Telling a heterosexual adult that they are not in fact “heterosexual” but that they merely identify with a sexual preference along a sliding scale, is annoying, intellectually dishonest and slightly invasive. It is also nothing new. Telling it to a heterosexual youngster is a form of bullying and abuse.
There is nothing about accepting people’s sexual preferences for what they are that requires one to to accept this sliding scale of sexual preference myth. Some people are gay. Get over it. Some people are straight. Some people are “other.” Get over it. Take the conveniently amorphous term “gender identity” and apply the same principle. Signed, god.
Yet the ground is shifting so that the idea of “difference” is the new identity fascism.
ABS statistics consistently show that the proportion of the population who are something other than straight hovers around 2%. But even the falsely exaggerated figure of 10% appears to be not enough, because either way, gay people are in the minority, which by definition means they are outside the norm.
Thus, the sliding scale concept of sexual preference and “gender identity” belies the “everybody is different” message it purports to uphold. Nobody is different, everybody is the same – we are just at different points on the sliding scale, no-one is truly straight, no-one is truly gay. The ground has shifted from the demand to accept difference, to the new catch-cry that nothing is “normal.” The term “normal” has become problematic, divisive, exclusionary, politically incorrect. We see the genesis of the idea that heterosexuality is a social construct, (in fact, it is the idea that heterosexuality is a social construct which is the social construct,) and the appearance of the extremely silly term “cis-gendered” (Google it for a good laugh.)
It should be easy, a piece of cake, even, to raise children and adults to be tolerant toward people’s sexual preference and “gender identity.” Teach them the Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” and inform them that this applies to these fields as well. Because, you know, everybody is different. Accept that this won’t be 100% effective, because some people are jerks. Move on.
If some people are straight, some people are gay, and some people are “something else” and everybody tolerates everybody else, imperfectly, that should be the end of it. But the sliding scale principle has at its core the obsession to break down these distinctions. It is as though, having won the battle for homosexuals to be accepted and tolerated, having won acceptance for their difference, the goal posts have been shifted, so that we can no longer classify ourselves as different from them.
Now that the battle for same sex marriage has been not so much won as it was forfeited by the other side, concepts of sexual preference and “gender identity” are, and will be, the new identity politics battleground. And this is where we cross the line from tolerance to totalitarianism. We cross the line from changing the way we define others, to mandating the way we define ourselves.
Do this to heterosexual teens – I guarantee you chaos, hatred, and violence.
