First of all, define “physiological” homosexual. To date, there is no evidence of a physiological cause for homosexuality, so any information you have to share on this subject would be a genuine boon to the psychological/sociological scientific community.
I don’t believe that “everyone” goes through an adolescent phase of homosexual play, although it is likely more common than is usually reported.
The idea that homosexuality is getting over-hyped by the media, and that this is tricking kids into thinking they’re gay, is absurd on its face. There has been a notable increase in visibility of homosexuals in popular media in the last decade or so, but this was preceded by a very long period of increasing visibility of homosexuals in the public and political sphere, starting in the late '60s and early '70s. The out and active homosexuals during this period had absolutely no gay role models in the popular media which could have “fooled” them into being homosexuals, so where did all those queers come from?
There are no respectable psychiatrists who would claim that homosexuality represents a stunted stage in the development of a heterosexual orientation. Across the board, research has shown that, all things being equal, homosexuals go through the same stages of sexual maturation as heterosexuals do, except with the standard gender attraction reversed. You are technically correct, in that homosexuality is “abnormal,” but that term is usually fraught with inappropriate value judgements. Homosexuality is no more “abnormal” (or curable, or in need of curing) than left-handedness.
Human sexuality is a fascinating subject, Maerzie, and I commend your interest in it, but you’ve clearly been badly misled by your sources. If you’ve got any further questions, we’ve got a wide variety of Dopers who would be glad to help you out.
Sounds hokey to me. There is still enough stigma associated with being gay that few, if any, people who aren’t actually gay are going to be “caught into believing they are” gay, especially at the adolescent stage.
At any rate, **Maezerie **needs to offer a cite from credible scientific or psychological peer reviewed research. Otherwise, it sounds like he just made up that hypothesis or read about it in the popular media.
I think it’s a poor argument, mainly because it would be a much better argument for claiming that actually heterosexuality is abnormal.
-* Everyone goes through stages of homosexual play.*
Everyone goes through stages of heterosexual play.
TV, movies, and ever other public resource shouts about homosexuality.
All of them shout about heterosexuality much, much more. On top of that, homosexuality is shouted about in bad ways quite a lot of the time. Heterosexuality, OTOH, is much more uniformly seen as a good (or at least normal) thing.
*They self-diagnose and then give up. *
I could say the same about heterosexuals. I don’t believe that, of course, but it’s certainly just as possible.
You have “homosexual” friends who are afraid to come out of the closet since it might hurt their parents.
An even better argument if used to say heterosexuality is the “fake” one. People in that sort of situation are of course going to try and make sure whether they’re really gay. You don’t think that people who live in secret that way wouldn’t honestly try and “stop” being gay if they could? Plenty of gay people have tried to live with heterosexual relationships, in the hope they might be wrong. OTOH, if a person mistakenly thinks they’re straight, there’s no pressure on them to not be. There’s no inherent social view that their way is wrong, and so they have less of a reason to honestly evaluate their feelings.
Hormones of “homosexual” people are normal (i’m guessing as in, “the same as straight people”.
An argument that goes both ways, though I would ask for a cite on this anyway. If hormones are the same in heterosexuals and homosexuals, it’s just as possible for the straights to be wrong.
So there you go. If your arguments are true, they suggest either that it’s possible heterosexuality is the “faker” one, or that it’s actually more likely heterosexuality is abnormal. Of course I don’t believe that, but that’s what your arguments say. I would rethink them, were I you.
I think it’s ridiculous to say some people are “caught into believing they are gay,” it just doesn’t work that way.
But to deny that some people in this day and age choose to be gay, for whatever reason, is equally ridiculous. Because I see that happening with an increased frequency in the past few years among people in several different age groups.
My knowledge of homosexuality occurred during my psychiatric training, and the stages of sexual development. I don’t think that homosexuality is “abnormal”. I just think that there are quite a number of people parading around, THINKING they are homosexual, when, in fact, their sexual maturity instead got arrested during a, but normal period of development. This “normal” period of homosexual activity occurs during adolescence, and may be VERY sexual, or may be so mild as three guys seeing who can pee the farthest, or comparing size , or even touching each other, etc. Or, the same for girls, feeling each other, seeing what kissing is like, etc. All is pleasureable and very confusing, but it is supposed to be a transitory phase into heterosexual interests, which occurs for the majority. Some others get hung up on the guilt and all the pervasive materials about homosexuals, and they begin to think that is their calling. Psychiatrists and other doctors KNOW that the porton of these “homosexuals”, who actually have more of the opposite sex hormones flowing through their blood, is an extremely small percentage of the persons who believe themselves to BE homosexual, but nobody seems to care, and all of it is just taken as, so what!
