Sartre treated sexual orientation as a chosen response rather than an innate fact

Evidence

One major point of disagreement between Sartre and Genet concerned Genet’s homosexuality. Sartre interpreted it as part of Genet’s creative response to being labelled a pariah — thus, a free choice of outsiderhood and contrariness. Instead, for Genet, it was a given fact, like having green or brown eyes. He argued this point with Sartre, but Sartre was adamant. In Saint Genet he even had the effrontery to comment, of Genet’s more essentialist opinion, ‘we cannot follow him in this’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 716

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretely illustrates what Sartrean freedom-in-choice means and its limits — a key concept for the reader’s orientation.
• XREF: This is the classic Sartrean position that contrasts sharply with later identity politics and essentialist views of sexuality. — connects to: Sartrean freedom requires facticity, not its absence — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 508; Sartre reinterpreted Freudian primal scenes as exercises of freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 690; Sartre’s choice-based view of sexuality clashed with emerging born-this-way gay identity politics — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 69

Broader Connections

• Sartre reinterpreted Freudian primal scenes as exercises of freedom #expands (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 690