In his essay What is a Homosexual? Andrew Sullivan presents his own view on the concept of homosexuality, a view based on his own experience of a homosexual person. Using this experience, the author gives his own interpretation of this concept as well as its major elements. According to Sullivan’s essay What is a Homosexual?, homosexuality is the isolation from the rest of the society and a diversity of human sexuality; however, it is not a factor which people are guided by when making their life choices.
To begin with, Sullivan defines homosexuality as isolation which is simply unavoidable. He states that “no homosexual child, surrounded overwhelmingly by heterosexuals, will feel at home in his sexual and emotional world, even in the most tolerant cultures” (Sullivan 155). Sullivan shares his own experience in order to support this idea; he emphasizes that this isolation is unbearable for homosexual adolescents who are unable “to enter into the world of dating girls” (Sullivan 156) and who have to throw themselves into sports or studies or just withdraw from the others into despair because of their fear to come out. Therefore, what homosexuality is above all, according to Sullivan, it is isolation due to the homosexual adolescents’ unwillingness to disclose their real sexual orientation.
In addition, Sullivan defines homosexuality as diversity in human sexuality. This diversity accounts for the creation of stereotypes regarding a particular type of people (just like the diversity of culture, for instance). Sullivan admits that homosexual people possess “certain unavoidable features of homosexual character” such as “inflections of voice, the quirks of a particular movement”, etc (Sullivan 157-158). And namely the possession of these features allows referring homosexuality to the diversity of sexuality. However, as Sullivan states, it is due to them that homosexuals often develop self-contempt and have to live in emotional and psychological disguise that eventually alters their self-perception. Thus, trying to define homosexuality, Sullivan names it a diversity of human sexuality.
Finally, when defining homosexuality, Sullivan mentions that it is not a factor to be guided by in one’s life choices. The author notes that most of the homosexuals get appeased with their sexual identity and soon stop regarding it as something that may change their life drastically: “Perhaps because of a less repressive upbringing or because of some natural ease in the world, they affected a simple comfort with their fate, and a desire to embrace it” (Sullivan 156). Sullivan confesses that he envies such people’s self confidence because he himself had “the more self-dramatizing urge of the tortured homosexual, trapped between feeling wicked and feeling ridiculous” (Sullivan 156). Consequently, what homosexuality is not, as stated by Sullivan, it is not a critical factor “or even a factor at all” (Sullivan 156) and it is much easier to simply accept it.
Taking into consideration everything mentioned above, it can be stated that Sullivan’s definition of homosexuality focuses on what it is and what it is not. Sullivan defines homosexuality as isolation which a homosexual individual faces when discovering his or her being different from the others; in addition, homosexuality is a diversity of human sexuality with homosexual people possessing distinctive character features. At this, Sullivan emphasizes that homosexuality is not a critical factor considered in making life choices this is why it should be appeased with.
Work Cited
Sullivan, Andrew. What is a Homosexual? In Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality. Ed. Andrew Sullivan. New York: Vintage Books.