Born With It

I fell down a Reddit rabbit hole about desire—specifically the kind you can never act on. Thousands of people working through the same uncomfortable question: if gay people didn’t choose their sexuality, and pedophiles and zoophiles didn’t choose theirs, what’s the difference?

The answer is consent. Homosexuality can exist between consenting adults. Child and animal abuse can’t, because there’s no consent possible. One person’s freedom depends on another person’s powerlessness. That’s not ambiguous.

But that’s not what stuck with me. It was the question underneath: what’s it like to be someone whose sexuality points permanently in the wrong direction? You didn’t choose it. You can’t change it. You spend your entire life suppressing it. You can’t talk about it. You can’t seek help without legal consequences in most places. Society tells you you’re broken, sick, dangerous—and they’re not entirely wrong, because acting on it would hurt someone defenseless.

The comparison to gay history kept coming up. Fifty years ago, society told gay people the same thing: unnatural, sick, evil. And gay people had to hide for generations. Eventually we changed our minds. We decided consenting adults should be free to love who they love. That framework shifted and suddenly the weight lifted.

But it won’t shift for this. It can’t. There’s a real difference, not just a social one. Homosexuality causes no harm to anyone. These attractions cause harm the moment they’re acted on. So there’s no future where this becomes acceptable. No light at the tunnel’s end.

And I don’t know what that does to someone. What it’s like to have your entire internal world permanently at odds with the world, forever, with no reconciliation possible. I think about it sometimes. But I don’t have answers. I’m not sure anyone does.