queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2002-05-06 12:20 am
queerbychoice) wrote2002-05-06 12:20 am
From a Comment I Just Left in Implodes's Journal
I maintain that everyone is born with the potential to be attracted to anyone, but that being pressured/terrified into trying to run away from one's ability to desire a particular gender, and told that you have no choice about it, tends to interfere with many people's ability to make free and well-informed choices. If someone told you, "Here is a red shirt and here is a blue shirt, AND IF YOU EVER FOR ONE SECOND EVEN FLEETINGLY DESIRE TO WEAR THAT STUPID FUCKING HIDEOUS BLUE SHIRT THEN GODDAMNIT I'LL DISOWN YOU FOR EVEN DARING TO DESIRE SUCH A DISGUSTING AND UNNATURAL THING, ONLY GENETICALLY DEFECTIVE HALFWITS WITH THEIR BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS WIRED ALL BACKWARDS WOULD EVER DESIRE SUCH A DISGUSTINGLY HIDEOUS THING AS TO WEAR A SINFUL BLUE SHIRT, so ahem, you're going to freely choose to only ever desire to wear red shirts all your life, AREN'T YOU, GODDAMNIT?!?!?!?!" then would that affect what color of shirts you desire to wear?
I suspect that in that situation, approximately 90% of people would conveniently deny ever having had the slightest interest in wearing blue shirts, while the brave remaining approximately 10% would find the self-knowledge and honesty to recognize and confess that they have, indeed, experienced a natural and normal human desire to wear blue shirts. They might also desperately plead that they hadn't chosen to desire to wear blue shirts, that this desire was natural to them - which I think it is in a way, but it's also natural for all those people who are frantically denying that they've ever had the slightest interest in wearing any blue shirts to desire to wear blue shirts on occasion too, and they've chosen to desperately suppress and deny those desires.
I suspect that in that situation, approximately 90% of people would conveniently deny ever having had the slightest interest in wearing blue shirts, while the brave remaining approximately 10% would find the self-knowledge and honesty to recognize and confess that they have, indeed, experienced a natural and normal human desire to wear blue shirts. They might also desperately plead that they hadn't chosen to desire to wear blue shirts, that this desire was natural to them - which I think it is in a way, but it's also natural for all those people who are frantically denying that they've ever had the slightest interest in wearing any blue shirts to desire to wear blue shirts on occasion too, and they've chosen to desperately suppress and deny those desires.
no subject
Just to add to it... don't forget the subversive and subtle messages people get to wear red shirts, too- the informal social controls... such as almost everyone around you wearing red shirts, and seeing what happens to people who wear blue shirts, and almost everyone in every form of our mainstream media wearing red shirts, and mainstream books, movies, television shows being made for people who desire to wear red shirts... even if, EVEN IF, no one ever specifically told you not to wear a blue shirt, or not so directly anyway, how would you know if you wanted to wear a blue shirt if the entire society was set up for people with red shirts to reap all the benefits and rewards?