Born This Way?

Dr. John Corvino, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wayne State University in Detroit, with some provocative thoughts on the born-this-way question:




What I Say: Your Head Trucker has much respect for Dr. Corvino's brainpower, but it seems to me he approaches the issue much too academically here. Unlike some people I've known who claim they "just don't remember" their childhoods in any detail, my memories stretch back in one long, unbroken stream of consciousness to before my third birthday. Of course, some details have grown dim or passed beyond recovery as time has gone on, like the name of my fifth-grade teacher - but more significant ones are still quite clear in my mind. And I am here to tell you that I was most definitely a little gay boy by the time I was 4 years old, maybe even earlier, long before the least suspicion of sex had ever crossed my mind. It had nothing to do with sex - it had to do with how I thought and felt about the world, and about myself, and how I acted, all unconscious of straightness or gayness.

There is a gay nature - that's the best word I can think of to describe what I mean - a gay nature that is evident in most gay men (even though some of us have learned to keep it tamped down and tightly wrapped unless we are with very good friends) and in gay little boys too. And that nature was already going full blast in me by age 4, as I said: wanting a toy washing machine for my birthday, then a toy kitchen for the next one; playing dress-up with my mom's old skirts and slips, her makeup and jewelry; preferring to play jump rope with the girls instead of softball with the boys; or picking out clothes at the department store with my mom, and by some unbidden, untutored instinct recognizing that, oh yes the yellow shirt will look good with the brown shorts, and the pale blue shirt goes with the dark blue pants; all the while wishing I could have a pair of the frilly pink socks across the aisle in the girls' department; and on one particularly memorable occasion, looking up at the stars and making a wish that I would NOT grow up to be a man - like all those men I saw on TV, all the time getting into fistfights and gunfights, and generally being mean and violent and brutal.  What an awful thought!  I wanted no part of it.

Of course it wasn't until many years later that I was able to look back on all those attitudes and behaviors, and see them as precursors of my sexual orientation - but they were. I'm not a biologist or psychologist or geneticist, and I can't say for an absolute scientific certainty what the efficient cause of my gayness is or was - but regardless of the mechanism, it was already there in me at such a young age that it only seems right to say that I was born that way, and in fact I do believe that that gay nature is something that is inborn, regardless of how many genes are involved or what precise combinations of genes and environment and anything else that might have a bearing on it might be - I know it was all there in me and perfectly naturally expressed by me long before I had any clue about sexuality or gender roles or what was or wasn't socially acceptable.

(A side note: my dad died when I was in high school, so we never discussed the whole gay thing. But I was blessed to have a mom who was totally supportive when I came out to her at age 24, and we did talk about it sometimes. I even asked her why she and my dad let me do all those girly things - which I caught grief for from other little straight boys. Mama smiled and said she and my father just figured I was going through a "phase" and if left alone I would grow out of it eventually - I think that was Dr. Spock's advice she was going on. But I never thought to ask her if she saw any difference(s) in me as an infant, before I was up walking around and learning to talk. It would be very interesting to know - but there's no one now alive who can answer that question.)

This me has always been gay deep down inside, since the very beginnings of memory and consciousness. The philosophers and biologists and psychologists and all the rest can dice it up in their theories however they please, but not a word of all that changes the fact that my real self, my essence, my nature was what we call gay from the start, or at least from such an early point that it might as well be considered the start for all practical purposes. 

Most assuredly, I did not choose this nature, no more than I imagine any little straight boy has ever chosen his nature. It's just me. And always has been. The simple, pure, uncoerced truth that has always been in me - has always been me. Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way, am I fellas?