Gay is not who you are
How shaky claims about sexual identity led to wacky claims about gender identity
I cringe when gender doctors claim “kids know who they are.” But the truth is, I used to be an angsty 19-year old stamping my foot and insisting to older people that I knew who I was: a lesbian.
When I was in college and law school, people often disbelieved I was gay. They ran the gamut from menacing straight guys to straight-girl confidants to lesbians I wanted to hook up with to my dad. Their wrongness stupefied me. I wanted to have sex with women so badly, but the whole world looked at me and said “nope! You don’t. Go sit with the straight girls.” I felt so alienated that it was almost like people were denying my existence.
My point isn’t that greedy endocrinologists and howling nonbinary people are right. It’s that I used to look at identity all wrong – most of us did.
I did not “seem gay” in the 2000s. I had long soft hair, I wore tight jersey dresses from American Apparel, I skipped dinner so I could get crunk off two cosmos. I thought about trying to seem gay by cutting my hair and walking more butch (?), but honestly, it wouldn’t have been my best look. At that age I was hotter presenting feminine – and I felt sure of that because I spent a lot of time analyzing female hotness. Problem: I wanted everyone to know I was gay to improve my odds of getting a girlfriend. Solution: I just adamantly proclaimed my gayness all the time.
The people who doubted I was a lesbian were cretins (except my dad) but I understand where they were coming from. I didn't look gay, didn't hang out with gay women, didn’t walk gay (?), and for too many of those years, I'd never had gay sex. My claim to gayness rested entirely on a feeling that no one else could possibly fact check.
Meanwhile, many homos kept insisting gay was an identity, not just a matter of having gay sex. They hawked cheesy stereotypes about lesbians being tough and gay men being stylish, even as a flood of "non stereotypical" gays were coming out louder than ever before and watering down the scene. In court, movement lawyers described gays as a bloc of people who shared an “immutable characteristic,” even as many people in same-sex relationships – especially women – confessed they felt their sexuality was fluid or not innate. (I think sexual orientation is innate, probably rooted in pheromone processing, but not everyone chooses partners in accordance with their sexual orientation.) Gay people insisted that we were something, when in fact we just did something. Or in my case, wanted to do something.
What did it get us to act like we were something? The concept helped us win some court battles. But some of our court battles were won based on conduct – courts protected the act of having sex or getting married – and I think that’s a stronger basis for gay rights going forward. We also have rights based on our status as men and women, for example, the right not to be discriminated against for violating sex stereotypes.
Gay identity used to confer belonging in gay cliques. That’s been eroded by two forces. First, homophobia used to be a glue for us but that’s dissolved lately, so gay people don’t form as strong bonds just on the basis of being gay anymore. And second, the rise of trans contagion and queer bullshit has recruited a lot of homosexual youth away from “gay” while encouraging hetero youth to identify as “LGBTQ.” All that means gay identity is kinda meaningless – it no longer confers many benefits (it’s technically legal for straight women to play the drums).
Lots of gays find the demise of gay identity sad. For me as a homosexual who never found the door to the club, I’m open to what comes next. And as we shed the baggage of sexual identity, we can look critically at what our "I am what I say I am" anthem unleashed.
In the 2000s, gay people like me groomed straights into believing identity could be something intangible and invisible, meeting no objective criteria. We paved the way for profiteering doctors to claim that gender-confused kids “are who they say they are.” I'm so sorry I did that. I was just trying to get laid.
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Not relevant but I am not gay... though as a "feminine hot girl," did get hit on by lesbians all the time in the 90s. However, I am what they call a POC a term which reminds me that I still have acne at 49. I have been thinking about how weird it is that for many people, that is supposed to be my primary identity when in fact, I barely notice it. Its othering. I appreciate acknowledgement that my experiences are tinged by the fact of my heritage and that racism is a thing. But in everyday life, I am not a [insert POC category here]. I am a neurotic, achy, solitary gal. Furthermore, the category that they put me in is not very reflective of my actual heritage. Being a [insert POC category here] is not an identity, it is just my heritage.