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Somewhere downthread, or perhaps last week, conversion therapy was described as akin to the Ludovico treatment from A Clockwork Orange. Let's say that this assessment is plausible. Why hasn't an effective version been developed for some (not necessarily gay male) sexual preferences? Surely there is no shortage of adults who would like to reprogram themselves but lack the means to do so.
I want to double this and kind of ask the question in a different way:
If someone says: "I am a woman, and I want to be a man" - we put the person through an intense, and experimental regimen of hormones and surgery. We do massive amounts of work, with a few high profile regretters. The process seems to carry a high risk of infertility?
If someone says: "I am gay, and I want to be straight" - nope. Sorry. Technology just isn't there. You have to accept who you are. There is nothing we can do, nothing we can try. "But I really don't want to be-" stop internalizing your own homophobia. Your lived experience here is wrong. - is this an exaggeration? I'm not trying to strawman here.
Really in all directions, I feel like I have seen a lot of people in my life go from evidently and obviously straight to gay. Like, if they were closeted, they were Daniel Day Lewis level acting and hiding their true feelings for decades. Even talking to one wife just shrugged and was like "it literally makes no sense". I have never seen someone go from gay to straight (sorry, I don't believe Milo). Even members of my faith who do the "i'm gay but I'm not acting on it" don't try to pretend that they became straight. Why? If it's a spectrum, and fluid, why does it only ever seem to go in one direction?
I hope this doesn't come across as hostile or sarcastic - I'm genuinely curious how a lot of this stuff works inside the brain/body, and if there was a way to change it how that might change a lot of things. I get why on some levels we don't - awful stories of conversion therapy attempts from the 70s and 80s seem to have really hurt a lot of people. Maybe there are people who had a successful time and we just don't hear about them. But I'm guessing the outcomes were negative, and the health establishment isn't willing to risk it again. But they seem to be willing to risk it for other things - and if it's consenting adults as opposed to minors, then well...give er? I'm assuming there is still a market for "Christian guy who doesn't want to be gay", but maybe not as much.
You know "a lot" of people who have gone from straight to gay? That seems unusual. I don't think I personally know anyone like that and I have a pretty wide social circle with plenty of non straight people in it. The closest would be a guy I met years ago and had a single conversation with who claimed he went gay after his wife cheated and he got divorced.
I guess it would be about 5 people, so not a lot - maybe I should clarify. They may have been gay the whole time, but there was no indication, it wasn't like a "ohhh, yeah, not a shocker" it was like, "are you our greatest living actor?"
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