Sexual Preference is Yours to Define
It's impossible to change what you're attracted to, but we're not simple animals and we do not have to act upon that attraction. Perhaps that is where the concept of reparative therapy gained its traction. Perhaps wanting to not be gay made it possible for men and women to not act on their desires and to simulate desire for the opposite sex. But whether you're attracted to men, women or both is not a choice.
What is a choice is the term used to define your sexuality. And that choice is from a vast, complex field of possibilities...and you don't even have to define it if that's what's best for you. For you, not for anyone else. Because whatever your attraction, it's no one's right but yours to define
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It seems easy, doesn't it, to think of others in singly-defined sexualities: there are lesbians and gays and straights and bis and asexuals. (NOTE: because this is about sexual preference and not gender identity I do not include in this list intersexed or trans* people.) But is that because we each of us know our own identities are perfectly clear cut? Is the Kinsey scale wrong in announcing a spectrum or two of sexuality? Of course not. In our own heads we know we're this or that but with caveats and exceptions...or not.
The choice to define, and the possibility of a personal definition that doesn't jibe with what others observe, can cause a lot of grief. And explaining the dissonance between attraction and orientation can cause a lot of grief. And there's enough grief just from coming to terms with an alternative attraction to begin with.
What I'm saying is don't use a label that you've not heard someone use for themselves. And stop calling me bi.
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