Homosexuality is curable

[Czarcasm]

How does one decide to become bisexual? How long would this cure take?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Stoneburg

First off, it’s good if you read at least the first paragraph of this post before you reply, because even though I will end up claiming that the topic is true, I will get to that point in a way that will most likely end up pleasing those who identify as homosexual, and perhaps not so much those of us (males) who identify as heterosexual. So if the headline of this topic upsets you, that’s great, I’m actually on your side, but I think the conclusion is funny enough to warrant a bit of a “gotcha” to get the blood boiling, because the post is very much about emotions and rationality, or rather, rationalizations.
Let’s start by looking at what the words heterosexual and homosexual mean from different perspectives. Normally you would say that a heterosexual man (I’m only talking about male sexuality) is defined as a man who likes to have sex with women, and a homosexual man is defined as a man who likes to have sex with men. So far so good. But another, equally valid way, to look at it would be that a heterosexual man is someone who does not have sexual relations with other men, and a homosexual man is someone who does not have sexual relationships with women. Instead of looking at what they include to define them, we look at what it is they exclude. One says I will not have sex with an individual who shares my gender, the other says I will not have sex with an individual who does not share my gender.
So now we have a new perspective of homo- and heterosexual individuals, defined by what they are avoiding rather than what they are attracted to. And when we look at what it is we/they are avoiding, it’s a combination of certain emotional and physical intimacy. A heterosexual man does (in general) not only avoid sex (symbolizing the extreme of physical intimacy) but also a wide range of non-sexual or borderline sexual intimacy. Heterosexual men don’t just avoid touching the genitals of other men, they also tend to avoid cuddling, kissing, hugging and even holding hands. They have excluded other men from their physical sphere of intimacy, and my realization is that this is essentially a result of fear. Basically heterosexuality and homophobia are the same thing, at least if you look at it literally, since phobia simply means fear. Heterosexual men are afraid of other men, and that fear has been institutionalized by different cultures. This in turn leads to a pathological situation where the heterosexual fear of homosexuality tries to justify itself by declaring that not suffering from homophobia (i.e. having the capacity to love other men both socially, emotionally and physically) is wrong, immoral or even a disease. Basically I (as a heterosexual male) am sick, but in order to not feel shame about it I instead re-organize my worldview so that my dis-ease with male to male intimacy becomes ”normal” and intimacy between males becomes abnormal, thus trying to pass my shame off to those who are able to enjoy what I can not.
It’s also interesting how this is a completely psychological phenomena, because I can quite easily (now that I look honestly at it) detect that my body, as separate from my mind, has no gender based preference regarding sex and physical intimacy, it is all in the head. As a thought experiment any heterosexual male can imagine getting a blow job from a beautiful woman (let’s say Scarlett Johansson), this is great, I’m really enjoying it. Now let’s give me a blindfold (kinky!), and it is obvious I still enjoy it, maybe less (maybe more), but it’s obvious that this body likes the combination of sensations even without visual cues. But now let’s imagine we remove the blindfold and it is Zach Galifianakis down there instead of Scarlett. What’s the reaction? For a heterosexual male that is a dream turning into a nightmare. But at first only for the mind. Notice that the body enjoyed it and from a physical perspective nothing has changed, it doesn’t matter if the mouth touching your genitals is attached to a male or female body, because there is no relevant physical difference.
Except that is not totally true since Zach has a beard and Scarlett doesn’t, so feel free to swap Zach for a more feminine looking man and see if that makes you more comfortable. As it turns out it does make me more comfortable if it is a person without a beard, not so much physically (I would assume) but mentally. Because the beard is so obviously masculine. And here is where we get into the whole trouble with heterosexuality again, because as it turns out, heterosexuality is not as much about having sex with women as it is about *not]/i] having sex with men. The fear of male intimacy is actually stronger than the attraction to female intimacy. And assuming that attraction to intimacy is good, and that irrational fear is something bad, exclusive heterosexuality is actually pathological.
And since this is obviously a psychological issue and not a biological (my body likes all non-violent intimacy, it’s my mind that is discriminating) it can theoretically be ”cured” by psychodynamic work. For example when I deconstruct my own psyche I find that I have certain fears associated to the concept of male physical intimacy. There’s a fear of being dominated, a fear of being penetrated and a magical taboo around other mens penis. On top of that there are social norms about when, how and with whom it is ”appropriate” to express emotion. For example my psychological programming (a result of culture) used to allow me to cry rather freely in front of a women, but not in front of a man. Once again this seems fear based. I am afraid that crying (showing emotional intimacy and vulnerableness) with a man will cause him to think I am weak, thus lowering my status, but I know that (most) women don’t have that perspective so I feel safer crying with them. So my homophobia (i.e. my fear of other men) is not only preventing me from physical intimacy, but emotional and social intimacy as well. This in turn leads to repression and can take all kinds of more or less unhealthy expressions, such as trying to cover up my shame by condemning others. A horrible example would be gay bashing, which when looking at it like this would be fear turned into hate. This is a standard psychological mechanism where we project what we have disowned from ourselves onto the exterior world. I beat up homosexuals because deep down I want intimacy with men and I hate myself for it.
So does that mean that a homosexual identity is more healthy than a heterosexual one? That seems to depend on two factors, first how we define it and second on how we arrive at it. I would suggest that there are two sorts of homosexuality when viewed like this. One would be pathological homosexuality, where you only share intimacy with members of the same sex because you have fears or unresolved issues around the other sex, and the other would be preferential homosexuality which would be someone who is essentially bisexual but has a strong aesthetic/emotional/social preference for males (in this case, still talking about male sexuality). And here we arrive back at the topic statement that ”homosexuality is curable”, because if you define it as a pathological inability to connect intimately with women in an emotional/physical sense it is. But the result will not be that the ”patient” stops being attracted to men, only that they are now capable for being attracted to women as well. So the cure for homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality but bisexuality.
The obvious conclusion now is that bisexuality is optimal (both physically, biologically, mentally) and that excluding one gender from your sphere of intimacy will result in a pathological hetero- or homosexuality. But does that mean that homosexuality and heterosexuality are equally pathological? I would argue that no, it does not seem so. Homosexual men, in my experience, do not have the same ”hangups” around heterosexual intercourse as heterosexuals do about homosexual intercourse, which indicates that homosexuals are in general less phobic (very obvious generalization here, I’m sure there are exceptions). The other is that homosexual men often show a higher capacity for emotional and social intimacy with women, which makes a lot of sense from a psychological perspective since the homosexual male will be more likely to evolve emotionally by confronting the psychosexual issues. This seems to be a positive feedback loop where women are also more comfortable around homosexual men (and hence can be more intimate) because they are not feeling the pressure of aggressive male sexuality directed towards them. So looking at it from this perspective, heterosexuality would seem to be almost always pathological, and homosexuality even when it is pathological (as in exclusive and based on fear) would be much less so (still capable of social and emotional intimacy).
The conclusion is of course rather radical. Both homosexuality and heterosexuality can be viewed as a dis-ease, but one is much more common and much more unhealthy than the other, and bisexuality (with or without strong preferences) is the only really healthy option from a psychological point of view. Heterosexuality is almost always homophobia in disguise, but homosexuality is not necessarily heterophobia since it is often just an expression of (actually bi-sexual) preference.

