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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24899 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Would many activists prefer that their campaigns result in everyone turning bisexual or gay? Maybe, probably. Doesn't mean that's what they expect.

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:

What percentage of people going to gay conversion clinics do you think believe themselves be straight be afflicted with something they find undesirable?

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.

To make no sense! I presume you meant "to be straight to be afflicted".

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.

I think youā€™re missing my point, or maybe your being cheeky and I donā€™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 youā€™re gay, as if that is an evolution. Iā€™m saying it goes both ways. Consider a 20-something who experiments with homosexuality in college and then realizes that they donā€™t like it later in life.

This is the same as a gay person experimenting with heterosexuality and ā€œcoming outā€ 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 isnā€™t LGBT activist types who say that a man who has a one-off sexual encounter with another man is gay, though. Thatā€™s a ā€˜masculineā€™ or red tribe adjacent thing in the modern west, itā€™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 heā€™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.

It typically isnā€™t LGBT activist types who say that a man who has a one-off sexual encounter with another man is gay, though.

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.

It seems like the assumption is that you can only ever find out that youā€™re gay, as if that is an evolution. Iā€™m saying it goes both ways.

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 ā€œconversion therapyā€ 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.

I think youā€™re missing my point, or maybe your being cheeky and I donā€™t realize it.

While I'm fond of sarcasm, in this case I presume it's the former.

Consider a 20-something who experiments with homosexuality in college and then realizes that they donā€™t like it later in life.

This is the same as a gay person experimenting with heterosexuality and ā€œcoming outā€ later in life.

We seem to be socially okay with helping straight people convert to homosexuality, but not okay with the opposite.

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.

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.

without even getting into man-on-man homophobia

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.

There was a book some time back about homosociality.

I think part of the greater visibility, openness, and acceptance of gayness in public (even with fears of gay-bashing and so on) has, ironically, created that closing-off of open affection, since the new understanding now presumes 'ah, if you're fond of your pal and like to touch him then that means sexual attraction so you're gay' and that means straight guys don't behave like that because hey, I'm not gay and I don't want to give that impression.

Expressions of such affection have waxed and waned over time in different cultures, and I think it's always been more acceptable for women to express this to their female friends since women are considered more emotional and affectionate and so on, but it did exist. From 18th century cult of sensibility, so that a man bursting into tears was acceptable (even if sometimes mocked), to romantic friendship. Certainly, some of it was entangled with homosexuality (see Walt Whitman the poet) and it could be used as a cover for LGBT expressions of sexual love in public ('they're such good friends', 'Julie has a crush on Annie, it's only natural at that age', 'confirmed bachelor', 'boys will hero-worship older boys and men, that's a phase' and so on).

In fact, I think the post-Freudian view that "aha, all affectionate display indicates sexual desire" has done a lot of wrecking such displays because now unless it's between parents and very young children, it's not seen as friendship, affection or the rest, but potentially if not actually looking for a sexual partner/lover. The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme: where past relationships that very probably were same-sex romantic ones were seen by society as platonic, because thinking of them any other way was unacceptable, now we're gone to judging all such relationships as 'must have been/must be same-sex' because why else would you write about or talk to or be physically close to someone in such a way?

C.S. Lewis, "The Four Loves", 'Friendship':

The homosexual theory therefore seems to me not even plausible. This is not to say that Friendship and abnormal Eros have never been combined. Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the mature Brave and his young armour-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the war-path had no doubt something to do with it. In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by an a priori theory. Kisses, tears and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up ... all pansies? If you can believe that you can believe anything. On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation. We, not they, are out of step.

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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