Thread by @TravelingNun

A lot of people think it's fair game to know the details about my sex life, if I'm celibate, etc. "You're the one who calls herself a lesbian," they say. "This is what you get for defining yourself by your sexuality."

But this fundamentally misunderstands the gay experience.

I didn't call myself a lesbian and then start experiencing discrimination, invasions of privacy, etc, in that order. I experienced discrimination and THEN started calling myself a lesbian, in part, as a way to reclaim the false narrative pushed upon me.

People like to pretend that if I suddenly stopped calling myself a lesbian, discrimination and invasions of privacy in my life would suddenly cease. But it happened before and it would happen after. The only difference would be that I wouldn't have the language to talk about it.

Gay people have always struggled against the tendency of outsiders to only think of us in relation to sex. This tendency doesn't exist because we choose to call ourselves gay. It exists because of homophobia.