Because switching pronouns is no fun. Sexuality doesn’t stop at the bed. It encompasses a major portion of our lives, a portion which straight people have been trained to discuss and value highly. Gay people are raised in the same environment, and want to talk as well.
We’d like to mention how we went skiing with our boy/girlfriend last weekend and then found this incredibly romantic bed and breakfast, cancelled our reservations at the Holiday Inn, and instead spent most of the time curled up together in the room talking about the profound and the inane.
We’d like to cry on someone’s shoulder when our husband/wife is being a real overbearing bitch, or is ill, or we’re having trouble with family members who won’t visit for Christmas because we’re “living in sin”.
We’d like very much to have someone ask how our signficant other is doing, show that they do care, invite us both to the company party.
You can’t expect, or even hope, for any of that if you’re constantly dodging questions or outright lying. Worst of all, you pull away from others, torpedo dangerous friendships, and generally build walls between you and someone who could be a wonderful addition to your life.
I’ve heard that one of the first things a person does subconsciously when he sees another person is to identify gender. This allows us to establish a framework for any interaction with that person. As this seems biologically useful, it sounds pretty plausible. It probably explains much of the discomfort people have with gender ambiguity.
In about 90% of the people on this planet, primary sexual-orientation is towards the opposite gender. Since gender-identity is a fundamental category to which we label people for our interactions with them, it is not surprising that sexual-orientation is an accompanying categorization, though one that may simply be assumed. Since the categorization is successful 90% of the time, it’s useful as long as too much reliance is not put upon it.
In some cases, the categorization is mostly irrelevant. If a straight man befriends another man, the other man’s sexual-orientation is unlikely to be of any consequence since the straight man has no sexual interest in him. His presumption that the other man is sexually-oriented on women is not essential to their interaction. If at some point that presumption is refuted, the man has not actually been harmed by his error because his relationship with the other man was not sexually-based, and therefore no reliance was placed on the presumption. If he makes that presumption about a woman, and pursues a sexual relationship with her, his reliance on the assumption of heterosexuality will be frustrated about 10% of the time when she ends up being non-hetero. Thus, categorizing people by their sexuality has an adverse effect on the person doing the categorization only about 5% of the time, and only that often if we were to presume that every male-female relationship is sexual.
Thus these categorizations are easy to make, made in connection with the basically automatic process of identifying gender, correct most of the time, and harmless to the labeller at least 95% of the time. That probably explains why they’re so common. The costs of labelling are minimal to the labeller.
It’s very hard to interact with people in a social environment without nouns and adjectives. At root, the things that are one person’s “labels” are another person’s “descriptors”. (And without descriptors, some things are really difficult to talk about, or require many, many more words.)
And descriptors are both useful and necessary in a social sense, not just for finding people in the airport. (As in the story of the guy who sent a friend to pick up his girlfriend at the airport. They didn’t find each other until essentially everyone had left. She says to the friend, “This would have been easier if he’d told me you were black.” The friend says to her, “Yeah? This would have been easier if he’d told me you were pregnant.”)
I’ve seen a lot of people who have found that there exists a word for them, either their beliefs or their condition or their natures. And they have been delighted. They’re not alone, this thing is known well enough to have a word. Other people are like this too. I’ve seen this for mental conditions and learning disabilities, I’ve seen it among polyfolk, I’ve seen evidence that it exists among transfolk, gays, bisexuals, I’ve experienced it personally with a religious conversion experience. The fact of being recognised accurately can be a really big deal, to be not alone.
But look on the bright side! You’ll never catch a sexually transmittable disease by Shaking Hands With Your Sausage. And accidental self-impregnation is almost unheard of!
Of course, I don’t talk about that stuff in my life with many people, and, for better better or worse, I have homosexual friends who only reveal these details to a close friends. Do you think these people are hurting themselves by being in the closet at work? Because you have strong feelings, I’m curious about your opinion. I don’t tell a lot of people, and certainly not co-workers, about my private life, but I don’t have to assume some people might be freaked out.
(BTW, I do think it’s unhealthy not to come out to your family, not if you have a relationship with them.)