Garrett Bithell: Dirty Words

Cynthia Nixon’s recent comments about her sexuality generated a groundswell of controversy about two dirty words: choice and bisexuality. But, as Garrett Bithell argues, we need to loosen the framework of the debate.

Choice: The act of selecting one thing in preference to another. It’s one of those ambiguous words that is hard to define in a concrete way, especially when it comes to sexuality and relationships.

When Cynthia Nixon spoke to The New York Times recently, her comments about sexuality ignited a bonfire of controversy. “For me, it is a choice,” she said. “I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

For the record, Nixon has since tempered these comments in an interview with The Advocate. “My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be un-inclusive and disempowering,” she said.

“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship,” she added.

It’s clear why Nixon’s initial comments were devastating for gay rights advocates at first glance. The notion that being gay is not a choice is our strongest argument for equal rights, because how can we be punished or disenfranchised for something we can’t control? It’s inherently unjust. Even the most basic, ignorant person at least has the capacity to understand that. It’s why many of the most rigorous opponents to gay rights – for example Margaret Court – still maintain the choice argument, because if they were to cede that point, they’d have nowhere to go.

Of course, we never choose to be sexually attracted to someone, and we never choose to fall in love in someone. It just happens – it’s primal and bodily and beyond our control. Nixon didn’t choose to be sexually attracted to Christine Marinoni, nor did she choose to fall in love with her. The only choice she did make was to be in a relationship with her, like she said.

But, in my opinion, we are stuck in a reductive quagmire when it comes to how sexuality is framed and defined. If anything, Nixon’s comments are further proof that yes – despite what many in the gay community seem to believe – it is possible to be sexually attracted to both men and women. Yes, bisexuality is real – it’s not some waiting room in the office of fully-fledged gaydom.

In fact, I don’t believe that anyone is 100% gay or 100% straight – and I believe that we sacrifice truth and detail when we insist on putting sexuality in these neat little gay/straight boxes. Sexuality is, by its very nature, complex and questing. If anything, I think there is a sexuality continuum between 100% gay and 100% straight, and we all exist at some point between the two.

Sexuality is never permanently fixed – it’s fluid, it’s desirous, it’s investigative. It can be influenced and moulded by context, environment, mood, the person you’re with, the people you meet. I have never felt comfortable with the gay label – I use it for social ease, but I don’t think it accurately or wholly encapsulates my sexuality. I find women highly arousing sometimes, and one day I might very well jump into bed with one.

So let’s relax the framework a bit – I don’t care who you want to sleep with or who you want to marry. But I also don’t care how you came to be in the relationship you’re in. If your last partner was a man, but your current partner is a woman, it doesn’t make either relationship less legitimate, and we have no right to judge, or colour someone else’s sexuality with our own.

As long as two people are happy and they’re not hurting anyone, who gives a shit?