tl;dr

Death cures everything from homosexuality to left handedness, so there’s that.

[Stoneburg]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

But then you’re just talking about something else than everybody else when you use the word ‘homosexual’. I mean, there’s nothing barring you from doing that (aside from a desire to communicate), but it also means that your conclusion carries no force for anybody not accepting your definition.

What you say makes theoretical sense but I don’t see the problem here. My radical definition is that a heterosexual is someone who is attracted to women and repelled by the idea of sex with men. I don’t see how that is controversial. You may have another definition, and once again I’m not interested in changing the meaning of the words, I’m interested in finding out of the reason certain men avoid intimacy with other men. You are basically saying ”it’s because they are not interested” and I am saying ”I think it’s because they are scared”. As far as I can tell that is the whole difference here, and my position is (right now) that it might be both, but I am leaning towards it all being ultimately fear based.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Sure, but again, disgust isn’t fear. I’m disgusted by tomatoes. I’m not afraid of them.

Fair point. But you could also argue that you are afraid of putting them in your mouth because you think they are disgusting. It all boils down to that it is something you want to avoid, and I guess that my argument would be that in the end all emotions that repell can be reduced down to fear.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

You’re awfully quick to try and turn everything into a simple dichotomy, but that’s not how most things work. It’s nice and simple to imagine they did, but as you demonstrate, one ends up painting oneself into ludicrous corners. The conclusion you draw, that ‘all heterosexual males are homophobes’ then just reflects that, amounting to a reductio of your premises.

