I’m Gayed Out

I completely agree!
And I think this is a problem particularly in the gay community, because they have had to continue fighting for the right to enter the mainstream. It seems sad to me that after all that hard work, many members of the gay community continue to define themselves by their orientation, gender, etc instead of their personality.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

I'll speak for myself here, but by embracing all parts of my personality, I've found my relationships (romantic, platonic, and professional) are more honest and true. And its made me happier for it. It also illustrates we're more than just glittered-up clones, butched-up lady mechanics or whatever other stereotypes are floating out there.

We are better than that.

the best of all. well put!

“Can we be more than what we lust after?”

I don't know, I'm pretty shallow.

hmmmi think scientifically speaking i guess who you'd like to sleep with does tell your sexuality. but i agree that people are so intense with being labelled gay that they are afraid to explore or even entertain how they really feel. i do believe love has no boundaries and that includes gender. kudos!

And what's the deal with those gay pride parades, am I right?

This reminds me of when Dan Savage was speaking at some school or another and an audience member asked the question of what to expect from living with an “extremely gay roommate.” Dan sort of questioned her on what “extremely gay” meant, she couldn't really describe it…although I think we all have a mental image.

I think the issue people have with that personality type sometimes, as well as outrageously macho straight guys, is that it just seems like such an affectation. I suppose there are some people who really define their identity by what they prefer to have sex with, but even then, there must be more creative ways to demonstrate it than playing into tired stereotypes.

I love this, I totally agree

In a lot of ways, this comes from wanting to find mates… since heterosexuality is assumed to be the default (nothing wrong with that btw), gay folks often gotta do a bit more peacocking to get their proverbial genes out there

Tasha, this is actually a very heterosexist thing to say. You don't think that straight people are doing the same thing all day long ? When I hang out with my straight female friends or watching Sex in the City or listening to my students chat before class starts, conversation is all about relationships, sex, looking for a mate, what to wear/how to be attractive to the opposite sex, etc. It's all over tv, movies, magazines, everywhere. And since everyone just assumes that straight is default, it is seen as normal practice. I am sick as hell of hearing about straight relationships, seeing “does size matter?” headers on magazines, having the romantic comedy relationship model shoved in my face all the time. I don't get to see myself or people like me represented very much in culture at large, and I don't shove my sexuality in people's faces either. But gay people are allowed to be just as open and vocal as straight people about the same things that we all talk about — yes, straight people are walking sexualities too. Your comment is equivalent to those “I'm-not-a-homophobe,-I-totally-have-a-gay-friend, BUT…” comments. Heterosexism isn't so latent after all.

I dare you to write “I'm African-Americaned Out.”

Seriously go for it.

Piece of homophobic trash.

This is uniquely awful. Jesus Christ. Until we live in a culture where there is queer equality, sexual orientation IS an extremely important facet of identity and should NOT be ignored. Clearly, there is more to everyone than any particular facet of his identity, but that absolutely does not mitigate the importance or relevance of his identity. Identity is a lens that colors almost everything that happens in your life–and most saliently, it colors your basic rights.

Half the reason people are homophobic is because so many gays are closeted–people become much less likely to hold anti-gay personal and political views when they realize people around them are gay. (Not when they “know gay people.” Everyone knows gay people. The question is whether or not they know the gay people around them are gay.)

Seriously, would you tell people “Stop making such a big deal out of your blackness?” Especially when color resulted in marginalization?

This is the most ignorant and offensive article I've read on Thought Catalog. I'm tremendously disappointed.

by transitive property, you are CLEARLY hating on those that are intensely, passionately obsessed with NASCAR and i am not sure how i feel about that. THOSE PEOPLE ARE NASCAR.

i love this.i love this article, because you're not telling gay people, or straight people for that matter, to ignore their sexual orientation. in fact, you are simply telling everyone not to let their sexuality define them. you make that very clear. i do not believe that you are a homophobe, as some commenters are calling you. i did not get one impression of homophobia while reading your article. i think it's beautiful that you are supportive enough of the gay community to say actually encourage them to look past their sexuality and embrace their whole selves. well done.

