When I was a young kid, around 8 or 9, the other boys at my gymnastics club called me gay. I didn’t know what the term meant at the time, although I learned soon enough, but I gleaned from their tones of voice, the looks of disgust on their faces, and of course the fact that they were invoking the descriptor as a taunt, that gay was not a good thing to be. I tried some feeble linguistic manoeuvres to disarm them (“Yes, I’m happy!”), but it was pointless. The seed was planted and soon took root: There was something different about me and the difference was wrong.

For the rest of my school years, I have no recollection of being singled out as “different” or feeling in any way out-of-place. In high school, particularly past the age of 15, almost all my friends were female; I remember not finding much common ground with male members of my cohort. I studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics, which was my best subject, but also excelled at English, technical drawing, and fine art. After high school I was an exchange student in South America. It was there, in my eighteenth year, that I first became aware of sexual feelings toward members of my own sex and, for the second time in my life distinct enough to recall even today, that I was singled out for what is most neutrally and accurately described as my non-conformity to sex stereotypes.

An acquaintance, an adult member of one of my host families, had seen me hail a taxi in what he took to be a feminine way, and one afternoon for no reason that I recall he called me gay, citing his observation of (and mimicking) my limp-wristed hailing. To be exact, he called me a maricón, the pejorative force of which is most accurately translated into English by ‘faggot’. He wasn’t asking a question; he was making a statement. I recall being confused and confronted by it, and suppose now that must have been because it was an unusually aggressive thing for an adult to say to a then still 17-year-old, and because I myself had only that year begun to discern let alone acknowledge the hue of my own affections, to say nothing of labelling myself according to them. I was all doubt, yet he was all certainty.

Only recently, at age 34, have I begun to label myself, and the label I have chosen is bisexual. It is the label not with which I identify, but which I think most accurately describes the orientation of my sexual and romantic feeling. Please note that I say sexual and romantic, for there is a tendency to treat sexual orientation as having only to do with sexual feelings. I think that is a mistake. The word ‘sexual’ in ‘sexual orientation’ refers not to the nature of the feelings but to the sex of the persons on whom those feelings, sexual and romantic, centre. What a diminution it would be of the complexity of human affections if we distilled out only their sexual component and labelled ourselves accordingly!

Of course, there are reasons why we focus on the sexual component. Historically, it is same-sex sexual behaviour which society and the law have punished and whose ‘practitioners’ have been ostracised. Male-male and female-female affection was fine as long as it moved within the narrow compass of platonic fraternity and sorority, but catch two men or two women enjoying each other’s bodies in acts of barren lust and Society—wholesome, God-fearing, fecund Society—would surely fall. And Society did not confine the surveillance of human affection to its expression in bedroom acts; it extended it to public life, vigilant there for signs of private misdeed. This is why non-conformity to sex stereotypes has historically been treated with suspicion, i.e., because it has been taken to signify ‘homosexual inclinations.’

There is truth in that observation. It is true that a substantial proportion of people who do not conform to sex stereotypes are also same-sex attracted or, if they are children, grow up to be same-sex attracted, same-sex attraction itself being the ultimate non-conformity. It is plain to me now and evident in the account I have given above that this holds true in my own case. Even before I was aware of it myself, others had observed that I failed to obey the rules of my sex; I see and understand it now as I did not at all or so clearly then, that the occasional reproaches about my conduct, the teasing of those boys at my gymnastics club, being called a maricón at 17, were all responses to my non-conformity to a standard I had failed to grasp, and to the sexuality which that non-conformity betokened in the minds of others.

It is worth pointing out that they were both right and wrong. In purely epistemic regard, they were right that my non-conformity signalled my sexuality, but they were wrong about its exact inflection, as I am bisexual, not gay. They could also have been wrong altogether, since not all people who do not conform to sex stereotypes are same-sex attracted or grow up to be same-sex attracted. Morally, of course, they were nothing but wrong to reproach or scorn me or any person for behaving in a way not conforming to sex stereotypes.

