My choice to live a queer life- yes, i said choice!

Some mainstream gay rights advocates are looking for a "gay gene" that determines homosexuality to argue that "gay people are born this way" or "god created us this way" in order to get equal rights. To me, it's the most defeated and sloppiest way to talk about queerness. I've known my attration toward women since i was 13 and definitely had displayed some typical "tomboyish" pattern while i was growing up. But if people ask me if queerness is biological or or choice, i would no doubt saying that it's my choice.

Desire is such a complicated human behavior to be reduced to one simple gene, one trait, or one dispositional theory. Even personality theorists cannot claim that some overt behavioral patterns such as agression are genetic consequences. How can they talk about queerness as a purely genetic cause? When our communities have the most complex and creative identities- fagdyke, boygirl, MSM, bidyke, heteroflexible - the list goes on, it is too boring and unspectful to say, all of us are just doomed to be gay because we were born this way. Was i born as a fagdyke? I highly doubt it. I mean, my genetic disposition- if it did exist -would be more like a bottom gay boy than a fagdyke. Desire is not just an impulse of who you wanna fuck, who you wanna cuddle with at night, or who you will most likely hit on after 3 drinks on Saturday night in a bar. Desire is how we are socialized to display outselves, to attract others, to be turned on by certain body types or tones of voice, to feel comfortable having sex with, to choose a career, to be drawn to different kinds of activities, to decide who to vote for, to deal with our family in a particular way, to mkae friends with what type of people, to decide if a long walk on the beach or taking your short off in a sweaty noisy punk-rock concert is more of your thing, to have certain politics. Desire is absolutely more than a fuck, a gender, a personality trait of how feminine/masculine you are. Desire is a complicated cognitive decision process that is too hot to be explained as one dead gene.

When i came out to my mom (unsucessfully) few years ago, she asked me if it's biological or what. I actually told her it's more of less my own personal choice. Maybe genes have to do with how sharp my jaw lines or how small my boobs are, but being with women and identifying as queer are definitely a more thoughtful decision for me than an uncotrollable impulse. Of course Mom didn't buy it and thought i was just not trying hard enough to fuck men. But i felt good to come out this way and not pretend to be a victim to seek tolerance. Maybe it is because i have had the privileges to choose my queerness and not be bashed to death in the streets so far, but just like everything else in my life, i take the full consequences of it but also make the best out of it. I would argue too, heterosexuality is not something natural, a genetic disposition, a human reproductive instinct or whatever. Heteroseuxlity is a choice just like how queerness is a choice. The differnce is that the society makes it easier for people to choose to be heterosexul and once you block out every other queer option, they give you a whole lifetime hetero pacakge for FREE.

To me being queer is to identity with the struggles with everyone who is oppressed, restrainted, ostracized, kicked out of home. Being queer is to break all borders that prohibit us from connecting with one another. Being queer is to be ready to fight for a kind of liberaiton that's not only for those white gay men whose only regret of their lives are not being able to marry the men they want, but to fight for a kind of liberaion that overthrows white supremacy- and look fierce while we are doing it.