I find this, and the reactions to it, very interesting. I know you weren't trying to be offensive and you seem to really stress that so I'm not even going to discuss that. Also, for what it's worth, I'm actually not offended. And neither would I be offended by an article questioning whether people should I identify solely/predominantly by their race, because, yes, there are other qualities in oursleves that we should focus on. However, I think you've hit the nail on the head when you ask

“Who you like to have sex with does not dictate who you have to be.

…Or does it?”

Because I think you know the answer is that all this “big” (for want of a better word) and even some “smaller” (e.g. which football team you support, or your hair colour) characteristics shape our opinions, ideas, behaviours, beliefs and ultimately our world view, to an extent. It's possible to discern that women and men generally have different opinions on certain issues, feel strongly about different issues, have different interests; same goes across race divides, age divides, religious divides. Anything really. Obviously, we are all an amalgamation of a variation of characteristics and these characteristics don't generally limit us to behaving/thinking in one sole way so there are similarities between different people and differences between similar people. But it's problematic to say “Don't get hung up on the fact your straight or the fact you grew up in New York” or whatever because these are exactly the factors which shape a person and which cause them to be the person you see.

This kind of thing is only allowed due to the invisibility (and therefore essential lack of stereotypes) of heterosexuality. I talk about fucking my boyfriend, I'm being kinda racy. My best friend talks about his boyfriend, he's making some sort of political statement (as perceived by others).

I agree people are more than their sexuality,
but I'm calling bullshit on your article.

Loved it, great work. I find it really odd that some people felt offended by this, but I guess that can happen all the time when you voice an opinion, even when what you're suggesting is embracing the whole of who you are. Cheers.

Regardless of whether this is offensive or not, it's incredibly unsophisticated. Read up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

It's just a cliche point, and a false one at that.

I was an out teacher, the only openly out one at my 2000-student HS,
which was really scary at first but in the end both necessary and not a
big deal. Anyway, I had multiple queer students and straight students
alike remark that they didn't think gay people looked or talked like me
because I was so “normal.” And I think it said a lot to them to have a
lesbian teacher they knew and cared about, who had good working relationships with the other
teachers, and was also into increased minority access to education and
alternative fuels and all the other non-gay shit we would talk about in
science class. And at the end of the day that whole experience
drastically changed my definition of queer activism. Maybe you
can accomplish more by being a good, out, multifaceted human being than defining yourself exclusively by your sexuality.

This is just shitty.
Shitty logic, shitty writing, just absolute, pure shit.
“it is quite another to deny that you are nothing more than your sexuality.”
“Denying that you can be gay and more than that feeds prejudice and panders to harmful stereotypes.”
Find me a gay who denies that they are anything more gay. Because I'd really like to meet the gay who says “I am NOT a multifaceted person with a complex, nuanced identity and sense of self. I am a gay. This is all that defines me. This is all that I am.” Or, yknow, because you're so not homophobic and have totally examined your own invisible, unmarked, heterosexist privilege, find me the straight who says “I am a STRAIGHT PERSON. This is all-consuming of my identity. Nothing else matters and the only thing you need to know is that I am a STRAIGHT.”
…oh, but right, you can't, because no one actually does that.
#thatawkwardmoment when you reveal douchebaggeryPLUSlogicalfallacy.

“Your sexual orientation, whatever it may be, is irrelevant to how you function at work, in social environments, and with friends.”
This is false, and you are stupid.
Sexuality, sexual orientation, gender performance, identity, sense of self, are all so bound up in each other, it is very dumb, and very wrong, for you to pick out ONE axis of individual identity (sexual orientation) specifically, the “marked”, Otherized formulation of that axis (homosexuality) as “irrelevant to how you function at work, in social environments, and with friends”.
Your sense of self, whatever that may be, as gay, as straight, as woman, as man, as Christian or black or hipster or whateverthefuckitis that shapes your worldview and your ways of existing as a social being in the social world, is not. I repeat, not. At all. Ever. “Irrelevant.”
All of these things (sexuality, gender, religion, race, etc) permeate ALL of our social interactions because they make up WHO people are, HOW people exist.function.interact.BE, socially.

