In her new book Straight Expectations, Julie Bindel argues that sexual orientation is a choice. The journalist, campaigner, and feminist also says that people believe that they are born gay because of “internalised doctrine.”
In an interview in today's Independent, Bindel also argues that there is no biological explanation for homosexuality and that there “has to be some kind of choice, as well as some deep-rooted, embedded responses that developed through different experiences in our childhood.”
Bindel, who with her partner co-founded Justice for Women which campaigns for female victims of domestic violence, says that her arguments regarding the causes of homosexuality have been “drowned out” by obsessed scientists and by those who use the gay gene argument to provoke sympathy.
Asked how and why people would choose to be gay in countries with oppressive anti-homosexuality laws, Bindel says:
“I don't know. All I know is I've never been convinced by a scientific argument, or seen any evidence that is compelling that there is something innate about our sexuality. What I'm suggesting is, there are people who could go one way or the other and happily choose to be lesbian or gay.”
However, writing in The Independent, Patrick Strudwick says that Bindel claims that she herself did not make that choice:
“Because I needed to leave home – there was nothing there for me in Darlington – and pursue my feminist possibilities, that meant starting a new life and all that was open to me. I fell in with a crowd [in Leeds] who spoke about lesbianism as part of women's liberation. I never chose to be attracted to women.”
Strudwick also claims that what Bindel means by sexual preference being a choice is actually making a decision “to have a gay relationship, identify as gay, come out and lead a gay life (whatever that is).”
(image via twitter)
