Lillian Curtin

One of my girlfriend’s friends calls me a lesbian.

It’s not something I’ve ever been comfortable with. She paints it as a joke, poking fun that the only men I ever find handsome happen to play hockey for the Boston Bruins.

But that’s the thing. Those are men.

I am bisexual. And claiming that my choice to exclusively date women from here on out suggests anything otherwise enrages me.

Because no matter what essayist and author Malayika Kannan believes, expressing sexuality as a choice — particularly one meant to combat the patriarchy — is so harmful.

Within her essay titled “Lowkey, I Chose To Be A Lesbian,” Kannan describes a plethora of reasons to which she has chosen to identify herself as a lesbian. It is not my place to police that label on others; she is perfectly entitled to her own personal journey to finding a label that best fits her own sexuality.

What I do have a problem with is highlighting this personal choice within an essay. A choice, and explanation, that reduces the experience of other queer individuals.

This essay, which is making its rounds across the queer community after an initial shoutout from Grammy Award-winning rapper Doechii, has led to widespread, deserved hate.

My issues with this essay begin halfway through the piece, after she dictates through flowery language and extended metaphors her own journey into a sapphic lifestyle that decenters men. Kannan’s sixth paragraph finds the elephant in the room and circles it in bright red marker.

“‘Born this way’ discourse had its moment, but I think it frames queerness as an unhelpable accident of your birth and not a wonderful, principled choice you could make for yourself.”

It’s a take that reeks of the privilege of easy acceptance. In parts of the world, including right here stateside, the legality of queer relationships is second to social pressures. Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts since 2004, but I can promise I am not the only kid who sat in church trying to rectify something impossible to change.

I think demeaning “‘Born this way’ discourse” diminishes the simple truth. People don’t get to choose their sexuality. An off-handed remark a woman makes on the street wishing she did not like men has more in common with the child begging in a pew to “please let me find a boy crush” than most care to realize. Good or bad, queerness is not a choice.

I recognize I can’t ever capture the brevity of this situation, as someone who has attraction to both genders. For me “compulsory heterosexuality” doesn’t exist. Choosing to be with a man is just that — a choice available because of who I am attracted to.

But to suggest that those who are bisexual can simply choose to reject men, whether it be for personal reasons or to dismantle the patriarchy, and then claim another sexuality in hopes to enter “lesbian spaces” is problematic on a level that burns a fire in my bones.

How Kannan manages to erase bisexuality with her perception of lesbianism and reduce sapphic love to a political action in the same breath, I truly cannot understand.

Then, to add a cherry to this horrific, borderline homophobic sundae, she attempts to justify this perception of queerness through the lens of rejecting labels. She discusses how there shouldn’t be gatekeeping within the community, and how she wants to share this queerness — an amorphous idea not specific to one gender — with everyone.

She cites the biphobia that seems to arise every June regarding the legitimacy of queer women in straight presenting relationships. The same biphobia that she inadvertently — and I choose to believe it was inadvertent to hold my peace — perpetuates.

In a weird way, her argument feels like the other side of the “gold star lesbian” coin. For those unaware of the terminology, “gold star lesbians” are women who have only dated and been with other women. What was once a term to protect the queer community — preventing someone’s intimate moment from turning into a college “experiment” — has now become a weapon against non-lesbian sapphic women.

The lack of invitation to a unified sapphic culture for non-lesbian women is its own can of worms that Kannan has no interest in dissecting in this essay. Instead, she’d prefer to bring down multiple sectors of the queer community, suggesting that the choice to date or marry a man is marred with hidden promotion of the patriarchy. Conversely, she believes that the choice to date or marry women as a non-lesbian is indicative of adopting the label.

If we take tally, she just erased bisexuality. You’re either lesbian or upholding the patriarchy. She says it herself.

There is a line in the middle of this essay, right after Kannan has presented queerness as a choice, where she says something haunting.

“I want to open the wide house of queerness to (straight women).”

The problem is, this house isn’t wide. Labels mean something and diminishing someone’s label as the means to a political end is harmful.

There is no implicit binary here. The options are not to uphold the patriarchy or practice lesbianism. There are plenty of women who reject the patriarchy and decide to be romantically or sexually engaged with men. There are also lesbians who are upholding the patriarchy through ideas like bioessentialism. All people can choose to reject the patriarchy and all can choose to maintain it, regardless of gender or sexuality.

You are not more queer or less queer because of the label you choose, despite what Kannan’s now-deleted TikTok would suggest her detractors think. You are just you. You love who you love.

I love my girlfriend because she makes me see the good in the world and genuinely connects with me in a way that no one else on this planet does. I think she is beautiful inside and out.

I don’t love her because I aim to defeat the patriarchy. I don’t love her because I have sworn myself off men forever, choosing to leave my bisexuality behind to become a lesbian.

I just love her.

Can’t that be enough? Isn’t that what the queer community has fought for? The right to just love.