The Problem with the Born This Way Mentality

[foreverdawning]

I want to preface this by saying this may get a bit long but bear with me. I don’t think we should rely so heavily on everyone in the LGBT community being born this way.

 

I will admit, it has been incredibly helpful in our acceptance in the cisgender and heterosexual world. A lot of people, even within the community, have an attachment to this phrase. I used to be one of those people.

 

I’ll also say that I do believe that I was born bisexual and nonbinary, but until I had the terminology to express it I only felt “different.” That’s not a bad thing. Many people feel the same way I do. But I have seen firsthand that it is also harming the young LGBT community.

 

The born this way argument has rooted itself into the core of all LGBT topics. Young people barely coming into their adolescence and realizing that they may be different feel pressured into claiming the “right” label immediately. This is unhealthy for them. It took many years of soul searching to find a label I identified with and was comfortable with. By that time I had already been two years into my college education.

 

Young people have flooded my inbox begging myself and the other mods for an easy answer to “what is my sexuality?” I am 22 years old and a stranger on the internet. You are in your early teens, maybe even a preteen, you should not be worried about the implications of being wrong about your sexuality and needing to change your label. The label is not important at this stage in y’all’s lives.

 

I am unsure about what my own future has in store. I want to help everyone, but I worry that modern identity politics on Tumblr is overflowing into the offline world and doing more harm than good. You may have been born this way, or you may have blossomed into a beautiful and healthy LGBT person. Either way, you deserve respect even if you are unsure about your label at this moment in time. Perhaps you never find a label that fits, and that’s okay too. Please don’t place unnecessary stress into finding the right label. You’re more than your identifier.

This is an upload from a tumblr post I made.
It felt relevant to post this on Dreamwidth because I know the majority of people on here are older and don't really know what's going on with highschoolers on platforms like tumblr and twitter. There's such a huge emphasis on labels that it makes me very uncomfortable and sad to see.