I was getting very angry and sad and disappointed at the reaction her statement has sparked. Then I read Thelparole’s comment and it made me feel so much better. if nixon was telling the truth the first time around, it wouldn’t have been bad anyway. I’m sick of hearing lgbtq people trying to define other people without knowing anything about them. It might be a choice for some people, just because it isn’t a choice for the majority, does not mean everyone works the same way….It threatens no one to say that. The people who threaten the lgbtq community are the people who hate the lgbtq community. And the people who put so much shame in the idea that maybe for some people, there is a choice. Big deal. It wouldn’t be a bad one!
I don’t understand why this has been such a heated discussion. At no point in Cynthia Nixon’s initial article did she speak for all LGBTQ people. She spoke of her own experience and her own sexual orientation. I don’t know why the LGBTQ community took it upon themselves to project it onto themselves. Hasn’t that been the underlying foundation of our arguments for equality in fights (ex: same-sex marriage and the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell)? This underlying notion that regardless of whether or not it a choice, we are individual commanders of our own identities and the government should not be excluding others, because certain identities do not fit within one such identity. Just like the ruling in Lawrence v. Texas held that a persons choice to engage in relationships, sexual or not, in the privacy of their own home cannot be regulated by the government (absent illegal relations, of course). It was a grand victory for LGBTQ persons, I believe, because instead of affirmatively carving out what is “right” or “allowed” in order to obtain this sort of equal treatment among the government, the courts merely stepped back and held it wasn’t to be regulated.
I stand behind her initial article, and do not think any sort of clarification or explanation was necessary. I believe that LGBTQ folks missed the point on this one and I think the general reaction was extremely hypocritical and frustrating. If people pay attention to this dialogue that ensued after she did this interview, I think some glaring potential problems in the fight for “equality” really surface here. It’s important to reevaluate the fight we are fighting in.
After weeks of heated discussion in the LGBT community following Cynthia Nixon’s comment that she chooses to be gay, the actress has released a statement clarifying what she meant to say in the original interview. Read the whole statement at the Advocate article above, but here’s the most telling part:
“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.
“As I said in the Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.That’s that. What’s great is how she inadvertently started a nationwide conversation on how we arrive at our sexualities, particularly the unspoken hierarchy of “born this way” vs. “chose this way.” Glad to have some closure with this one, though.