Another way (which I think is more fair, and not as polemic) to explain the conclusion would be that ”What is called a heterosexual sexual identity is a strategy that avoids intimacy of the physical kind with members of its own gender due to a combination of cognitive patterns that are ultimately based on fear. It holds no significant evolutionary value (bisexual men can procreate just as well) and can sometimes become severely pathological (repression, gay bashing etc)."

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

But you still need to make contact to how words are used by other people, if you want to convince anybody of your argument. And in point of fact, ‘homophobia’ simply doesn’t mean what you take it to mean.

If everybody already thought that heterosexuality was a psychological expression of homophobia there would be no need for the discussion. Basically you’re saying that since not everyone agrees, there’s no point in discussing it.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Again, you can, of course, define words anyway you like. Define ‘green cheese’ to mean ‘lunar rock’, and ‘the moon is made of green cheese’. Define ‘homophobia’ as being afraid of men, define ‘being afraid’ as being anything that causes avoidance behaviour, and yes, everybody avoiding sexual contact with men will be a homophobe; but by that, you won’t have uncovered underlying motivations for some behavior—you’re not saying something about the world, but merely about your usage of words.

I would say that it exposes both truths of the subjective kind (such as ”why?”) and the objective (such as ”how?”).

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

That’s not really how arguments work. You’re the one trying to establish a conclusion; you have to show how it follows. As it is, your premises are simply false, and your reasoning fallacious, so your conclusion fails to be established. Maybe you can ‘see that it makes sense’ that the moon is made of green cheese, but that doesn’t mean the moon is made of green cheese.

I have actually to my mind at least provided a pretty interesting argument that has at least been illuminating for me (since I now understand more about my own sexual preferences). The fact that you want to call it a failure because you refuse to agree with some of the premises is a bit sad, but not ultimately proof of anything other than that we are failing to communicate here a bit. But I promise you that I am trying, I have no other agenda than to discuss something interesting that I just thought of. I like discussing things and I am not married to any of my opinions or perspectives (I’m either aperspectival or poly-perspectival I guess).

[Stoneburg]

@Human_Action

And that leads to universal bisexuality being natural and ideal how, exactly? The actual expression of the, er, “horniness” isn’t randomly directed at whatever willing orifice is closest.

I think that universal bisexuality being optimal from an idealistic perspective is pretty self-evident, at least from an individuals perspective. Having a wider selection of people to be intimate with seems simply better than having a more narrow (or no) selection, as long as it is a choice.

Whether it is “natural” would depend on your definition of “natural”. I would say that it is not a disadvantage from an evolutional perspective, since it does not limit your ability to procreate, and if we are looking at qualities such as “maximizing pleasure” it’s obviously very much an advantage. As a strategy it only seems to run into problems that are socio-cultural constructs.

If you could sign up again for your body and persona, and you did have a choice regarding your sexuality, wouldn’t it make sense to sign up as “bisexual” if there were no socio-cultural drawbacks to having such a set of preferences?

[Lobohan]

@Stoneburg

If you don’t want to engage in debate, feel free not to. Since this was an unwarranted ad-hominem, and very un-constructive, I have reported the post,

Ad-hominem doesn’t mean, “Calling your argument utter trash.”

[tim-n-va]

TL:DR but I got far enough to see that your argument is based on making up your own definitions which means any conclusions have no merit outside this thread.

[coremelt]

If you’re going to spout the “everyone is bisexual” argument at least do your research. Freud and Kinsey were both keen on this:

Bisexuality

There’s also opportunistic homosexuality. Some prisoners will perform homosexual acts in jail because they have no other opportunities for sexual release but when released have no interest in homosexual encounters. Are they bisexual?

[Stoneburg]

@muckalusha

Stoneburg, thank you for posting such a fresh viewpoint. You’ve definitely got me to do a little thinking, inspiring a Google search or two.

I found an article by Clementine Ford of Daily Life (Australia), who wrote something back in 2012, “The fear of male to male intimacy,” that touches on this issue. From what I’ve read of the article, she believes that those that are exclusively heterosexual have more fear of being labeled unmanly by their peers/community than they fear actual intimacy with other men.

I think avoiding male-male relationships is a combination of your ideas of pathological fear of male-male intimacy and also a way to save face in communities that are ultra-religious or have a warped view of what it means to “be a man.” Better to deny one’s natural inclinations than be ostracized by your friends and family.

Combine those ideas and you are getting close to the truth about male sexuality.

Thanks for a very interesting post.

