Why Would Anyone Choose to be Attacked?#

I don’t remember now, what prompted me to think about this topic. It’s one that I actually jotted down some time ago in response, probably, to a news article or some other reading I had done at the time. But the question that I wanted to explore a little bit (this may be more a micro blog post rather than long-form) is in the title.

Okay, so one of the things I hear far more often than is reasonable, is that somehow being gay or being trans is a choice. Folks that hold that being gay or trans is not determined by biology don’t make sense to me. I wonder how folks that hold that view can justify their position.

Here’s why:

I would like someone to explain to me why anyone would choose to follow a path that is guaranteed to bring pain, abuse, discrimination, constant threats, and derision to themselves. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Similarly, if the individual is choosing this as a “lifestyle”, why would so many hide that side of themselves? Why would they go to extremes to try to “fit in” to society? Certainly it would be easier to just be “normal”.

So, let’s take a step back. There’s this belief that there are only two sexes. Yet, there is a long history in both the medical and legal literature of what was once termed “hermaphroditism”. That is, a baby is born and their genitals are such that it is difficult to determine the sex. Why this happens is still not clear, so far as I know. But we do know that the development of sex organs is strongly influenced by hormones. It seems reasonable to me that the same hormones that led to the development of ambiguous genitalia might also influence the child sense of gender. ¹ Genetically, we generally do see two sexes: XX (female) and XY (male). But there are also anomalies in which there may be a third chromosome: XXY (Klinefelter syndrome); XXX (Trisomy X); XYY and even some with multiple X chromosomes (XXXY, XXXXY) and there are multiple other phenomena that lead to variations in the apparent sex of the child.

All of that leads to the realization that it is not always possible to determine, based simply on visual examination, whether a child is male or female. This fact is well documented by such notables as Hippocrates, Galen, and others. Even Saint Augustine, while noting that there are two sexes also acknowledged that some babies are “androgynes”, meaning the child has ambiguous genitalia.

It’s important, also, to note that some societies, such as the Hijra community in South Asia do, in fact, acknowledge a ’third sex’, that being composed of intersex individuals. Whether members of these groups are subjected to the type of discrimination that those in the west do is unclear to me. That said, according to Wikipedia India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all legally acknowledged a third sex. Except for Bangladesh, these countries even provide an option for this third sex on passports and legal documents.

Now, I’ve digressed a bit from my intent here. It just seems to me more than a little ludicrous that anyone can believe that someone would deliberately choose to live a life that they know is going to lead to abuse, discrimination, and so forth. That’s not generally how people operate and is the reason why so many gay and trans people remained “in the closet” for so long. Many of those people we have revered through time: Alan Turing, Oscar Wilde, Andy Warhol, Peter Thiel, Lady Gaga, Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter,Anthony Perkins, among many, many others were either gay or bisexual, according to multiple sources.

Why would these people choose a lifestyle that they knew – particularly those from the early to mid-20^th^ century – would likely destroy their careers if exposed? Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me. What does make sense to me is that that their biology dictated the direction of their lives. They didn’t choose that lifestyle, biology did.