be chosen encourage parents to try to raise their children to be hetero?

A: Does saying queerness is genetic stop them from trying? Do parents actually even care whether they can change their child's feelings, as long as they can change their child's behavior—in other words, intimidate their child into pretending to be hetero?

No matter what you tell parents about what causes queer feelings, parents know that having a queer-supportive environment and openly queer role models makes it more likely that their child will come to terms with their queer feelings instead of allowing their parents to intimidate them into an unhappy marriage. And as long as they know that, parents who don't want their children to be queer are going to go right on trying to deprive their children of queer role models and queer-supportive environments. The only way to change that is to make the parents want their children to be queer. We believe that letting parents know of the existence of proud, happy queer people who choose to be queer is every bit as good a way as any other of trying to accomplish this.

Q: Why would you want to be queer in such a homophobic world?

A: You know, there's more to queerness than being discriminated against. Ask your queer friends if they want to turn hetero—the odds are that most of them don't. Whatever their reasons for wanting to remain queer, those reasons are probably also good reasons for people to choose to become queer. Some possible reasons for choosing to be queer include the following:

• It may be easier to relate to members of our own gender on an understanding, nonexploitative level.
• It may seem silly to reject perfectly good people just because of the shape of their sex organs.
• If we don't believe queerness is genetic and we also don't see anything immoral about choosing it, then limiting ourselves to loving only members of the opposite gender just from pure fear of social condemnation might make us feel like cowards.
• We may be looking for a sense of purpose in life, and reclaiming the right of all people to love and make love to members of our own gender may provide us with a sense of purpose.
• We may admire the queer community and want to be a part of it.
• We may be rebelling against the sexually repressive culture.
• If like most non-queers we find that the idea of being called queer scares us, we may recognize that the only way to overcome any fear is to face it and do what scares us most—to become queer.

One final note: People who choose to be queer do not generally do so with the idea that being queer will be some kind of nonstop party. But as Frank Aqueno says on his Queer by Choice website (http://members.aol.com/QBCHOICE/), people often choose for good and rational reasons to do painful things. Some people volunteer to fight in wars and die for their country. Other people choose to practice civil disobedience and be arrested and/or beaten up for the sake of their cause. For many of us, choosing to become queer may feel something like that. Also, most of us who made a fully conscious and direct choice to become queer also tend never to have believed the hype about queerness being in any way immoral.

Q: Does the idea of choice encourage homophobes to say that queers don't deserve equal rights?

A: Most people believe we should have the right to freely choose our religious beliefs without loss of other civil rights. Why shouldn't we have the same right to freely choose our sexual preference? Queer by choice people challenge homophobes to answer that question. We assert that we have a right to choose to be queer. It's none of the government's business, our parents' business, or anyone else's business but our own to decide which gender we should fall in love with or marry. And it's insulting to all queers that the mainstream queer movement (especially in the United States) argues in court on a regular basis that the reason people have a right to be queer is that we supposedly can't help it. That is not the reason that anyone has the right to be queer. The reason everyone has the right to be queer is that everyone has the right to control their own mind and body unless it infringes on anyone else's right to control their mind and body. Two queers making passionate love to each other are not infringing on anyone else's rights; they're simply making each other happy.

So why are so many queers so afraid of the idea of choice? This is an age in which Dr. Laura recently motivated hundreds of thousands of homophobes to flood Vermont lawmakers' offices with letters and phone calls railing angrily against the possibility of same-sex marriage, on the grounds that gay people are, in the words of Dr. Laura, "biological errors." Yes, you heard that right: she said biological. And hundreds of thousands of listeners heard her words and obediently called the Vermont lawmakers; offices to complain that the "biological errors" should not be allowed to marry. Gosh, what a lot of good that biological theory did for queer rights.

It's ridiculous to think that saying we have no choice about our queerness can earn us equal rights. Even Fred Phelps himself has said that he believes that queer people are incapable of choosing not to be queer. He just hates us all the same. He pickets our funerals but he doesn't claim that we can be "saved." He just pickets our funerals to let us know how much he hates us.