Thank you for the very positive feedback, I’m happy to see that someone appreciated the perspective, it was turning out to be quite a pile on…

Now I did a google search and it turns out my idea may not be as controversial as I thought. Actually it seems self-evident once you start looking into yourself, but I guess that only holds true if you’re a heterosexual male yourself. I can quite clearly see now that my fear of intimacy with other males has shaped my behavior very significantly, but I am still exploring the exact nature of the different fears and taboos that come up. But the common denominator here is the fear/disgust an I’m now looking to deconstruct it all and see where it came from.

The socio-cultural game seems to be based on domination/subjugation, where male-male sexuality (for heterosexuals) means a threat to their social status. Basically the male is afraid to be penetrated because that will (in the patriarch system) demote it (symbolically) to a female. Basically, if I let someone penetrate me I am showing submission, which means I am weak. Culturally this seems to have been supported in earlier eras where the “dominant” or “penetrating” male was sometimes not even considered “homosexual”; but only the “submissive” or “penetrated” was. I find this very easy to differentiate since there is a much bigger fear of one than the other, and one is associated with masculinity, the other with femininity.

So you could argue that it’s not just a fear of other men, it is also the fear of “becoming a woman”. So I am a male afraid of other men on the outside (as in the exterior world) but also afraid of the femininity I may have repressed in myself (what if I like being penetrated?). Psycho-sexuality is super interesting.

[Czarcasm]

@Lobohan

Ad-hominem doesn’t mean, “Calling your argument utter trash.”

Unless you happen to redefine it as such.

[Emiliana]

Any chance the mods could confine Stoneburg, LinusK, and Futurist101 to a single thread for their own little debate about sex strategies and the potential financial obligations thereof?

[Human_Action]

@Stoneburg

I think that universal bisexuality being optimal from an idealistic perspective is pretty self-evident, at least from an individuals perspective. Having a wider selection of people to be intimate with seems simply better than having a more narrow (or no) selection, as long as it is a choice.

If you’re also serially monogamous, like most people are, then what’s the advantage? My goal isn’t to be intimate with as many people as possible, but instead the one person who suits me best, and half the human race is plenty to choose from in that regard.

@Stoneburg

Whether it is “natural” would depend on your definition of “natural”. I would say that it is not a disadvantage from an evolutional perspective, since it does not limit your ability to procreate, and if we are looking at qualities such as “maximizing pleasure” it’s obviously very much an advantage. As a strategy it only seems to run into problems that are socio-cultural constructs.

If there are no disadvantages and only advantages, then why don’t we see this phenomenon in nature? Has natural selection failed that badly? You may be overlooking disadvantages - for example, again assuming serial monogamy, some (half?) of the time, your long-term partner will be the same sex as you, and you will thus be unable to reproduce with that person with the same ease as an opposite-sex partner.

@Stoneburg

If you could sign up again for your body and persona, and you did have a choice regarding your sexuality, wouldn’t it make sense to sign up as “bisexual” if there were no socio-cultural drawbacks to having such a set of preferences?

See above. Also, given that we don’t get to sign up for our bodies, this is akin to arguing that everyone should be left-handed, or brunette - debatable as a thought experiment, but in no way a reflection of how things actually are.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Stoneburg

What you say makes theoretical sense but I don’t see the problem here. My radical definition is that a heterosexual is someone who is attracted to women and repelled by the idea of sex with men. I don’t see how that is controversial. You may have another definition, and once again I’m not interested in changing the meaning of the words, I’m interested in finding out of the reason certain men avoid intimacy with other men. You are basically saying ”it’s because they are not interested” and I am saying ”I think it’s because they are scared”.

Well, but you can’t flat-out just assert that. Of course, yes, if ‘avoiding something’ implies ‘being afraid of that something’, you’re right, but it simply doesn’t.

Fair point. But you could also argue that you are afraid of putting them in your mouth because you think they are disgusting. It all boils down to that it is something you want to avoid, and I guess that my argument would be that in the end all emotions that repell can be reduced down to fear.

Avoidance has a whole host of reasons; reducing all of this to fear oversimplifies so much that I’m not sure in the end anything’s left. Disgust, as mentioned, is different from fear (even in your example, the fear is not one of tomatoes, but one of situations in which one experiences disgust). You also may avoid something because you hate it, but not everything you hate, you also fear. You may avoid things you enjoy because they’re not good for you. You avoid hurting your loved ones precisely because you love them.

And yes, there may be fears associated to these sorts of things—fears that certain circumstances come to pass, for instance. If you avoid sugar, you might fear that if you didn’t, you’d get fat; but that’s a fear of getting fat, not one of sugar. So avoiding the thing in no sense equates to fear of that thing.