It is also worth pointing out that experiences such as these are how many non-conforming young people first discover that in some regard—often obscure to them, as it was to me—they do not fit in. Their non-conformity is noticed by others before they notice it themselves, and the noticing is often communicated in words and gestures that convey disapproval and disgust. What’s more, the disapproval and disgust (and the language in which it is often expressed: ‘dyke’, ‘faggot’, etc.) relate at root to sexuality, something these young people may not yet even have experienced or begun to reckon with themselves. (I was 8 or 9 when I was first called gay; sex was not on my mind.)

The effect of this on a young person’s developing concept of self should not be underestimated. We are all of us occupied to varying degrees with the work of understanding ourselves in relation to the world, no more intensely nor with more seeming consequence than in our youth. We are, if you like, cartographers on a journey engaged not only in producing a map of our social, political, and natural environments; nor merely, in addition, trying to locate ourselves on that map in relation to those environments; but we are also in the process of understanding our own make-up, the vessel—so to speak—which is taking the journey. These three projects are not independent of each other. Our sense of our social, political, and natural environments informs our sense of where we are and who we are; and our sense of who we are, in turn, tells us where we would like to be in relation to those environments. Now imagine that you are a young cartographer, fresh on your journey, your notions of world, place, and self still incipient, which is manifest in the blankness of your chart and the lightness of the contours already sketched on it. Other cartographers, old and young, come to you noting that you are in some way different and that that difference is not good and occasions disapproval and even disgust in them and others. Naturally you will note these remarks on your map, and there they shall remain to remind you that for a vessel of your make there are places unfit in the world, places where you may make yourself known only at risk of psychological and physical maltreatment. Unfortunately, many of those places are places you already inhabit and visit, places where you have already started to build your life, and places that you must go if you are to continue enjoying life at all. Studying your map, you realise there are basically two options open to you: either you change the environment to suit you, or change yourself to suit the environment.

Historically, the choice made by most same-sex attracted people and their non-conforming peers was to change themselves to suit their environment, i.e., to conform. Generally, this meant concealing facets of your life and person from public view except, occasionally, in certain semi-public places where Society turned a blind eye. If you didn’t hide yourself well enough, there were always thugs ready to lend a helping fist, confident in their impunity before a public by turns cowardly, indifferent, or hostile. The dementing effect on same-sex attracted individuals of this response to the social and political environment is well evidenced and readily conceived. Gay liberation was as much about escaping this sort of self-imposed exile from oneself as it was about reshaping the society which exacted it in the first place. It was a victory both for same-sex attracted people and for people who simply did not conform to sex stereotypes. Feminine males (i.e., men and boys who embodied characteristics statistically correlated with females), a significant proportion of them also gay or bisexual, would no longer have to ‘act more blue’ to lead a safe and (at least legally) respected life; masculine females (i.e., women and girls who embodied characteristics statistically correlated with males), a significant proportion of them also lesbian or bisexual, would no longer have to ‘act more pink’ to lead a safe and (at least legally) respected life. In other words: Space was made for greater diversity in what it meant to be female or male, which included romantic and sexual feeling for and behaviour with persons of your own sex.

One would have hoped that the trajectory of this movement toward diversity would have culminated in the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’, ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ being little more than descriptors of sex and relative maturity, i.e., that they would ultimately be emptied of all prescriptive content. It seems to me, however, that in the form of gender and transgender ideology and the attendant trans movement, we are today seeing a resurgence of the old—dare I say: binary?—way of thinking, the only difference being that the binary is now applied in the opposite direction relative to the sex of the individual involved. It should surprise no-one that the colours of the transgender flag are the stereotypical colours attributed to the sexes.

