In the essay "How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay" by Eve Sedgwick, she describes one of Friedman's ideas that "the reason effeminate boys turn out gay... is that other men don't validate them as masculine." Although this is very interesting idea, it bases one's sexuality on only the outside influences of society. Referring to the debate between nature versus nurture, this idea would solidify the significance of "nurture," and does not take into account the "nature" behind one's sexuality. The fact that it does not believe one can naturally be born "queer" suggests the notion that heterosexuality is "normal" and anything else is against nature and can be "fixed." Due to this flawed belief, any ambiguity in one's sexuality, and therefore one's gender (because one can only be homosexual if one is the same gender as the desired object of affection) is shunned by society. People that fall under this characterization must then suffer from a double inadequacy, not able to be accepted by either genders or sexualities.
A solution for people who must face this unacceptability is presented Joon Oluchi Lee's "Joy of the Castrated Boy" when he states that "it can be wonderful to be mistaken for something that the rest of the world calls horrible, ugly, embarrassing." Rather than dreading being mistaken for someone that one is, one should instead take pride and joy in the fact that people correctly interpret one's gender, whether it is against the heteronormative constructs of society or not. People will virtually always want to categorize and judge things at surface level. There is no use in trying to get away from the shame and pain of laughter by denouncing one's identity because like Lee asserts, "What works is to accept that mistakability as not only a fact of life but a point of joy and liberation."
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