And again, fear of men and homophobia are different things still, so even if fear were the only reason to avoid sexual contact with men, that wouldn’t amount to homophobia.

If everybody already thought that heterosexuality was a psychological expression of homophobia there would be no need for the discussion. Basically you’re saying that since not everyone agrees, there’s no point in discussing it.

No. I’m saying that since you use idiosyncratic definitions, your conclusions only apply to the idiosyncrasies behind your definitions, but not to matters of fact.

I would say that it exposes both truths of the subjective kind (such as ”why?”) and the objective (such as ”how?”).

Why is ‘why’ subjective? How is ‘how’ objective? What’s that sentence even supposed to mean?

The fact that you want to call it a failure because you refuse to agree with some of the premises is a bit sad, but not ultimately proof of anything other than that we are failing to communicate here a bit.

The problem is not that I disagree with your premises, the problem is that under a quotidian interpretation of the words you use, they’re wrong; and under the definition you propose to use, the conclusion you establish only says something about your definitions (namely, that they’re not very good ones).

You want to equivocate on the meaning of homophobia, heterosexuality, and so on: use your definition, but have your conclusion apply to the dictionary definition. On your definition, you’re not saying anything interesting: people avoiding certain kinds of things indeed avoid certain kinds of things. On the usual understanding, what you want to be saying is something about homophobia and heterosexuality. But since your argument doesn’t appeal to the usual understanding, but uses ‘heterosexuality’ to mean ‘non-homosexuality’, and ‘homophobia’ to mean ‘avoidance of sexual relations with men’, you’re just asserting the tautological ‘men avoiding sexual relations with other men are non-homosexual’. It should be clear that no deep insights can be gained from this.

[Stoneburg]

@coremelt

If you’re going to spout the “everyone is bisexual” argument at least do your research. Freud and Kinsey were both keen on this:
Bisexuality - Wikipedia

There’s also opportunistic homosexuality. Some prisoners will perform homosexual acts in jail because they have no other opportunities for sexual release but when released have no interest in homosexual encounters. Are they bisexual?

You seem to have missed my point entirely. I am not saying that everyone is bisexual, I am saying that the reason men are not more intimate (both socially, emotionally and physically) is because of fear, and that those fears in themselves have created a situation where those fears have become normalized, and even institutionalized.

[Czarcasm]

Are you going to tell us how this cure can come about, or not?

[yawuntz]

Yeah, need answer fast! Wait - homosexuality is an illness??

[Stoneburg]

@Emiliana

Any chance the mods could confine Stoneburg, LinusK, and Futurist101 to a single thread for their own little debate about sex strategies and the potential financial obligations thereof?

Any chance you could actually read the argument and participate as an intelligent human being, rather than compare me to some anti-feminist and try to get moderators to stop the debate. You can start a pit thread where you can misunderstand, misrepresent and insult me all you want, but please don’t shit in this thread, I’m trying to have an adult conversation.

[John_Mace]

@yawuntz

Yeah, need answer fast! Wait - homosexuality is an illness??

It’s a “dis-ease”. Get it? “Dis-ease”. Isn’t that clever?

[yawuntz]

Ah, so!

[Emiliana]

@Stoneburg

Any chance you could actually read the argument and participate as an intelligent human being, rather than compare me to some anti-feminist and try to get moderators to stop the debate. You can start a pit thread where you can misunderstand, misrepresent and insult me all you want, but please don’t shit in this thread, I’m trying to have an adult conversation.

Without a great deal of success, I’m afraid.

[Stoneburg]

@muckalusha

By the way , I also see the aesthetic argument as being valid. Some men simply find the male body more appealing than the female, and vice-versa. It’s a combination of mental hangups, community norms, and personal preferences/taste.

Yeah I agree totally and I was going to bring that up, but the original post was getting so long. The whole concept of beauty itself is almost mind boggling though, I seriously still have no idea how it “works” psychologically. What is the experience of beauty? How does it appear…? I guess in the end, that is what individual identity as a separate self might be about, what do I consider to be beautiful. That would of course also sync up very well with the Big Three of Art, Morals and Science. One is subjective, one is intersubjective and one is objective.

Personally I can see beauty both is the feminine and masculine forms of the human body, but the experience of that beauty is somewhat different. Basically I think it boils down to that I like looking at both beautiful women and men, but I don’t feel like I want to touch the men but the idea of touching a beautiful woman is very attractive.