So you’re a psychiatrist and you believe that there are real homosexuals who have more opposite sex hormones and there are fake homosexuals who have somehow convinced themselves that they’re gay? And where did you go to med school/residency?
I don’t really understand how you can think your homosexual and not actually be homosexual. You’re sexually attracted to members of your own sex or you’re not, I don’t see how you can be mistaken about your own preferences.
I mean, I think I like apple pie, I seem to enjoy eating it, am I mistaken about liking it? Do I really hate pie? On some deep subconsious level am I griding my teeth and hating the apple pie I keep eating? I seriously doubt it. Same deal with sexual preference.
I think what you’re seeing here isn’t that people are “choosing” to be gay. Rather, the increased acceptance of homosexuals has had the side effect of creating an enviroment where more bisexuals feel free to express the full range of their sexuality, instead of ignoring or suppressing any aspect that would have been socially unacceptable in previous years. They aren’t choosing their sexuality, though, any more than a heterosexual or a homosexual chooses it…
Hormones of “homosexual” people are normal (i’m guessing as in, “the same as straight people”.
An argument that goes both ways, though I would ask for a cite on this anyway. If hormones are the same in heterosexuals and homosexuals, it’s just as possible for the straights to be wrong.
So there you go. If your arguments are true, they suggest either that it’s possible heterosexuality is the “faker” one, or that it’s actually more likely heterosexuality is abnormal. Of course I don’t believe that, but that’s what your arguments say. I would rethink them, were I you.
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All anyone has to do is go in to see their M.D., and ask to have blood drawn to determine their sex hormones. There will either be a predominance of female hormones or a predominance of male hormones. Then anyone knows if they are a physiological male or a physiological female. How much more factual can it be than a person’s own blood report?
But then what makes these feel the need to announce to their friends and family a revolving mantra of “I’m gay”, “Now I’m straight,” “Gay again,” “Straight this month.” for years?
I’m exaggerating of course, but two people who previously self-identified as gay (including one who regularly told me she was “super gay”) have now had to “come out as straight to their friends” makes me wonder.
I too would request Maerzie inform us further about his credentials.
Because what you’re posting doesn’t make much sense. At all. Especially what you impute about the meaning of sex hormone levels.
My creds:
MD, Johns Hopkins. There I studied under Dr. John Money, past director of the Psychohormonal Research Unit and leading expert on gender/sexual identity issues.
Diplomate, ABFM (and I have passed the psychiatry subsection on that exam every number of years, most recently in 2003)
Better cough up some reputable cites for these assertions, or you will rapidly be dismissed here.
And where is your cite that gender is tied to sexual preference? In fact, what role exactly do male or female hormones do in selecting who you’re attracted to? If I inject an otherwise straight man with oestrogen, will he suddenly become attracted to other men? Same for women?
Note that you haven’t actually disproved my point. I disagree with you, but even if you were right, it’s still just as possible to say people are faking heterosexuality as they are faking homosexuality. And given that your other arguments work better for heterosexuality being fake, I suggest you either prove me wrong or accept your deep abiding lust for your own gender.
I’m inclined to agree with this based on my experience.
Similarly some people’s maturity is arrested in non-sexual ways and they forever act like children. Often due to some kind of traumatic experience, I think.
I realized I was attracted to my own sex when I reached puberty at 13 in 1961. There was NOBODY praising or hyping homosexuality at that time, I assure you. I lived in fear of anyone knowing. I denied it to myself so strongly that I was a virgin until I was 25! I never touched a man sexually until that age. Believe it or not.
Between 13 and 25 I continued to deny my sexuality, dated and necked and petted with girls (but never actually had sex). For the first twelve years of my sexuality, my sex life consisted only of masturbation, to pictures of men. Every now and then, I would try to use a Playboy foldout to “cure” myself", but I could never work up interest in any picture of a woman.
At 19 I went to an arsehole of a psychiatrist, a right-wing moron who did me enormous harm by telling me that I was stuck in a phase from my early adolescence. All he did while collecting a fortune in fees for four years was to help confirm my internalized homophobia. The instilling of self-hatred that the Roman Catholic Church had begun was now continued in the name of medicine.
Just to give you an idea of the conservatism of this idiot, he was a Spaniard who thought Francisco Franco was a great guy!
And his theories about homosexuality were about the same as yours, Maerzie.
