Maybe if I could have sex with fifty different women I wouldn’t want to anymore.
Hmmm…While I see (and do not disagree) with your larger point, I somehow think that this particular example might not show much more than that you are a heterosexual male. Do we have any heterosexual men out there who can strongly say that they don’t think they would find this attractive?
Only if you define a homosexual as “somebody who has sex with men” rather than “somebody who is attracted to men.”
As he described it, he went through a lot of Viagra and fantasized that he was having sex with … some movie star I’m not familiar with. Rafe something, I think it was. And he said he almost never had an orgasm. (As a side point, I’d never heard of a man faking having an orgasm before, and we had an interesting discussion on that.)
He said that even after having sex with so many women in an attempt to cure himself, he still found female bodies repellant.
Well the Viagra is really a red herring. Viagra doesn’t cause erections. The fantasy I can believe, but once again we are back to my original point:are you claiming that it would have been impossible for him to develop a sexual response to women if all his rewarding sexual experiences had been with women?
Of course almost never isn’t the same as never.
This another point that makes me wonder whether the failed sample is the tail end of the curve. We know that large numbers of heterosexuals feel no particular repulsion towards their own sex, and indeed many heterosexuals have engaged in homosexual experiences. The fact that the homosexuals who fail to develop a heterosexual response despite trying report not just ambivalence but repulsion to heterosexual sex makes would seem to indicate that the ones who failed were the extreme end of the curve. If that is so then they are not evidence that a majoriy of humans can’t control the reposnse. They are just evidence that some humans can’t, just as some humans can’t control their anger or their desire for alcohol.
We know that most humans can control thier response to alcohol or aggravation and we certainly don’t use the tiny minority that can not as proof that those things are never chosen responses. We only use it as evidence that a minority can’t choose it. I’m not seeing any evidence here that sexual preference is any different.
Here’s my-off-the-cuff hypothesis:
Human sexual reposnse is equivalent in most regards to human anger response. The basic aggression pattern is hardwired into our brains, even though the details on agression levels and so forth vary between individuals. Social conditioning leads a majority fo people to control the response and express it only in socially appropriate ways. In the case of anger that might mean for example that going off the handle and throwing punches is appropriate amongst young men in bars but inappropriate at work. We learn these approriate reactions and the vast majority of people choose to react in socially approriate ways, even though the aggravation at work and at a bar is exactly the same. A tiny minority of people lack the ability to choose to exhibit a socially accpetable aggression response and cannot control their agression. These people are not evidence that humans as a species can not control their aggression responses, these people are only evidence that their will always be some humans who don’t fit the mold of the vast majority.
Similarly the basic sexual response is hardwired into our brains even though details on our majority attraction and so forth very. IOW some people will be more prone to exclusive homo or heterosexuality and so forth. We learn that a sexual response to our own gender is socially inappropriate, and the vast majority of people will choose to react in a socially approriate manner. A tiny minority of people lack the ability to choose to exhibit a socially acceptable sexual response and cannot control their homosexual (or theoretically heterosexual) responses. These people are not evidence that humans as a species can not control their sexual responses, these people are only evidence that their will always be some humans who don’t fit the mold of the vast majority.
Have at it folks.
It doesn’t cause erections, but it sure makes them easier to achieve. As for whether or not it would be impossible, I don’t know, but he says he doesn’t have any sexual feelings about women even after all that, and I believe he was trying really hard to change himself (for religious reasons, which I found a bit bizarre since he would certainly have gotten in big trouble religion-wise if people had known about him having sex with a bunch of women).
True.
That’s certainly a possibility; I’ve never felt any sexual attraction for a male, and indeed the idea of feeling myself have a sexual response to a male body seems pretty icky to me, and I always assumed that was the way most hereosexuals felt. But maybe not. I guess it depends on how big a percentage the large number of heterosexuals who don’t feel repulsed by the idea of (themselves engaging in) gay sex are.
Hmm … if most people aren’t like you, me, or my friend, then shouldn’t the “treatments” for turning gays straight have better success?
I think (no cite, so there) a big part of the reason they don’t work is that there is so often very much at stake - if it were the case that a person calmly decided to alter their sexual preferences, then set out to do it, I think they might well succeed in some way, but I’m pretty sure that’s never what actually happens.
Gay>straight conversion attempts are nearly always vastly overshadowed by religious guilt, cruelty or other harsh treatment, induced self-loathing, etc.
Take away all those things and try it calmly and voluntarily, and I think it might be possible (of course, take away those things and there’s little reason to try).
A person can carefully train himself to enjoy eating something he initially finds repellent. I don’t think the same effect can be achieved at gunpoint, or because he thinks he’s an evil bad person for not enjoying it.
None of the above should be understood to mean that I’m advocating the ‘conversion’ of homosexuals. I think it’s a stupid - usually evil - idea.
Yes, but the desire needs to exist first. That is the point.
Let’s not get into the bizarrity of religion in this thread, mmkay? 
I have no particular reason to disbeleive your account of your frend, but the I have no particular reaons ot believe it either, it’s just an anecdotal account. My point is that accepting it at face value it seems this man had many years of pleasurable sexual experiences associated with men. Isn’t it concievable that this sort of reinforcement strengthened his response in one direction?
