A few days ago Cynthia Nixon created a controversy when she said that for her lesbianism is a choice. It is for me too. You see like Cynthia I've loved both men and women over the course of my lifetime. Bisexuality doesn't mean someone can't make up their mind as to be either straight or lesbian/gay. It certainly doesn't mean we are unfaithful to the person we love or over the course of a life time the people we love.
For some bisexual people there is a gravitation to one or the other either straight or gay. For me that direction has been towards lesbianism. This is encouraged by the greater equality one can find in a same sex marriage/partnership.
Cynthia Nixon’s Comments Prove We Still Don’t Know How To Talk About Sexual Identity
From Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/27/412318/cynthia-nixons-comments-prove-we-still-dont-know-how-to-talk-about-sexual-identity/
By Zack Ford
on Jan 27, 2012
The LGBT blogosphere has been wrestling with comments made by actress Cynthia Nixon (immortally Sex in the City‘s ”Miranda”) to the New York Times that she chose to be a lesbian:
I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.
She doubled down in an interview with the Daily Beast, but in a way that helped clarify where she’s really coming:
I don’t pull out the “bisexual” word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals… but I do completely feel that when I was in relationships with men, I was in love and in lust with those men. And then I met Christine and I fell in love and lust with her. I am completely the same person and I was not walking around in some kind of fog. I just responded to the people in front of me the way I truly felt.
Continue reading at: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/27/412318/cynthia-nixons-comments-prove-we-still-dont-know-how-to-talk-about-sexual-identity/
Is It a Choice to Be Gay? It Depends on the Meaning of 'It'
From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathaniel-frank/is-it-a-choice-to-be-gay_b_1231126.html
Posted: 01/25/2012
When Cynthia Nixon, who became famous for her role on Sex and the City, recently told The New York Times that being a lesbian was, for her, "a choice," her words lit up the LGBT listservs, angering many who believe that Nixon is giving comfort to the enemy. Those who believe sexual orientation is a choice are far more likely to oppose our equality, while folks who think we are "born that way" are more likely to support us. If we can't help it, goes the thinking, we shouldn't be punished for it; and the corollary to that: if you can't choose to be gay, there's no need to stigmatize it as a way to discourage people from making the wrong choice.
Those angered with Nixon's comments felt they were both unhelpful and incorrect. They say that research, along with so many of our own experiences, make clear that being gay or lesbian is not a choice. And what Nixon was really describing, although she refused to apply the term, was the fact of being bisexual, since she had previously been partnered with a man (Nixon later said, "I don't pull out the 'bisexual' word because nobody likes the bisexuals").
But many have also defended her words, particularly lesbian and bisexual women. They say she was only speaking of her own experiences and that if she feels it was a choice for her, it's not for anyone else to say otherwise.
The problem is that this is not just about what Cynthia Nixon "feels." It requires more rigorous thinking about what identity and choice really entail. Nixon's comments further muddy a matter that sometimes seems to stem from a vast but rather simple confusion in American thinking. To paraphrase President Clinton, the question depends on what the meaning of "it" is. When I hear "it's a choice" (or "it's not a choice"), I can only make sense of the statement if I know if we're discussing same-sex attraction or same-sex action. I can't say it better than the blogger John Aravosis: "It's only a choice among flavors I already like." That is, I don't choose to like chocolate ice cream, but I choose whether, when, and how much to eat it. The idea that one can choose to be attracted to one type of person over another is nonsensical, just as no one is accused of choosing to prefer chocolate over strawberry. The question is what someone will choose to do with those feelings (eat chocolate or strawberry, partner with this person or that), and whether any particular choice is morally good, bad, or neutral.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathaniel-frank/is-it-a-choice-to-be-gay_b_1231126.html
Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away
From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/bruni-gay-wont-go-away-genetic-or-not.html?_r=2
By FRANK BRUNI
Published: January 28, 2012
That has long been one of the rallying cries of a movement, and sometimes the gist of its argument. Across decades of widespread ostracism, followed by years of patchwork acceptance and, most recently, moments of heady triumph, gay people invoked that phrase to explain why homophobia was unwarranted and discrimination senseless.
Lady Gaga even spun an anthem from it.
But is it the right mantra to cling to? The best tack to take?
Not for the actress Cynthia Nixon, 45, whose comments in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday raised those very questions.
For 15 years, until 2003, she was in a relationship with a man. They had two children together. She then formed a new family with a woman, to whom she’s engaged. And she told The Times’s Alex Witchel that homosexuality for her “is a choice.”
“For many people it’s not,” she conceded, but added that they “don’t get to define my gayness for me.”
They do get to fume, though. Last week some did. They complained that she represented a minority of those in same-sex relationships and that she had furthermore handed a cudgel to our opponents, who might now cite her professed malleability as they make their case that incentives to change, not equal rights, are what we need.
But while her critics have good reason to worry about how her words will be construed and used, they have no right to demand the kind of silence and conformity from Nixon that gay people have justly rebelled against. She’s entitled to her own truth and manner of expressing it.
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