So, What Made YOU Heterosexual?

While not gay myself*, The Heterosexual Questionnaire rings quite true for me anyway, as someone who has taken part in numerous discussions with people who can't seem to "get" what's wrong with pathologizing people who have no desire to alter their physical/cognitive configuration (or some aspect thereof) toward something more "normative".

Text appears below, courtesy of Queers United.

This is a fun survey, but also an activist survey. Please repost this to your email list, myspace bulletin, use it in a group setting, have fun with it but also let the point be made.

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?

2. When and where did you decide you were a heterosexual?

3. Is it possible this is just a phase and you will out grow it?

4. Is it possible that your sexual orientation has stemmed from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?

5. Do your parents know you are straight? Do your friends know- how did they react?

6. If you have never slept with a person of the same sex, is it just possible that all you need is a good gay lover?

7. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality... can’t you just be who you are and keep it quiet?

8. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?

9. Why do heterosexuals try to recruit others into this lifestyle?

10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual... Do you consider it safe to expose children to heterosexual teachers?

11. Just what do men and women do in bed together? How can they truly know how to please each other, being so anatomically different?

12. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?

13. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality?

14. Considering the menace of overpopulation how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual?

15. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you feel that he or she might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his or her leanings?

16. There seem to very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change if you really want to.

17. Have you considered trying aversion therapy?

- Martin Rochlin, Ph.D., 1972

(I'm convinced that some people don't even realize they're pathologizing others when they say things like, "Oh, but see, you might think you're happy, but you still have no idea what you're missing!" Ugh.)

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* I'm female-bodied, androgynously-brained, and in a long-term monogamous partnership with a male, but I don't consider gender/sex to be the be-all end-all of who I'm going to find attractive. I don't tend to find many people attractive in "that way" to begin with, so I'm honestly not sure what the boundaries of my orientation are -- nor, frankly do I really care, as I'm plenty happy in my partnership to the point of being "hypermonogamous". But I have considered myself something of a "queer ally" for years, regardless.