Last week, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published a study finding that lesbian and bisexual women are likely to have shorter life expectancies than heterosexual women.
Researchers “found that, on average, sexual minority women died 26% sooner than heterosexual women. Stratifying results by sexual orientation subgroup, the researchers found that bisexual women died 37% sooner and lesbian women died 20% sooner.”
What gives? Well, the researchers concluded that it was due to the fact that people are assholes.
Sarah McKetta, postdoctoral research fellow and lead author of the study, explained that LGBTQ people experience stigma, prejudice, and discrimination that result in chronic stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms, making the population vulnerable to worse health and premature mortality.
“The sexual orientation–related inequities in mortality highlight the urgent need to address preventable causes, particularly given the increasingly hostile policy climate for LGBTQ people in the U.S.,” she added.
Bisexual women, they noted, experienced it from both sides.
“Bisexual women face distinct stressors from outside, as well as within, the LGBTQ community that are rooted in biphobia,” said senior author of the study Brittany Charlton. “Additionally, bisexual people are often excluded from various communities because they’re assumed to be straight or gay based on their partner’s gender.”
But Michael Brown of the Christian Post is not so sure!
In an op-ed titled “The Deadly Cost of Lesbianism and Feminism,” Brown says that he’ll buy that lesbian and bisexual women are likely to have lower life expectancies than straight people, but asks what if the cause of this is not what the study concluded it is, but rather something that would benefit him and support his world view?
Given, then, the seriousness of these findings, it would be wise to ask whether the data can simply be explained as the result of “toxic social forces.” Could this be an oversimplification if not a largely gratuitous conclusion?
I have been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which the Right tries to create these narratives in which their behavior is not hurtful or harmful to others. Like, they’re not the ones rejecting their own children for being LGBTQ+, those children are being brainwashed by an evil liberal cult that has convinced them that they are not straight or cisgender even though they are, and that has told them to hate their parents. They’re not harming pregnant people with their laws, they are protecting them from nefarious actors who will conspire to force them to abort their babies — which, of course, is why the Texas law only allows people to sue those who “aid and abet” the abortion and not the abortion-havers themselves.
In this case, Brown doesn’t want to hear that cruelty from him and others like him is toxic enough to actually take years off of people’s lives. He wants it to be something else.
I would propose something far more basic, namely, that gay and bisexual women are less likely to have long-term, family-based relationships (meaning, committed relationships that result in the production of children) than heterosexual women. And because healthy families provide the most stable, emotionally strong, and supportive environments for human thriving, the lack of this support base produces more emotional and social instability.
You know … I do not think this man is quite as familiar with stereotypes about lesbians as he thinks he may be.
But do go on!
Put another way, God’s ways are ways of life, and when we deviate from His intended pattern, we shorten our lives.
So like, be an immortal deity, stay single for all eternity and get a surrogate to give birth to our clone? Okay! Sounds good, where do I sign up?
That’s why the life insurance policy of a smoker is higher than that of a non-smoker, or the life insurance policy of a stunt man who is also a heavy drinker is higher than that of an accountant who doesn’t drink.
God says you can’t be a stuntman? I did not know this, but now I see the first season of The Righteous Gemstones in a whole new light.
This is not to say that your average gay or bisexual woman is partying day and night or sleeping around freely or engaging in substance abuse. It is simply to suggest that, even in the most-affirming environments, LGBTQ+ identified people will, on average, have shorter lifespans simply because they violate God’s pattern for human thriving.
According to a Pew Research study, Jewish people have the longest life expectancy, so perhaps he does have a point! Or he would, if the next longest life expectancy were not the “religiously unaffiliated” (ie: atheists and agnostics). And then next weren’t Buddhists, “Other Religions,” Folk Religions and then Christians.
Now, I may just be a simple country lawyer (or none of those things, as the case may be) but isn’t that the kind of thing one should look up before writing up a whole op-ed claiming that gay and bisexual women don’t live as long as heterosexual women because more heterosexual women are living according to what one believes is God’s intended pattern? I know I would!
Brown then moves on to trashing feminists and our sad miserable lives that we have. For this, he cites not an actual study of any kind, but rather one (1) op-ed by one (1) random lady in England claiming that “Feminism has left middle-aged women like me single, childless and depressed.”
Petronella Wyatt, the author of the article, states candidly, “According to a recent study by an American medical institute, loneliness is the leading cause of depression among middle-aged females. I should know, as I recently fell prey to the unforgiving maw of mental illness. This has taken me to hospital several times after I experienced impulses so dark that friends became concerned.”
Then this: “But the truth is that much of my depression sprung from a solitary existence that would be eschewed by a race of alley cats. I do not know one single woman of my generation who lives such a life and actually likes it.”
Ah, yes! Petronella “Petsy” Wyatt — who is mainly notable for having had a four-year long affair with a married Boris Johnson when he was the editor of The Spectator and kept promising her that he would leave his wife for her. I don’t know that any feminist told her to do that, but if they did, she was under no obligation to listen. I know I certainly wouldn’t recommend it!
In the op-ed itself, she complains that noted feminist Margaret Thatcher used to come to her house to hang out with her parents, former Labour MP turned “Tory royalist peer” Woodrow Wyatt and his fourth wife, Veronica "Verushka" Banszky von Ambroz, when she was young and told her that “a woman’s career superseded by far her relations with the opposite sex.” While I certainly have no qualms about blaming Margaret Thatcher for many things, Wyatt’s personal unhappiness with her life is not among them.
According to The Sun, “Petronella was originally due to read History at Worcester College, Oxford, but quit after two weeks claiming she had been persistently harassed and bullied due to her personal Conservative political views.” Given this, I have a hard time believing that she has done anything in her life “because feminism.”
I could pull up multiple essays and videos from women who regret having been “trad wives” after having been left destitute when their husbands left them the way Wyatt was hoping Boris Johnson would leave his wife. Or there’s always A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story, starring Meredith Baxter of Family Ties.
No one lifestyle choice is a guarantor of happiness or unhappiness and to expect that is ridiculous. But gee, isn’t it better that we have choices?
Well, not according to our pal Michael Brown.
There are certainly single women who are blessed, and there are certainly gay and bisexual women who settle down in families. But to the extent that we deviate from God’s intended plan for human thriving, it will take its inevitable toll.
No.
This is a lot of work to get away from the fact that the actual conclusion of the study was that sexual minority women have lower life expectancies due to the fact that they have to deal with assholes like Michael Brown.
That being said, if we’re going to make the claim that living according to “God’s intended plan” will extend one’s life, I’m going to have to point out that the person best known to have followed God’s plan died single and childless at the age of 33. So there.
PREVIOUSLY:
If God didn't want me to be an alcoholic chain-smoking lesbian feminist stuntwoman, She wouldn't have created cigarettes. Or whiskey. In any event, I'm going to live forever, just to fuck with that dude's perceptions (I am some, but not all of those things).
first of all, mansplaining at women is always super awesome!
second, smoking and being gay aren't quite the same thing and it's not lost on anyone how this conflation just serves to blame the victim and lionize the aggressor.
third, religious dogma has killed, is killing, and will keep on killing because it serves to dehumanize the other.
and finally, fuck off.