Thinking about how modern, “progressive” culture surrounding sexuality still enables homophobic rhetoric.
There is, first of all, the idea that sexuality is fluid. The issues in this, I hope, are obvious; by saying that it is fluid, one is saying that it can change. I wonder who preys upon this idea, exploiting vulnerable gay people telling them that there’s something broken with them that can be fixed?
… oh. As we can see, not only does this conversion therapy group draw on this idea, it directly uses this phrasing that is so popular.
Then, of course, there is the idea that people can (or even should) “healthily” engage in sexual activities with those to whom they are not sexually attracted. For example, we commonly see the idea that it’s normal, great even, for asexuals to have sexual activities with their partners. I have seen this justified in several ways:
It still brings physical pleasure to the asexual
It makes the partner happy, and they have an emotional bond with the partner
Both of these could be used to “support” gays and lesbians having straight sex. After all, it’s not as if not being physically attracted to wo/men means that they still can’t love them on an emotional level, right? And they’re still capable of physically enjoying sex. After all, there are plenty of gay men who sustained physical arousal enough to have kids with their female partners.
Then there is the rhetoric that it’s transphobic for lesbians or straight men not to be attracted to a trans woman, or for gay men or straight women not to be attracted to a trans man—genitalia included. No, this certainly isn’t a view every trans person or self-style progressive holds, but it’s something that unfortunately happens too frequently:
I’ve seen several posts where a lesbian will ask if it’s wrong for her not to be attracted to penis if that penis belongs to a trans woman, or ask if there’s a way that she can overcome her penis repulsion for trans women, and she will be met with long lists of advice about thinking about something else, or imaging the trans woman’s genitalia as a cis woman’s genitalia, and so on, the fact she is incapable of being attracted to penis being reduced to “genital preference”. She could completely respect trans women, not be at all transphobic, but still be labelled as such for not being attracted to penis.
The phrase genital preference itself, used in these instances, reduces an immutable part of someone‘s orientation to a preference, in the same way that a bisexual might prefer men but still be attracted to women, or I might prefer brunettes but still be attracted to blondes.
These are multiple areas in which a person’s unchangeable sexual orientation is viewed as changeable, downplayed, or disregarded within progressive spaces. All of these result in an environment where old homophobic rhetoric is validated, because if you’re gay maybe you really aren’t, and even if you are, that doesn’t matter; you can have sex with people you’re not attracted to anyways and it will be completely fine, so what’s holding you back from a normal heterosexual life? There has to be something wrong with you.