Anti-poor and anti-gay attitudes
often echo one another's talking points.
People who are classist and those
who are homophobic (and many are both) believe they are choices; that they're
the fault of those who are oppressed for living with the labels. Bigoted
individuals insist that a person's financial circumstances, sexual orientation,
and gender identity can be easily changed at will. They believe people choose
those identities or those stations in life out of laziness, fear, or a desire
for "special rights" and validation. They honestly think that being
LGBT or being poor are privileged statuses that shield people from any kind of
accountability. This perspective insists that those who fall under both
umbrellas are pampered, attention-seeking brats who refuse to live as adults.
Gay, bisexual, trans, and
non-gender conforming identities would exist regardless of society's attitudes
about them*, and there would be no danger to living as a LGBT person if those
negative attitudes didn't exist. Poverty, however, is a social construct--and
by that, I don't mean it's any less real, but that it only exists because
people cause it to. Layers of oppression cause and perpetuate poverty. But
people are judged as responsible not only for their financial struggles and for
their gender and sexual orientations, but for others' reactions to it as well.
There are, of course, straight people living in poverty who
espouse anti-LGBT beliefs, and financially well-off LGBT individuals who look
down on the poor (although it's worth noting that the common perception of gay
people as affluent is largely a myth). But both groups are discriminated against on the same
basis, even if members of those groups sometimes discriminate against one
another.
Anyone who knows what it's like to
be poor is painfully aware that nobody would willingly choose it. Where's the
"luxury" in putting off going to see a doctor as your health takes a
nosedive, and then ending up spending more on emergency care? Where's the luxury
in having to decide whether grabbing so much as a Snapple or a cup of coffee is
worth the indulgence, even if it's your only frivolity of the week, and then
having to answer to a frustrated spouse if you do choose to spend that money?
And then seeing the guilt and inner conflict on your partner's face because
they want you to be able to enjoy such basic pleasures? Where's the luxury in
having to constantly arrange your social outings around watered-down (or almost
liquidated) finances and turning down invites when you would love nothing more
than to go? Or living in terror of pregnancy, not because you don't love
children or wouldn't want them, but because even providing for yourself is such
a strain?
The same is true for being
non-heterosexual or not fitting into a proscribed gender mold. Nobody would
choose an orientation that's too controversial to be represented in most media
because you are not "family friendly." No one would choose an
identity that isolates you from family, friends, and ideologies which are
deeply committed to not understanding. Nobody would opt to be seen as an
objectified prop, either to bolster someone else's progressive credentials or
to serve as an experiment for somebody who says they're just curious. It's so
hurtful to be referred to as "practice." Practice for what? For a
relationship with someone of another gender, because that's the only legitimate
kind? For someone who says you're fun to hook up with and they love you as a
person, but you're no more than a friend? Meanwhile, you want to draw their
every mesmerizing feature and hand them bouquets of blooming words and show
them all your favorite books and songs and know all of theirs in return. To
bring them to all your treasured spaces, both tangible and mental, and bask in
a shared world you can add to together. No person would ever choose an identity
that's spat at and called immoral, even though nothing can be more moral than
love.
If any of those examples sound
autobiographical, it's because they are. They're all problems I have faced at
different points in time, but those stories are not only mine. They belong to
anyone who doesn't fit into the middle class and strictly heterosexual mold.
People who think these are choices do not believe we face those kinds of struggles.
They convince themselves that we live in taxpayer-funded bubbles of decadence,
but they are the ones who live in insulated bubbles and are terrified of having
their illusions popped.
*Gender norms are a social construct, but gender itself is not. Also, it's important to remember that sexual orientation and gender identity are separate things.
