Hi There! I Saw A Post You Made Ages Ago About Gender Not Necessarily Being A Static Thing And Being

hi there! i saw a post you made ages ago about gender not necessarily being a static thing and being something that can change over a person’s lifetime.

excuse my ignorance in this but do you think that is something that applies to a person’s sexual orientation as well? i always appreciate your insight on these topics.

also, apologies if anything is worded strangely. english is not my first language.

no worries, i can understand u perfectly! and my short answer to ur question is yes

longer answer is i don’t think anyone is born w some innate metaphysical identity that they can unearth to discover their True Self; i think sex, gender, and sexuality are largely socially constructed, though obviously materially rooted. the comparison i sometimes make to explain this to students is to think about an accent—certain physical aspects influence accent (mouth shape, vocal chords, etc) but ultimately the accent a person has is almost entirely shaped by the world around them; babies aren’t born with some “true” accent they have to discover about themselves. but that doesn’t make a person’s accent any less real or “natural”!

i think where some people get defensive abt the idea that sexuality isn’t necessarily static or innate is that oftentimes conservative voices have used this specifically to say that being gay is a phase, etc. this is a very clever trick, in which heterosexuality is enshrined as “natural” and any sexuality departing from that is a phase, a choice, etc, such that many queer people have found themselves cornered into arguing that queerness is also natural and innate, just like heterosexuality. but the ‘born this way’ narrative will ultimately not lead to liberation, because it fails to question the basic premise that heterosexuality is natural and innate; in reality heterosexuality is just as constructed and contrived as any other form of sexuality, and in fact we often see the lengths that people must go to in order to hide this fact. kinda like the wizard of oz behind the curtain (the invention of heterosexuality by jonathan ned katz is a great book abt this!)

the other sticking point i think people often have with this concept is that they think saying sexuality isn’t innate means people can just pick & choose who they’re attracted to. but that’s not how social constructs work! again, going back to the example of accents, just because an accent is socially constructed/developed does not mean that people can just snap their fingers and get a new accent. this is because social constructs are grounded in material realities and have material effects; they’re not just playing make-believe. money is another good example of a social construct that has very real and tangible material effects; i can’t just take monopoly money to the store and buy something.

so…yeah. i think sexuality can be just as fluid as gender. maybe you’ll be attracted to something at one point in your life and that’ll change over time, or maybe you’ll identify with one sexuality and then later figure out a different label works better for you. when it comes to queer politics & queer communities, i really don’t see a point in trying to nitpick or analyze whether someone is REALLY x sexuality, or what the “correct” label is for someone to use, bc i find labels more useful for identifying shared struggles than for like. unearthing buried metaphysical truths about identity lol. i also have found that i personally am much happier not worrying about figuring out my “true” sexuality and just using whatever label best fits my experiences & how i’m perceived in the world