Have you by any chance read the homophobic essays at NARTH.com? The ones about what causes sexual preference? NARTH is probably the biggest ex-gay institute in the world, and there is not one of their essays up on their site which says a word against the theory that we're biological errors. They like the idea that we're biological errors. They do want to let us know that it's not wholly biological (because unlike Fred Phelps, they persist in wanting to "save" us), but they have no problem at all with the argument that it's substantially genetically influenced. The only way that the biological argument could ever do us any good at all in terms of giving us the excuse that we "can't help it" is if somebody could prove that sexual preference is wholly genetic. Unless it is wholly genetic then they can always tell us that we have "a little bit of a choice."

Well, it can't be proven to be wholly genetic. Even the study of 56 identical twins done by Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard in 1991, which was so widely touted as proof of a "gay gene," found that only 52% of the identical twins of gay men were also gay. In other words, the very most you could hope for is that either our genes have a 52% influence on our sexual preferences (in which case the other 48% of the influences are presumably social environment and/or choice), or else 52% of gay people are born irrevocably destined to become gay and absolutely can't help it at all (in which case the other 48% of gay people had no genetic influence whatsoever—and you'll probably agree that 48% is a much larger percentage than the numbers of gay people you could find who are willing to say that their gayness was not in any way genetically influenced). Furthermore, a more recent study done by King and McDonald in 1992 found that only 25% of the identical twins of gay men were gay—a substantially lower number than the 52% that Bailey and Pillard found.

Also bear in mind that the 52% (or 25%, or various other percentages, depending on which study you listen to) could easily reflect environmental influences instead of just biological ones. Identical twins are exposed to extremely similar social environments and besides, in a world where queerness is so widely believed to be genetic, if your identical twin comes out to you as gay then that's got to drastically increase your likelihood of intensely questioning your sexual preference, and which in turn must surely increase the likelihood of discovering same-sex attractions which you might never have discovered if your identical twin hadn't caused you to look for them.

In contrast to NARTH, some queer by choice people (although certainly not all of us) do not believe sexual orientation is any more biologically influenced than, say, wearing purple socks or voting Democratic. Some of us also believe that claiming that sexual preference is genetically influenced may cause most people to judge it by the system commonly used to judge the merits of other biological characteristics: in other words, "Is it an evolutionary advantage?" To say that queerness is biologically caused can lead almost inevitably to a suspicion on the part of most people, especially heterosexuals, that since it doesn't lead as often or as directly to reproduction as heterosexuality then it must be a defect. As soon as we say it's a defect then we encourage parents to not want their children to be queer, and as soon as that happens then we make the coming-out process very difficult for the parents' children.

If a person freely chooses to have no children, that is not a defect and no one should attempt to "cure" the person of their decision. But if a person is biologically incapable of having children, then it's perfectly understandable that scientists would try to cure them of it. The same goes for queerness. If a person is born biologically incapable of being attracted to the opposite sex, it's virtually impossible to deny that in evolutionary terms this is a defect. But if a person freely chooses to love the same sex, then this choice should only be judged on the basis of whether it makes themself and the one they love happy. When we tell the world that we choose to be queer, we are saying that we aren't afraid to have our choices judged on this basis. We know that we and our lovers are happy in our love.

Perhaps the most important contribution of queer by choice people to the fight against homophobia is that when we say that we chose to be queer, we force people to realize that it's possible to want to be queer. For too long homophobes have painted us as one-sided creatures who experience nothing but nonstop pain. To paint us this way is to paint us as something less than full and well-rounded human beings, and they paint us this way specifically to scare others into repressing their own potential queerness. The reality is that there's much to enjoy about being a member of the queer community and we who are queer by choice want homophobes to realize and acknowledge that.

Q: What is the difference between essentialist and social constructionist techniques for fighting homophobia?

A: Social constructionists believe that although same-sex love has occurred in all cultures, the concept of certain people being predisposed to love only one sex (and thus being "homosexuals" or "heterosexuals") is an inaccurate concept invented by modern Western society, and does not accurately describe how human sexuality develops in other cultures. They believe that a person who describes themself as homo or hetero and orients their sexual behavior toward only one gender does this only because their culture has fed them certain ideas about sexual identity.

Essentialists believe that the concept of people being "homosexuals" and "heterosexuals" accurately reflects an unchangeable reality which holds true for all cultures in all of history, and thus that a person's homosexuality or heterosexuality constitutes an unchangeable "essence" rather than a socially constructed characteristic.

