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I find this a very dubious assertion. It seems to me, both in terms of public assertion as well as mildly uncharitable questioning of their inner motivations, that the aim isn't to convert straight people, but to have people who are already gay (or at least not a zero on the Kinsey scale) to feel free to express their sexuality.
Would many activists prefer that their campaigns result in everyone turning bisexual or gay? Maybe, probably. Doesn't mean that's what they expect.
This is distinct from the odd grifter who painlessly claims to be gay for the sake of diversity points, since it's verboten to question them even if they've never sucked an actual dick in their lives, but even then they're more likely to claim to be trans or non-binary. While some activists might grudgingly tolerate this (or feel helpless to call it out according to the standards of self-identification they espouse), I don't think they approve of it per se.
Or even more nebulously, "queer".
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What percentage of people going to gay conversion clinics do you think believe themselves be straight be afflicted with something they find undesirable?
I doubt it’s zero.
In their minds they are straight people who need help overcoming a psychological condition.
I don't think a significant fraction of them think being straight is bad, and even if they did, that's not likely the reason why they endorse Pride. And the tendency of many gays to take pride in "converting" "straight" men is more of a fetishization of the unattainable.*
Of course, I'm trying to interpret the question I think you're trying to ask, because as of the time of writing, what you said:
Makes no sense! I presume you meant "to be straight to be afflicted".
*Many gay people mock the straights, but or ask questions along the lines of "are the straights OK?" but that's more of an in-group catechism and bitching, rather than a genuine belief that being straight is somehow inferior.
Note that I'm specifically addressing gay men (or maybe lesbian too), the trans activist community has an unhealthy obsession with cracking eggs.
His question was how many people go to conversion therapy go there with the intent of relieving themselves of homosexual attractions so they can live their preferred lives.
It is a bit of a tautology.
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I think you’re missing my point, or maybe your being cheeky and I don’t realize it.
A straight person unconverted to gay, and a gay person unconverted to straight are equivalents.
It seems like the assumption is that you can only ever find out that you’re gay, as if that is an evolution. I’m saying it goes both ways. Consider a 20-something who experiments with homosexuality in college and then realizes that they don’t like it later in life.
This is the same as a gay person experimenting with heterosexuality and “coming out” later in life.
We seem to be socially okay with helping straight people convert to homosexuality, but not okay with the opposite.
Yeah. Be married to a woman for thirty years, have kids with her, then come out as gay: you were gay all along, baby!
Straight guy might have once-off sexual encounter of some kind with another guy: Okay dude, that means you're gay. No take-backs.
Gay guy might drunkenly have sex one time with a woman: No, that doesn't mean he's straight or bi! It was just the one time!
It really is a one-way street where you can only move towards and never away from full gayness; if you're bi, you're faking it or too chicken to come out as really gay.
It typically isn’t LGBT activist types who say that a man who has a one-off sexual encounter with another man is gay, though. That’s a ‘masculine’ or red tribe adjacent thing in the modern west, it’s more likely to be a homophobic person who thinks that a guy who fucked another guy once is 100% gay. Progs would say it means he’s bi or queer or whatever.
"Queer" seems to be the new catch-all phrase. And that's what I'm getting at: it's not considered "okay, you're straight, you just did that thing" but "hey dude, you might be queer, have you considered that?" from some of the progressive types.
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They do though. I've seen people declare others are self-hating gays for being slightly effeminate. They do the same thing with transgenderism nowaydays, and throw abuse at people who say it was just a phase for them.
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There are plenty of people who experiment in college and then end up (almost entirely?) straight. They get a few jokes about them (Lesbian until Graduation and Gay until Graduation), but they aren't particularly subjected to much opprobrium that I can tell.
Is someone who had same sex relationships then went back to different sex relationship straight? or are they bi? I think it might be logically true that if you have been attracted to same sex people and acted upon said attraction, that even if you go back only to opposite sex relationships for the rest of the life, you might not be considered straight.
In other words it might not be equivalent. Especially if, ironically enough we consider straight the default. You either are forever (super) straight or you are not. You don't find out you're straight, you just are.Even the gayest guy I know, who realised he was gay very early in life, originally had the same ideas about romantically rescuing princesses in so on.
Your assertion is they are equivalent, but is it actually the case?
Equivalent for the purposes of my point, which is that “conversion therapy” is morally near to pride, LGBT holidays, trans therapy, etc.
But that only matters if going straight to gay or gay to straight are actually equivalent. If it's impossible to be made gay but possible to be made straight (for example) then they are not the same (and indeed vice versa). Assuming for the moment both attending conversion therapy and Pride are both consensual for now.
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While I'm fond of sarcasm, in this case I presume it's the former.
Even after you've offered a clarifying example, I'd have to disagree.
It's exceedingly common for women (if not men) to "experiment" with each other in college or school. Usually it's just the odd drunken kiss, but it can go further. I know this is true for a fact both because I've heard of it in the West and a friend of my ex drunkenly admitted that we were Eskimo siblings (the friend was a girl). They're otherwise straight, and go on to exclusive have heterosexual relationships and might not even think of a woman romantically again.
This has little in the way of repercussions or even anything beyond mild disapproval from the more staid, nobody I'm aware of advocates for reconverting them after they ceased to experiment with the same team.
I would agree with the Pride activists that any guy who was convinced by a Pride parade or other advocacy to start sucking dick or taking it in the rear wasn't particularly straight to begin with, leaving aside what they identified as.
Female sexuality mores are different than male sexuality.
The real rate of male homosexual experimentation is very hard to figure out and seems to vary by environment.
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How much of that is cultural, though?
Girl-on-girl is a bit of raunchy fun. Guy-on-guy experimentation is likely to ick every woman who ever hears of your involvement, without even getting into man-on-man homophobia.
I don't know if it's actually true or not, but there is an obvious evopsych explanation for that with regard to disease predilection.
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Imagine if we took men's complaints about men creeping them out sexually as seriously as we take women's complaints about men creeping them out sexually. Say we at the very least didn't default to assuming they are just hateful toward men who find them attractive?
I feel a lot of the male-male homophobia is downstream of the female revulsion towards male affection in the modern era, plus a phemonenon that I find hard to nail down but is kinda like 'since only homosexuals show open affection towards eachother, doing so must mean hidden eroticism not just affection'.
Having traveled to cultures where homosexuality is just taboo to the point that the average person essentially forgets that it exists, it's amazing how much more affectionate and physical contact between men takes place.
The photo of Khabib Nurmagomedov bathing with a bunch of other men for instance
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESoX8IPWoAAvVgc.jpg
Culturally since homosexuality is seen as being so outside the overton window, there's no concern of appearing to be homosexual.
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I can't say I disagree. But they both are presumably relevant here, and most guys don't even try experimenting with other men, so it's not like I can point at them.
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