More Fun with Nurture

[andrewducker]

Guardian article on claims that Gay people can be made Straight.

The study of Americans who had undergone so-called "reparative therapy" claimed that 78% of men and 95% of wome reported a change to predominantly or completely heterosexual behaviour.

The study's author, Professor Robert Sptizer, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, claimed it was the first study of its type. The Times Higher Education Supplement quoted him as saying: "It questions the politically correct view that once you're gay that's it and suggests that there is more flexibility than many people have assumed."

Comments

[dibzva.livejournal.com]

Does this mean straight people can be made gay?

Are we all, at heart, bisexual? I always suspected that no-one was ever 100% heterosexual or 100% homosexual. Maybe mother nature wants us to experiment?

[vill.livejournal.com]

About once a week I see an article that states something that I either read about long ago or learned about in college. I took a sociology class about social movements that explicitly discussed papers presented by people who interviewed self-selected groups that had gone through some sort of "re-education" and said they were no longer gay. "First study of its type" is bullshit. And there have been people claiming to be able to "cure" people through (often-traumatizing) avoidance therapy at least since the beginning of the gay rights movement.

well

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

You can brainwash people into doing and thinking pretty much anything, can't you? How is that flexibility?

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Whatever. Funnily enough, the sort of people who undertake that sort of reprogramming are the sort of people who want to be straight. And since there aren't measures of sexual orientation, gosh, might people who want to be straight report that they are straight?

But what really bothers me is the whole "politically correct view" bullshit. The radical queer view would be that of course it's a choice, and it doesn't matter a fuck anyway. I fucking hate it when people assume what I think and then say rude things about it.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Geee... So there are more Bi-sexuals then anything. Woo-hoo. I'm excited... Get me someone, I need a hug.

It's all a bunch of bull anyway. You can't really make a person into something they aren't. Not without being extreme about it, anyway.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Well, so?

Radical new study shows that with years of therapy, people who like coffee can be made to like tea instead! But why would you want to?

[cx650.livejournal.com]

"It would be interesting to see research on whether straight people can be made to be gay."

According to a gay friend of mine. 'The only difference between a straight man and a bi-sexual man is about six pints'.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

Your view is pretty much the view I have. It can't be genetic. For one, it doesn't make too much sense, it doesn't facilitate passing its own genes along. For another, it would probably mean the end of homosexuality if it was genetic. People would start testing for it during pregnancies and aborting like they do with females in certain Asian countries. That would be quite ugly.

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

Last I heard, it's not genetic, but it is physical; a configuration in the brain which triggers in utero based on factors no one fully understands, but which appear to be affected by overcrowding stress on the mother. Don't ask me for my sources, though, since I'm not going to spend three hours paging through back issues of Science News to back up a casual blog-reply. :)

[derumi.livejournal.com]

Well, it could be a physical change. I was straight at least into young adulthood, and more inclined to be bi now. I don't think my mom was too overcrowded when my cousin and I left home. : p

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound intensely scientific.

Still - let's not be too negative. For all those straight people who wish they were gay, this surely a grain of hope to cling to.

[andrewducker]

. It can't be genetic. For one, it doesn't make too much sense, it doesn't facilitate passing its own genes along. For another, it would probably mean the end of homosexuality if it was genetic. People would start testing for it during pregnancies and aborting like they do with females in certain Asian countries. That would be quite ugly.

The first half of your argument makes some sense (although lots of things are passed on which lessen chances of reproduction, largely because they're somewhere on a scale or they are side-effects of useful things).

The second half makes much less sense - it can't be genetic because that would have ugly consequences?

[andrewducker]

Last few things I heard indicated that high levels of testosterone in the womb had an effect.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Tea is cheaper?

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

I've had a theory for a while that homosexuality - indeed, all sexuality for that matter - is the result of myriad, probably indeterminable, factors from our formative years.

Most of the other characteristics we display in later life are decided in that way, so why not what sort of person/animal/inanimate object/whatever else your twisted minds can come up with you find arousing?

This just says there's some way to rewrite the programming, which is consistent with the formative influences theory.

Knee jerk says its right wing bigot research though.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

For the second part, I mean that "you don't want it to be genetic" because "it will likely have ugly consequences". Pardon.

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

That's a theory I've heard advanced,

it isn't true

but it's not a bad shot