When did the queer experience become commodified? Who knows, but a consumer of the commodity, Malavika Kannan is an example of the danger of its accessibiltiy.

Kannan posted an article to Autostraddle titled “Lowkey, I Chose To Be a Lesbian,” on June 26, 2025. According to the website, Autostraddle is “the internet’s most popular and oldest independently-owned website for lesbian culture that’s inclusive of trans and nonbinary people and all queer women.” The platform offers articles and queer-focused news, entertainment, culture and lifestyle content, developed as “a space for lesbians and queer people to be our entire selves, to be known for the multi-dimensional ways we move in the world.”

Kannan described a first-person think-piece of a journey through self-discovery, the patriarchy, queer community and the political affliction that inherently comes with queer identities. These factors brought her to “make the choice” of becoming lesbian. While the article’s intended message seemed relevant, the structure (and arguably the messenger of said message) was rather controversial, sparking discourse online.

While the article came out in the summer of last year, it garnered buzz this February on TikTok, with the article’s title sparking conversation with queer folk online — and rightfully so. After hearing about this article through a recommended YouTube video, I too found myself enraged by the sheer blasphemy displayed on my screen.

After watching the video and re-reading the article on my own, I felt inspired to add to the echo-chamber of backlash against this article. Not to dogpile, but to amplify a conversation that is needed now more than ever: Queer folk don’t choose to be queer and our intrinsic existence isn’t a means for political revolution.

Without dissecting the article word-for-word, I want to highlight points within the article that I believe are ignorant and contribute to a dangerous perspective of the queer community.

The article begins with Kannan saying that while they have recognized their queerness for as long as they can remember, they have had an attraction to men most of their life. After many unsatisfying and borderline traumatic experiences with men, it was a pregnancy scare and the overturn of Roe v. Wade when they realized they no longer wanted to take the risk of being in romantic relations with men.

She said it was around that time that she chose to start identifying and living as a lesbian.

“I was empowered by a rising tide of lesbian visibility to take the plunge into an identity I had previously believed was lonely, restrictive, or puritanical (I fell for some propaganda, I fear),” Kannan wrote.

This is the first red flag and the foundation of this article. Unlike many queer folk, Kannan decided to ditch her inherent attraction to men and decided to only date women. While there is nothing wrong with that, necessarily, her wording phrases gayness as something that can be chosen and not something intrinsic.

Kannan continues to say that once they graduated from college and moved to New York, they were “determined to be gay, as a lifestyle.” This second red flag amplifies the first. Kannan further depicts queerness as a choice, framing gayness as a lifestyle and not an intrinsic trait. This is dangerous to the already false perception of queer people. It’s already believed amongst queer oppressors that queer folk are choosing to act gay and, in turn, choosing not to be straight. Kannan amplifies that stigma with this comment.

Kannan goes on to describe where this attraction to not only women, but lesbianism as a “lifestyle,” came from: “To join a long lineage of women and queers who make tender love and mischief, build worlds against violence, towards equality, until even the slurs hurled against us lose wind, can be recast, joyously, like confetti.”

She continues, “I discovered lesbian culture online, through screens, but it is different when you can touch, feel, thumb through lovers like the pages of books. Indeed, this world I previously only read about has scooped me in its jaw, stuns me with its vibrancy.”

Viewing how lesbian women live their lives and how they love online, it seems like Kannan romanticized and almost fetishized this “lifestyle” of women. Their ways of surviving in a homophobic, patriarchal society and their very exclusive attraction to women all fed a dream of a world without the need for men. While that all may sound cute and all, this very fetishization of the lesbian experience is dangerous, perpetuates unrealistic realities and harmful stereotypes. Romanticising the inevitable struggles and fight for survival that come with being a lesbian woman trivializes the oppressive experiences they face to a personality trait. It threatens the severity of the lives lost and the sacrifice made to secure not just lesbians, but queer folks’ safety within this country.

Furthermore, knowing that Kannan’s attraction to women was heavily fostered through an algorithm frames the lesbian and queer experience as a commodity. It feels like Big Media succeeded in selling lesbianism; Kannan is merely just a consumer of the commodity that is the gay experience.
Kannan goes on to describe that her attraction to women isn’t limited to their physicalities, but more so, how they show up in society.

