By Erika Tapalla
INQUIRER.net

“I’m a lesbian,” Jane says, “but not by choice.”

Hidden under the name Jane, this senior Miriam College student admits to liking girls. Unlike many of the closet homosexuals, she’s come out to everyone, except her family.

Standing five foot two with silky shoulder-length hair, she epitomized the physicality of a heterosexual female. She even had ladylike manners during the interview, sitting primly cross-legged with her hands on her knee.

“There was a stage in my life where I wore my brother’s clothes and cut my hair like a boy but that’s over,” Jane describes, “People only looked.”

Psychiatrist Gina Mohnani, specializing in abnormal psychology and children’s special needs, claim that being a predominantly Catholic country with strict religious and moral codes, people will always look simply because it is unnatural.

“In today’s society, we are already in fact being very accepting to homosexuality,” Mohnani asserts, “If you look closely to the socialites and celebrities in the newspapers and magazines, they are always with a gay guy. In the malls, lesbians walk holding hands all the time. People look, but that’s all.”

How a particular sexual orientation develops in any individual has remained a question marked in the field of science.

Theories have been proposed offering various answers to the physiological roots of a person’s sexual orientation, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, but Mohnani strongly disagrees to these.

“Sexual orientation is shaped for most people at an early age through complex interactions of psychological, emotional and social factors,” Mohnani says.

Environment plays a very big role that if a young girl grows up to be surrounded by lesbians, or grow up to the idea that lesbianism is common, it would only seem acceptable to be one — possibly explaining why lesbianism is more frequent in all-girls schools in the Philippines.

Being in an all-girls school all her life, Jane feels that this assumption is valid and says, “I was never exposed to the opposite sex and only had friends who were attracted to the same sex. So I thought, it was okay, sanayan lang naman eh [It's just something you get used to].”

Mohnani adds: “Lesbians aged 30 and below can be helped through therapeutic sessions where they can talk of their experiences and problems so they can more clearly identify with themselves and live healthier lives without fear or discrimination.”

However, Lorna Q. Israel, an International Studies professor at Miriam College, associate of the Women and Gender Institute (WAGI), and advocate of transgender identities, laughs at the idea of ‘therapeutically fixing’ a lesbian.

“How can they be re-oriented to becoming female when female, as a concept and in practice — is heavily oriented to heterosexual female — precisely why they found themselves in the lesbian term?” Israel says, “Lesbians are females who resist the heterosexual concept of a woman.”

Israel suggests that if there was any root to lesbianism, or any sexual orientation problem for that matter, it would be the labels society creates for us. Labels only create confusion, discrimination and other problems.

“Every one must be respected regardless of their sexual orientation. Any labeling is an exclusionary act,” Israel points out.

“I would never tell my parents I’m a lesbian or I like other girls,” Jane admits, “They are very traditional and believe that man is made for woman and vice versa. They’ll never accept me and make me feel like a sinner.”

Concepts of religion, man and woman, and their roles in society, have been handed down for many generations nearly forcing everyone to accept it and comply without question. Even Jane herself has trouble in establishing her role in her romantic relationship.

Jane admits to breaking up with her girlfriend months back because she wanted her girlfriend to wear her hair long so she could wear her own hair shorter since she was the one who courted her, but her girlfriend wouldn’t follow this rule Jane was strict about.

Eventually, Jane’s then ex-girlfriend grew her hair and they got back together. Beyond the labeling society and the Church imposes, there is further labeling involved in lesbian relationships.

“You know how there is pink and blue. Pink is for the ‘girl’ in the relationship, and blue is for the ‘not girl’,” Jane explains, “I’m the blue one in my relationship but it doesn’t mean I’m the ‘boy’ or do everything boys would do, ’cause I’m a girl.”

Israel claims, “Some lesbians will insist that they are women as a tactic to convince the homophobic public that they are also humans.”

Problems in lesbian relationships emerge because people obsess with labels and lesbian couples “try to mimic man-woman or heterosexual relationships because it provides the template of any relationship,” Israel says.

But it’s the mimicking of this man-woman template that Mohnani cites to be “detrimental”.

Mohnani noticed that lesbians are generally more possessive than heterosexual females, and have higher tendencies to do anything to get what they want from their partners.

In a study Mohnani encountered in the US, 80 percent of lesbians can still be attracted to the opposite sex.

“I never tried to be ‘normal’ ’cause I’m not well-exposed,” Jane confesses, “Maybe after college, things could change and I could like guys. Who knows?” This would then make Jane a bisexual. Still different and subject to discrimination.

Having her own gender as unclassifiable, Israel states, “I am an advocate of fluid sexual identity. I don’t like people being pigeonholed as one–heterosexual–or the other–homosexual. I am more comfortable in allowing people to choose whatever sexual orientation they want attached to their bodies but critical of those who unfurl that label that would promptly exclude other sexualities or identities.”

“It’s hard to feel something you were taught was wrong,” Jane confides, “I didn’t choose to be like this.”

There are some females out there who are lesbians due to emotional and psychological problems deeply rooted in their childhood, as Mohnani asserts; and some simply because societal labels them as such creating even more confusion, as Israel explains. Regardless of what and who they feel they are, both Mohnani and Israel agree that they are human beings that should be respected and treated as human beings.

Israel points out that instead of questioning the nature and existence of lesbians, maybe the question should be redirected to the people, “How can we help people not to be afraid of the lesbians?”

To those like Jane, Mohnani stresses, “As long as you’re happy, by all means, live your life because you only have one.”