The survey has since gone viral on Twitter, garnering over 33,000 likes and 20,000 shares in four days
Anyone who doesn’t fit into the definition of ‘normal’ laid down by society, usually ends up being subject to ignorant statements. Members of the LGBTQIA community are usually the highest recipients of oblivious questions. So, one university professor in Florida decided to turn the tables on the ‘normals’ and put them in the shoes of the LGBTQIA people.
The unnamed professor, who teaches human sexuality at the university, presented her students with a mock survey, specifically for the heterosexual students in class. The questions read:
What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
When did you decide you were a heterosexual?
Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase that you may grow out of?
Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Why can’t you just be what you are and just keep quiet about it?
Why do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your lifestyle?
Have you considered therapy to change your heterosexual tendencies?
The survey has since gone viral on Twitter, garnering over 33,000 likes and 20,000 shares in four days. Elise, one of the professor’s students who posted it on Twitter, has been fielding responses to the comments, explaining the reasoning behind it. She says her class is relatively open-minded, but her professor was trying to make a point about the treatment of LGBTQIA in society. “Gay people are asked these questions all the time,” she tweeted to one dissenter.
While the survey is certainly a stroke of genius, there’s another hidden tidbit behind it. It turns out, the professor herself didn’t have to write the questions. The questionnaire has been around since 1972, albeit, in a slightly different form.
Martin Rochlin, a pioneer in the field of gay-affirmative psychotherapy, conceptualised the quiz as a way of putting straight people in the shoes of gay people, then widely considered ‘unnatural’. It had 22 questions, designed to shake the beliefs of “self-avowed heterosexuals”. Unfortunately, it’s both telling and saddening that a 45-year-old questionnaire is still relevant today.
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