G&STC’s Director Jesse Kahn talks with Gabrielle Kassel at Yahoo! About What the 'Born This Way' Narrative Gets Wrong About Being Queer
Check out G&STC’s Director Jesse Kahn talking with Gabrielle Kassel at Yahoo! about what the “born this way” narrative gets wrong about being queer.
The gist of the "born this way" narrative is that queer people deserve rights because their queerness is an innate and inborn trait — so denying someone rights because of their queerness is as absurd as denying them rights because of their eye color.
Part of the reason it caught on, according to Jesse Kahn, L.C.S.W., C.S.T., director and sex therapist at The Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in NYC, is that it's easy for non-queer people to understand, and therefore empathize with. In other words, if you're downright genetically incapable of being attracted to people of different genders from your own, then, fine, you deserve rights.
Initially, many queer people also embraced the catchphrase because it's in direct opposition to the common religious narrative that says that queerness is a lifestyle choice, says Kahn. The idea that queerness is a choice is linked to the idea that queerness is a sin — and as such, a sin someone could avoid, if only they had a little willpower, adds certified sex therapist and queer person Casey Tanner, M.A., L.C.P.C., expert for luxury pleasure product company LELO. "The born this way narrative pushes up against this by rejecting the idea that queerness has any relationship to willpower, and suggesting instead (to religious folks) that God made us this way," she says. Understandably, that's an appealing note for queer people who experience their sexuality as an inherent part of them — especially queer people in religious communities.
MORE FROM G&STC DIRECTOR JESSE KAHN ON THIS TOPIC
There are endless ways for someone to be queer.
It’s [the “born this way” narrative] a narrative that is understood and empathized with by those who do not share the identities and experiences of being queer. Also, I think it’s in direct opposition to religious narratives regarding sexuality being a choice or lifestyle that someone can easily choose to not be or engage with.
What are some of the other reasons that someone might make the choice to identify as "not straight" or "not cisgender"?
There are a lot of reasons! One might be that they haven’t found a word(s) other than “not straight” or “not cis” that fits.
Language changes and evolves over time and with that so could the words we use to describe ourselves. Both our genders and sexualities are allowed to be as fluid and evolving as feels right and with that may come word changes.