“I love women and queer people, but the things I love about them could feasibly belong to any gender. There is little these people have in common — not their bodies, energies, or personalities — except the condition, in some way, of refusal. It is a condition of existing in opposition to patriarchy — as its victim, or mortal foe, depending on who you ask, rather than its perpetrator, or beneficiary — that I find incredibly hot. This is why (I’m happy to report) I have never crushed on a straight woman in my life.”

It’s here that Kannan reveals why she chose to be a lesbian: Kannan is attracted to what lesbianism represents in this society. She’s attracted to the intrinsic rebellion against the patriarchy that comes with being a lesbian; Kannan sees lesbianism as feminist activism. Let’s put a pin in this for now.

Kannan goes on to say, “For a long time, gay people were criminalized and ostracized (we still are) and the way you’d insist you were still worthy of care and protection was by claiming you couldn’t help who you were.”

This is the third red flag and the point in the article where Kannan had me f—– up.

This sentence claims that gay people started to say that they were “born this way” as a means of pity for being gay, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Born this way was and still is a movement that fights to position queer folk as normal members of society, because they are normal members of society. Queer folk are, in fact, born queer.

Being queer isn’t a trend. It isn’t something that occurred with the “current times” or is what’s “in” right now. “Born this way” isn’t just “discourse.” While I understand factually discourse just means spoken or written structured communication, its connotations make it sound as if it’s a trending topic, which is furthered when she later said the following:
“Born this way had its moment, but I think it frames queerness as an unhelpful accident of your birth and not a wonderful, principled choice you could make for yourself.”

“Born this way” is more than just a trending slogan or a beautiful song platformed by an infamous pop icon. “Born this way” is a powerful idiom that represents advocacy for understanding queer identities and experiences as normal, pushing for the erasure of the villainization and alienation of queer folk. That comment is so incredibly ignorant and dismissive of the significance of the phrase, further depicting Kannan’s lack of knowledge on queer history and experiences.

Kannan continues, “I choose to loudly and decisively align myself with other women, because I think it helps all of us, especially straight women. Far from gatekeeping, I want to open the wide house of queerness to them.” Similar to how she was informed, Kannan attempts to market lesbianism to her heterosexual counterparts.

This statement reiterates the main message and key takeaway from this article. Kannan views lesbianism and appreciates queerness more as activism, as resistance rather than intrinsic existence.
She ends the article by contradicting herself and advocating for giving celibate straight women an “honorary lesbian” token for decentering men.
If you haven’t picked up on it by now, Malavika Kannan is a political lesbian.

Political lesbianism “started in the late 1960s as part of second-wave feminism in response to overwhelming levels of sexism and compulsory heterosexuality. It is a form of radical feminism where women make a political choice to stop dating, marrying, and sleeping with men”.

The foundation of political lesbianism isn’t rooted in the validity of queer identities, but means of rebellion for women against these systems set up by men. Kannan’s choice to become lesbian wasn’t solely rooted in her attraction to women, but her aversion to men and her justifiable disdain towards the patriarchy.

Listen, if you resonate with Kannan’s testimony and sentiment in choosing to be lesbians, by all means, do you, but this doesn’t make you queer in the slightest. Hell, it doesn’t make you a lesbian. Simply because – and I cannot stress this enough – you can not CHOOSE to be gay.

This entire article platformed a perspective that is not only misinformed but also dangerous and amplifies stigmas against queer people. To discredit the

“Born this way” phrase and state that queer people can choose to be gay blurs the line between gay existence and political affiliation, even when those two exist separately. It reassures ignorant bigots that queer people are deciding to be queer and thus can decide to be queer. It reaffirms dangerous infrastructures like conversion therapy and “ex-gay” ministries, programs that have sacrificed the lives of many queer folk.

Kannan’s article may have been for the sake of encouraging women to decenter men, but it was at the expense of the community she claims to love so much. It’s contradicting and so incredibly dangerous to the lives of queer folk.

This entire article reeked of internalized biphobia and insecurities with being attracted to men during a time when women’s autonomy is being threatened every day. I empathize with the sentiment. However, assigning a label that represents political activism rather than a depiction of intrinsic attraction is misleading and dangerous to the community you are affiliating with.