Post #1826520
2026-04-24 22:02 UTC
Those assimilationist refrains are, of course, a reinforcement of the bioessentialist narrative - "culture is ephemeral, your unfortunate biology is the only thing gay about you." It's a facet of western, colonial attitudes of white/cishet/male identities and cultures being unquestionably legitimate while all others are subject to scrutiny. You may be "born this way", it might even be a part of some god's grand plan, but you're still not as natural as the straights. What were simply unnatural acts before "born this way" are now the symptomology of a naturalized-as-unnatural being.
I'm not saying that sexual preferences, likes and dislikes are fundamentally fungible, invalid, or problematic. They're definitely more fluid than they're usually given credit for though, and, through the construction of immutable sexual identities, have been made intelligible within a framework of coloniality that produces systems of domination.
5/6
Replies (1)
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@lina@neuromatch.social 2026-04-24 22:02
This is why queer liberation requires the destruction of essentialism, immutable categories, and the biologization of queer identities. They uphold a culture of intolerance and exclusion masked as assimilationist acceptance. They inform doomed quests to find a neurological or genetic cause of queerness - a line of research clearly inspired by eugenics. The naturalization of queerness got us here. The denaturalization of sex/gender and sexuality categories as a whole is the way forward. All that to say, maybe some of y'all cishets should kiss more people whom you typically wouldn't. 6/6