People who believe sexual preference is always inborn are pure essentialists. People who do not believe anyone is born with any predisposition toward any particular sexual preference are pure social constructionists. There are also many people who are somewhere in the middle and agree with certain aspects of both social constructionism and essentialism; they may believe that there's some degree of biological influence on sexual preference but that cultural ideas also have an important influence. Queer by choice people are by definition not pure essentialists, but not all of us are pure social constructionists either (although a lot of us are).

In their efforts to fight homophobia, essentialists tend to start with the assumption that queers will always be in the 10% minority and that heterosexuals will always be in the 90% majority. Essentialists typically try to promote queer rights through arguing that gay people "can't help" being queer and saying that giving queer people equal rights to marry and not be discriminated against will not cause anyone else to become queer.

Social constructionists tend to believe that in a truly liberated society where same-sex desire was not stigmatized, everyone would feel and acknowledge feeling same-sex sexual desire, and exclusive heterosexuality would fade out of existence. Thus, they believe that in order to win queer rights we have to also teach hets to liberate their own queer potential. Social constructionists typically try to promote queer rights by talking about other cultures where all members of the society were expected to have same-sex relationships, and by asking hets to imagine that they'd grown up in a society like that, and by trying to get hets to face and accept their own queer potential and see same-sex desire as a natural part of what all humans are capable of experiencing.

Essentialist queer activists typically get mad at social constructionist queer activists for being too threatening to hets by actively trying to convert hets to queerness. But social constructionist queer activists typically get mad at essentialist queer activists for making hets too comfortable, agreeing with too many het ideas and not challenging het people's deepest fear of their own queer potential.

Q: Are you choosing to go against nature?

A: Against nature? Is that even possible? Doesn't the fact that we're capable of feeling a particular attraction automatically mean that it's within the range of natural possibilities?

Most of us certainly don't feel that we're choosing to go against nature. Against puritanical cultural dictates, certainly—but not against nature. In fact, some of us might even argue that it's those who practice exclusive sexuality who are choosing to go against nature. There's very little evidence to indicate that there are many complex species at all, and especially not mammals, in which it is at all common for animals to limit their sexual activities solely to partners of the opposite sex. For insects, yes, it can be argued that exclusive heterosexuality is normal—but the more complex the animal species you name, the less evidence there is to indicate that members of that species are normally exclusively heterosexual. For primates especially the current research indicates that all members of all primate species except humans regularly indulge in sex with partners of all genders. Furthermore, there's even more extensive research showing that humans themselves in many cultures and historical eras have not been divided into any categories remotely resembling the typical modern "90% heterosexual" statistics.

Furthermore, if people's sexual preferences were allowed to develop naturally and without social pressure, like the preferences of our primate relatives, one would expect that in a society with strict gender roles there would be far more people who'd prefer their own sex than who would prefer the opposite sex. Most people typically form their most intimate relationships with others of their own race, class, and religion, and having had a similar cultural upbringing to one's partner often makes it easier for the two of you to relate to each other. Heterosexuals know very well how difficult their gender differences can make it for them to relate to their partners—witness the proliferation of bestselling books like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which purport to help hetero partners "translate" their words into each other's different "languages." Trying to bridge cultural gaps is all very well, but if people were choosing their partners for healthy reasons instead of from sheer terror of being called "queer," one would expect that it would be more common to form intimate relationships with people who do speak the same language than with those who don't.

Our bodies were not designed with exclusive heterosexuality in mind. Bodies do not even come in two genders in the first place—they come with a range of sexual organ configurations which can include at least ten different possible chromosomal patterns from XXX to XXY to XO, as well as one or more ovaries and/or testicles, an orifice which may or may not lead to a womb, and a protuberance which may or may not include ejaculatory or urinary functions at its tip, and which, regardless of what functions it performs, doctors label as a "penis" or "clitoris" primarily based on its size: if a baby's sexual organ protuberance is under about half an inch wide and half an inch long then they label it a "clitoris" and suggest surgery if "needed" to make it more closely resemble the doctors' ideas about what a "clitoris" should look like; and if it's about half an inch or more wide and long then they label it a "penis" and again suggest surgery if "needed." But the surgery is in fact rarely really needed—most babies' nontraditional sexual organs are quite functional, often fully capable of reproduction (occasionally even in more ways than one), and always quite capable of being made love to by people of all possible sexual organ configurations. And as for people with different chromosomal patterns—most people who have them never even find out about it. At one point the Olympics Committee made chromosomal karyotyping a requirement for all female athletes to "prove" they were "real" women. Guess what happened? They disqualified such a huge percentage of athletes and upset so many women who would never otherwise have suspected themselves of being anything other than female, and who in some cases had even given birth to children and considered that quite sufficient proof that they were "real women," that the Olympics Committee was forced to remove the karyotyping requirement. Now then: what does the concept of "heterosexuality" mean for these people? Did Nature, God,or whatever Creator you believe in create these people this way just to forbid them to ever have sex with anyone? Be serious. What kind of a Creator would that be?