Do you actually use those theorires on young gay people? Have you tried electroshock aversion therapy? The rack or the iron maiden, perhaps?
My story has a happy ending. By the age of 25 I came out, and in 1976 I met the wonderful man I have been with for the past 31 years. Last year we were legally married here in Canada. We both have productive careers, and are accepted by our families and friends. At present, I am one of the happiest people I know.
But even so, it took me years to shed my inernalized homophobia and to learn to accept myslf as I was. When I think about the young gay people you could be cripling with internalized self-hatred, I just want to puke!
Finally, I have a question: Would you say blond people suffer from an abnormal deficiency of melanin in their hair, or that dark-haired people suffer from an abnormal excess of melanin?
I would tend to say that the only reason a person would “suffer” from having a diffrerent hair colour would be if crackpots decide they are abnormal and make them suffer.
Hi, Maerzie, glad you stopped by. Before I continue, a quick helpful hint about quoting other posters.
If you want to offset other poster’s words in a quote box, type {quote} at the beginning of the material you’re quoting, and {/quote} at the end. Except instead of curly brackets { } use square brackets [ ]. This will make it much easier for everyone to tell what part of your posts are yours, and what parts are other people’s.
Okay, let’s dig in.
Firstly, what was the extent of your psychiatric training, when did you receive it, and at what institute did it take place? Because the theories you’re putting forward have all been roundly debunked by mainstream psychiatric theory for several decades now.
Secondly, when you say, “the stages of sexual development,” are you refering to your own sexual development? Because that doesn’t really give you any special insight into human sexuality. At least, not one that every other sexually mature human doesn’t share. If I’ve misunderstood you here, please clarify your meaning.
Okay, you seem to be making a distinction between “real” homsexuals and “mistaken” homosexuals. What is the difference between the two? Is it physiological? What is the physical agent of this difference? Sociologically speaking, how does one recognize the difference between a “real” homosexual, and a sexually immature heterosexual? What behaviors will the “fake” homosexual exhibit that the real one will not? How is it that, with this high proportion of fake homosexuals out there, that so-called reparative therapies have such an enormous failure rate? If these faux-homosexuals are indeed simply stuck at an early level of sexual development, how is it that they cannot be persuaded to move past that level?
Let’s keep in mind, the vast majority of the “pervasive materials about homosexuals” is overwhelmingly negative, and has been more most of modern history. It is quite literally only within the last ten to fifteen years that this has started to change at all, and yet the social message is still overwhelmingly that being gay is wrong and unnatural, to the extent that the President has repeatedly and successfully been able to rally voter support by calling for a Constitutional ammendment limiting the rights of homosexuals. Gay teens are still at a greatly increased risk of harrassment and suicide. The terms “gay” and “fag” are widely accepted as generic terms of disdain and disapproval.
But on the other hand, we’ve got Will and Grace. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m seeing a massive disparity in influence, there. How the hell does Debra Messing inspire people to overcome that much social adversity, when their natural inclination (according to you) is heterosexuality?
What doctors, specifically, are you talking about? Where have they said that most gays aren’t really gays? How did you hear about it? Because they sure haven’t been saying anything like that in the major medical research journals. Overwhelmingly, the medical consensus is that homosexuality is innate, immutable, and a normal, healthy expression of human sexuality.
:dubious: I was pretty sure I was physiologically male when I noticed I had a penis. I don’t think further blood testing is necessary.
Anyway, you seem to be confusing homosexuality with transexuality. The differences are quite distinct, but I think bringing them up now would only muddy the waters. Let’s get you straightened (ha!) out about homosexuality first, and then we’ll tackle the varsity material.
Exactly. There’s nothing objectively “normal” about our society today, so if social acceptance of gays increases and we find more people self-identifying as gay that is no indication that some people are being somehow tricked into being gay-- especially since we are far, far away from having a society where being gay doesn’t carry some serious stigma.
I also think your point about bisexuality is important, and we shouldn’t get lulled into the false dichotomy of people being either straight or gay. Biology rarely works that way, so a more reasonable assumption (even without any absolute proof) is that there is a range of sexual behaviors that humans display, and that give a free range, many people would align along some intermediate position. People aren’t either violent or peaceful, happy or sad, shy or extroverted. Most people fall somewhere in between, and there is no reason to think that sexuality should be any different. If it were, that would be extraordinary indeed!
Exactly. Please, Maerzie, tell us more about your medical credentials? Since when do doctors “KNOW” what causes homosexuality, as you claim in this post:
