Born this Way?

“I’m beautiful in my way, ‘kuz God makes no mistakes. I’m on the right track baby, I was born this way.”

-Lady Gaga, “Born this Way”

            People that believe that having a LGBTTQ* identity is amoral or unethical usually also believe that being gay is an individual choice.  This is a rocky road to travel; after all, if being gay is a choice then, well, just un-choose it!  Claiming sexual identity as a choice invalidates romantic love between same sex partners, and reduces a queer identity to something of a passing phase.  The opposing school of thought claims that sexuality is not a choice, and that individuals were born that way.  This means that one cannot change their sexual identity any more than one can change their eye color.  The question needs further analysis; is sexuality a choice, or were you, in the words of the lovely Lady Gaga, born this way?

            Queer feminism is “the application of queer notions of gender, sex, and sexuality to the subject matter of feminist theory, and the application of feminist notions of gender, sex, and sexuality to queer theory” (Marinucci, 106).  Queer feminism avoids binary or hierarchal reasoning usually associated with these concepts (Marinucci, 106).  Let’s look at the concept of gender.  Queer feminists believe gender to exist on a continuum, and not as discrete categories, where you can only belong to one group.  Gender is a socially constructed set of beliefs about what is normal or natural behaviour for a person of a particular biological sex.  Biological sex is determined by hormones, which is complicated by the fact that men and women produce the same hormones, though in different relative quantities (Marinucci, 43).  There is no single identifiable female cocktail of hormones, just as there is no exclusively male set of hormones.  To use hormones as a dividing line between the sexes we would have to set an arbitrary standard as to “acceptable hormone variations for malehood and femalehood” (Marinucci, 43).  If there is no firm dividing line between the sexes, it seems to naturally follow that differences in gender roles are largely the result of social construction of gender ideals and are not biologically determined. 

            Liberal feminists believe that women are socially conditioned into the roles that they play (Mullaly, 163).  Social Constructionism is also an important concept to queer feminists, who believe that gender roles are politically constructed to ensure male dominance (Jeffreys, 11).  Through a queer feminist lens, LGBTTQ* oppression and the oppression of women are seen as the result of established sex roles.  Women are constructed as everything men are not: nurturing, gentle, obedient, and emotional.  All these constructions of womanhood relegate women to the private sphere, while men find fulfilling careers and accumulate power and prestige in the public sphere. Lesbians and gays are persecuted because of the threat they pose to established gender roles; lesbians challenge female sex roles of passivity and servicing of men, while gay men challenge the male sex role which requires masculine behaviour and objectification of women (Jeffreys, 11).  

            Biological sex is determined by arbitrary hormone variations between men and women.  Since we are really not all that different chemically, it follows that gender roles are not biological, but a construct of a given society at a particular point in time.  Gender roles are socially constructed to dictate what is good or proper for a specific sex, they are used to oppress women and the LGBTTQ* by valuing what is prescribed as typical male traits and devaluing what are considered female traits.  Those who step out of their socially defined gender roles (LGBTTQ*) are stigmatized and demonized by larger society. I believe gay and lesbian identities are fixed determined early in life (if not at birth) and are natural, good, and healthy rather than unnatural, bad, or sick (Jeffreys, 14). 

“No matter gay, straight of bi, lesbian, transgender life, I’m on the right track baby, I was born to survive.”
-Lady Gaga, Born This Way

Love & Rage

Julianna

Jeffreys, S. (2003). Unpacking queer politics (1^st Ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell

            Publishers Inc.

Marinucci, M. (2010). Feminism is queer: The intimate connection between queer and

            feminist theory (1^st Ed.). New York, NY: Zed Books Ltd.

Mullaly, R. (2007). The new structural social work (3rd Ed.). Don Mills, ON: Oxford

 University Press.