When you say you "chose" it, do you just mean
it's a product of your social environment?

No. The word "choice" indicates an element of free will, and those of us who use the word "choice" to describe our experience realize this and use the word deliberately.

A more interesting question, however, would be whether people who say "social environment" really mean "choice" as well. By what mechanism exactly does environment affect people? Don't people make choices in response to their environment? The choice is not necessarily a direct choice as in "I've decided to be queer now" (although there are certainly some people who did make direct choices like that), but environment doesn't generally seem to impose itself on some helpless victim's psyche without choices being involved. Of course you could argue that in a case of severe trauma, environment can produce post-traumatic stress syndrome without a person choosing to experience it. But if we're talking about a healthy person responding in a healthy manner to a healthy social environment, then we're usually talking about someone who's making choices in response to that environment.

Back to the Queer by Choice FAQ
Back to the QueerByChoice.com Homepage

©2000 by Gayle Madwin. All rights reserved.