Whereas in the past a non-conforming person was pressured to conform in the direction of their sex, today he or she is (also) pressured to conform in the direction of the opposite sex. A feminine boy or man is no longer told to ‘act more blue’ but is (also) encouraged to wonder if he might not be ‘pink inside’; a masculine girl or woman is no longer told to ‘act more pink’ but is (also) encouraged to wonder if she might not be ‘blue inside’; and both are taught that by adjusting their bodies through medical science and surgical technique they can live up to this inner colour, i.e., ‘be their true selves’, ‘affirm their true identity’. I see in this narrative nothing but the enticement to a new kind of self-imposed exile from oneself (even though it purports to be about nothing other than embracing the self), this time both psychological and physical and, in the latter regard, often irreversible. And it is nowadays encouraged by organisations which grew out of the gay liberation movement but which, in so encouraging that exile, betray that movement’s legacy even while affecting to uphold it. To a young person who might be struggling to make sense of or accept their emotions and affections, such narratives, which seem to proffer certainty, are tempting to embrace, especially when they are made to glisten with the promise of that affirmation, acceptance, and belonging which every human craves but especially young humans who have tasted the rejection and disgust of others, sometimes within their immediate family.

The continuity between the old conformity and this new one can be seen in the linguistic detail of that Spanish slur which I was labelled with as a 17-year-old: maricón. As I said, its pejorative force is captured by the English word ‘faggot’, but it derives from the word marica, also used as a pejorative for effeminate men and a diminutive form of the name Maria, the sacred name of that religious epitome of womanhood (whose traditional colour is blue). In this regard it is like calling a gay man a ‘nancy’ in English. The insinuation that non-conformity to sex stereotypes is evidence of sexual transposition has therefore always been present in homophobic language. Oddly, the kind of person nowadays most likely to disapprove of a non-conforming boy or man being called a nancy is also the kind of person most likely to affirm his trans identity if he claims one. Call him Nancy, just don't call him a nancy.

None of what I’ve written amounts to denying the existence of trans-identified people, but it does reject the idea (which, it should be noted, many trans-identified people do not believe) that a person can change their sex. A man who wears high heels, shaves his legs, puts on a skirt and make-up is not deserving of mockery, condemnation, contempt, or violence, but he is also not for all that a woman, no matter the medical and surgical measures he has taken to extend his cosmetic modifications into his flesh; a woman who wears sneakers, doesn’t shave her legs, puts on trousers and no make-up is not deserving of mockery, condemnation, contempt, or violence, but she is also not for all that a man, no matter the medical and surgical measures she has taken to extend her cosmetic modifications into her flesh. Saying otherwise, that is, denying the immutability of sex, is to promote a lie; to have others believe a lie is to delude them; not only to allow people (and especially children) to act on a delusion but to encourage and accommodate it is immoral.

Sex is not a costume. Sex is not a performance. Sex is not a choice. Sex also matters in a variety of medical, social, political, and personal contexts, and one neither is relieved of nor does one incur the burdens of one sex or the other by a declaration of pronouns or by making cosmetic changes to oneself, however radical. A heterosexual is a person who experiences no sexual or romantic attraction whatsoever to persons of the same sex; a homosexual is a person who experiences no sexual or romantic attraction whatsoever to persons of the opposite sex. A homosexual man (gay) will never experience sexual or romantic attraction to a woman, no matter how stereotypically masculine her appearance; a homosexual woman (lesbian) will never experience sexual or romantic attraction to a man, no matter how stereotypically feminine his appearance.

In the landscape of Australian organisations which claim to promote diversity and the rights and freedoms of same-sex attracted people, the LGB Alliance Australia is the only one I see standing up for the reality of biological sex, on which genuine diversity and both the rights and the defining experiences of same-sex attracted people (but not just same-sex attracted people) are premised. It is also the only organisation which I see keeping faith with the old gender-critical ways, which sought to abolish the social prescriptions around sex and so liberate men and women alike from a repressive ideological incarceration. Its members do not, unlike the gender ideologues of today, teach people, especially young people, to find their freedom in a bespoke captivity (“my pronouns”, “my gender”, “my identity”; i.e., “my uniform”, “my bars”, “my cell”), but to seek that genuine liberation which comes from breaking the mould and not oneself.