Exclusive heterosexuality is not ordained by any higher force than human culture itself—it is a human byproduct of the terror and cowardice promoted by a twisted religious belief which pretends that sex exists only for reproductive purposes and condemns every form of nonreproductive pleasure, from masturbation to queer sex to all forms of birth control. Sex has never existed only for reproductive purposes, and it never will exist only for reproductive purposes. It exists for social purposes, as an expression of love and an important part of emotional bonding. Animals use it to demonstrate trust, welcome a newcomer into a social group, or facilitate cooperation in any task. This is why both human and animal bodies are designed in ways that encourage us to take pleasure in the bodies of all those around us. Evolution selects for it because it is an advantage. The ability to enjoy sex with both genders encourages cooperation with both genders and this makes it easier for the whole species to survive.

There are so many ways in which Nature, God, or whatever Creator you believe in seems to have gone out of Her/His/Its way to make it easier for people of the same sex to make love to each other. Men have special pleasure receptors in their prostate glands which intensify orgasm, and which can only be stimulated if they are anally penetrated. Why do you think those are there? And when two women live together and come into contact with one another's skin frequently, the glands in their skin react to the hormones in each other's sweat and adjust their menstrual periods to occur at the same time. What possible purpose could this serve except to make the sex lives of women in lesbian relationships go all the more smoothly? And what about the basic structure of women's sexual organs—why is the clitoris located outside of the vagina, making it necessary for a man to rub a woman's clitoris with his hand or tongue to bring her to orgasm because plain vaginal penetration just doesn't do it for a woman? If women's bodies were designed solely for heterosex it would be absolutely stupid to put the clitoris anywhere but inside the vagina. But for lesbian sex it is extremely convenient to put the clitoris where it is so that women can get off together by sliding their thighs against it. Isn't it fascinating that the clitoris was placed here, where it is most convenient to lesbian sex, and not in the vagina, where it would have been far more convenient for heterosex?

As Alfred Kinsey once said, "The only unnatural sex act is one which you cannot perform." In other words, if Nature, God, or whatever Creator you believe in had not intended for a man to be with a man and for a woman to be with a woman, why would She/He/It have provided all of us with a wide variety of holes and sexual organs that rub up so pleasurably against all other varieties? If the Creator had wanted to make us all hetero, all the Creator needed to do was stick our glans sexual organs way at the back of deep tunnels and then provide only the opposite sex with tentacles of the proper shape to fit into each other's holes. Instead of doing that, She/He/It put both the penis and the clitoris out in easy reach to be made love to by anyone at all. Hmmm . . . maybe there's a reason for that!

Q: Why don't you just keep quiet about having made a choice?

A: Fighting for queer rights goes beyond just fighting for legal recognition of same-sex marriage or allowing openly gay people in the military. Fighting for queer rights also means fighting for the right of each and every queer person to express their own experiences of queerness and find others who understand and relate to their experiences.

Most of us who consider ourselves queer by choice have been told some or all of the following (often repeatedly, ad nauseum) by people to whom we attempted to express our experiences of choosing to be queer:

• 1. You're the only person in all of human history who has ever claimed to have chosen to be queer! [Not true. there's a whole mailing list full of us.]
• 2. Queerness has already been proven to be completely genetic! [Not true. See above.]
• 3. Well then, you're not a real queer! [So who made you the guard at the gates of the queer queendom? Saying we're queer by choice certainly doesn't keep our parents, the churches, the governmental marriage certificate bestowers, the military, or any other homophobic institutions or people from considering us queer.]

Most of us who consider ourselves queer by choice have also been asked some or all of the questions on this FAQ, and many other questions too, ranging from hostile to very well-meant, but always requiring a great deal of energy for us to keep answering the same questions from so many different people. This FAQ and QueerByChoice.com in general were built in order to save all queer by choice people some of the trouble of answering these questions over and over. Help us out—tell others about what you learned.