But the facts tell us that many, possibly most, heterosexuals have willingly engaged in homosexual activity and the most homosexuals have engaged in heterosexual activity. That leaves us with two possiblities:
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You and I and anyone feeling as we do are at one extreme of a congenital spectrum: compulsive gender orientation.
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(Which I consider more likely based on nothing substantial) our sexual responses have been chosen. We learned that homosexuality was inapproriate at a very young age and have trained ourselves into that thought process. We feel revulsion not because it is innate but because we have oriented ouselves that way. Those people who are more ‘adventurous’ have not made that choice. To give you an example, think of picking someone else’s nose and eating it. Revolted? Humans are the only primate that is, all others do this regularly as do many human infants. This strongly suggests that this revulsion is learned very early in life an strengthened as time passes, and I see no reason why our sexual revulsions couldn’t be the same.
No, exactly the opposite, the more “abberant” sexual inflexibility is the less success we would expect in altering it. I already adressed this above.
I don’t have an anger management problem. Do you? Does your freind? If most people are like you, me, or your friend, then shouldn’t the “treatments” for anger problems have better success?
No. If most people are learned to control their anger at an early age (like us) then we would expect most treatments to fail. If most people have no problem controlling their anger then the only people turning up to anger management courses will be people with the most extreme inability to alter their anger responses. Everyone else will have learned successful techniques to alter their response without need for third party help. The only people turning up to courses will be the people who have tried and failed at every other option. These are the very people we would expect to fail at this step too.
The same goes for sexuality inflexibility. If most people learned to alter their sexual response at an early age (unlike us) then the only people turning up to ex-gay courses will be people like us with the most extreme inability to alter their sexual responses. Everyone else will have learned successful techniques to alter their response without need for third party help. The only people turning up to courses will be the people who have tried and failed at every other option. These are the very people we would expect to fail at this step too.
Of course all this assumes that you and I are congenitally straight and that our revulsion isn’t just the result of social conditioning like our revulsion at eating someone else’s snot.
Often ill conceived, but not necessraily stupid and certainly not always evil.
As others have said, being homosexual in today’s world is a tough row to hoe for all sorts of reasons. As such there are legitimate reasons why someone could make a rational and moral decision to convert from homosexuality, or to urge someone else to do so. It doesn’t matter whether the reason why being a homosexual is tough is due to things that shouldn’t happen. By all means try to change those things, but we can’t just say they shouldn’t happen so everyone ought to act as if they don’t happen.
To give the obvious analogy, would you say that a black man in 1800 was evil or stupid if he partook of a treatment intended to make him white? Or that anyone who urged him to do so was stupid or evil? I certainly agree that the system that made it desirable was evil and stupid, but people who acknowledge that he would be better off white are not evil or stupid.
I would agree that it is evil and stupid to force or coerce someone into conversion, but the conversion itself coudl very easily be intelligent and moral.
That’s more or less what I was trying to say. It’s not stupid or evil to try to change yourself if that’s what you really want to do, but it is if you try to impose such a change on someone else.
In practical terms, I don’t believe there’s much in the way of altruistic effort to ‘convert’ homosexuals abroad in the world right now - it might be dressed up that way to try to look respectable, but I’m pretty sure that not far below the surface, it’s often just a seething mass of hatred, intolerance and fear.
Interesting post, Scylla.
Regards,
Shodan
While I do not personally believe that homosexuality is a choice, I do think that the science on sexual orientation as genetic/prenatal is nowhere near definitive as yet.
That being said, I do think that the homosexual/social liberal community (“HSLC”) glommed on to the “homosexuality is not a choice” paradigm much too readily, particularly as the paradigm was adopted well before there was any significant scientific evidence supporting it. In doing so, the HSLC has effectively surrendered the moral high ground to the social conservatives. The section of your post I quote demonstrates the point: implicit in it is the assumption that, if homosexuals had a choice, they would all be straight, as the better (or at least easier) sexual orientation.
This is a self-hating paradigm (a little too strong, but I’m blanking on the proper language at this pre-coffee time of day). Further, it is a dangerous paradigm: it is disturbingly close to the disease paradigm, and it, potentially, can have real negative effects, including the not-too-far-off possibility of genetic testing and selective abortion of fetuses with the “gay gene”, if it is ever identified.
IMO, it is much better to view homosexuality, if not as a valid choice (which, I believe, the science will disprove), at least as a valid option. A better paradigm is to view the causes of homosexuality as irrelevant, that it doesn’t matter if a person is homosexual due to personal choice or genetic predisposition.
Sua
“Out there” on the SDMB, maybe not. “Out there” in the world at large, absolutely. For example, how about a man from one of those Sudanese tribes that fattens their wives up (with camel milk, IIRC) to levels a European or American would consider borderline morbidly obese?
To say that your sexuality can’t be affected by your environment and experiences doesn’t make much sense. What is so sacred about sexuality that makes it different from every other aspect of your personality?
That’s the thing - not the notion that sexualilty/sexual response is very considerably ingrained/innate, but the assertion “Nothing about sexual response is a choice.”
I don’t think there’s any other human behaviour (ones where differences exist from one person to the next, so not ‘breathing’) where it could be said nothing about this is a choice. So why is sexual response different? It isn’t.