So basically what you're saying is, “Can you not be quite SO gay, or so obvious about it, putting all your gayness all up in my face, like can you just stick it back in the closet a little bit because this is a work environment/friend environment/social environment and I don't think your ways of existing socially or like, your personhood, with its super-obvious-gay-flamboyant-elements are RELEVANT.”

Like, idk, move to Connecticut, or something, so you can go on pretending you're liberal and accepting so long as people don't FLAUNT their SEXYSEXUALORIENTATIONGAYSEXINESS in your totally-not-controlled-by-your-heterosexism-face.

While reading the comments, a question popped to mind; Do we truly define ourselves? Are we just the perceptions and results of the labelling of others? What sparked this question was the label that I assigned to Olympic Athletes. I labelled them a gymnast, a diver, a sprinter. I have placed this label on an individual who may label themselves differently.

You know, when someone is fired for their sexuality, or someone is beaten up for their gender performance, it doesn't mean that they said “this is all I am”. When people are discriminated against for being LGBTQ, it means that there are assholes out there who immediately assume that that little fact is the most important fact regarding that person. When same-sex couples can't get married, that means that the government in their state believes that no matter how loving they are, how dedicated they are to their children, the fact that they both have the same genitalia is the most important and actual defining factor in their relationship, of their personhood.
When all sexual orientations/gender identities have the same rights, THEN you can say what you said in your article. Until then, your article is all about how privileged you are to not know/care about someone who as been discriminated against due to their sexual orientation. Any identity that is attacked has been made a defining characteristic by the attacker, not the victim.

Are you guys publishing an apology for this article? You should. It's egregiously offensive. My desire to read Thought Catalog has decreased significantly.

I don't know the author's sexual orientation, but it's entirely inexcusable if she's straight. It's still offensive, ignorant, poorly reasoned, and misguided if she's gay, but she has 0 right to go there whatsoever if she's straight.
(And frankly even if she's bi/fluid/whatever… completely different when you have an option of “passing” in society.)

I'm so delighted to see people already got here ahead of me and pointed out how absolutely deluded this article is.  It's incredible how the stated message, “I like you for whatever and everything you are” and the actual message ” I know you're gay, but jeez could you maybe keep that to yourself” collide head on. I imagine the writer fancies herself as a liberal open-minded thinking person which probably gives her the permission to write garbage and make believe that she knows the intricacies, plights, complexities, etc., that still pervade sexual orientation, especially MINORITY sexual orientations in the present day. This comes across once again as a heterosexist majority message asking the LGBTQ community to keep our business to ourselves when our fellow heterosexual brethren, with a complete grasp on the known world, continue to go gallivanting around in their hetereosexual dominant society and think they're doing a service to the world by being friends with a gay person. At times I feel like I've made inroads with heterosexual society, in particular straight guys, but reading articles like this makes me realize that there is still so much work and understanding that still must be carried out.

What saddens me the most is not that there are members of the gay community who are defined by their sexuality (Wait, isn't everyone? And also, hasn't heterosexual male sexuality had a huge footprint on the entirety of mankind?), I laud them there for knowing they're gay and being as open as any straight person would be (Possibly responding, ” I have a boyfriend,” when someones asks them if they have a girlfriend, which to some people may be TMI, when in actuality a person is owning up to themselves, and at the least merely honestly answering a question not making a POLITICAL STATEMENT), but that there are people who identify as gay, but not to the extent that they would be open about it, and then bash other gays who are out there and “out” in every sense of the word. And even if gays do identify solely with their sexual orientation, this will almost always be perceived (whether it's true or false) as such since that's how and why gays are a minority.

Please Tasha, don't write any more articles from your ivory tower advising gay people on how we should act in public or in private. I would suggest you meet a wide range of LGBTQ before pontificating about how important our sexuality should be to us when heterosexual society can already make that choice for itself without EVER being chided one way or the other or being asked as to why.

Interesting post, I like it.  Lot's of name calling; odd and hypocritical.  So if I'm reading this correctly (correct me if not) the gay posters here dominantly perceive hetero's identifying themselves by their sexuality?