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The big question that this viewpoint misses is what to do with fears that certain things "turn people gay" and the flip side of that fear: that the straight com

The big question that this viewpoint misses is what to do with fears that certain things "turn people gay" and the flip side of that fear: that the straight community might use successful conversion therapy to eliminate the gay community. All of a sudden both of those camps have ammunition for their points. Saying that it's "genetically determined" (or at least innately determined) very nicely sidestepped that. To the extent that that is not true, then you have to grapple with those other questions.

suizi 6y ago
I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight. The exception would be where they're bi, but they would already have had some interest in the same sex, and it wouldn't have come from social conditioning.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  > I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight. Indeed if that's true, i.e. that there is an innate immutability between the two, then the whole question is conveniently moot and we can instead turn our attention to figuring how to combat these fears at a rhetorical and cultural level (still a Herculean task but at least a step forward). The fear, on both sides of that coin, comes from if that's not true.
- tomp 6y ago
  Why do you think that? I’d say it’s very much cultural... these days, bisexuality is much more acceptable for women than for men, and more women identify as bisexual... in Ancient Greece, men having sex with men were much more common than these days (AFAIK).
  - danbolt 6y ago
    I feel like the culture seems to be the big variable there than the preferences, to be honest. Or, people are going to express what they like based on their environment and how they perceive it will respond.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsmith45 6y ago
    But even in ancient Greek culture there was still something akin to homophobia. While err... screwing a guy as a guy was just fine, being screwed by a guy is not. I.E. being the receptive partner as a male was heavily socially stigmatized. It seems this was viewed as being basically being effeminate, and unsurprisingly that was viewed negatively. It seems to be extremely common over the ages that women acting like men is more accepted than men acting like women. Even during times when women acting like men in some respect was highly taboo, the reverse almost always seems to be viewed as worse. (I.E. back in the days when a woman wearing pants was scandalous, it generally seems like a guy wearing a woman's dress was even more scandalous). This dislike of men acting like women definitely seems to be one factor in modern homophobia (although it is not the only factor). It also seems to factor a lot into transphobia (which seems to be much more focused on trans women than on trans men). Of course I suspect that transphobia in men is frequently intertwined with homophobia. The idea being the revulsion found in the idea of finding out that the woman you are dating "is really a man" (in the bigot's mind), making them effectively gay.
kergonath 6y ago
> Saying that it's "genetically determined" (or at least innately determined) very nicely sidestepped that But nature does not care whether it’s convenient or not. If this gets disproven, then what?
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  Indeed nature does not care. But the point of the parent comment, summarized in a single sentence as far as I understand it is "the issue of whether homosexuality is innately determined is irrelevant, policies and attitudes should be entirely unaffected by whether it is innately determined." Taken at face value that is a far stronger statement than "nature does not care about convenience." This is saying "in this instance, we should not care about the truth of nature. There is no policy value to be attained by finding out the truth of the matter." We certainly should not let convenience dictate our policies. That a statement happens to be convenient should not be why we accept its truth. But that's a different statement than the parent comment. All I'm trying to explain is why certain segments of the population would believe it valuable to figure out whether innateness is true or not. EDIT: > If this gets disproven, then what? There are significant policy repercussions if this were to be conclusively disproven (the unlikely extreme would be if it turned out that sexual orientation was entirely mutable given the right external situation). In education alone, arguments of whether certain curricula or environments "turn people gay" or "turn people straight" would take on a far more urgent tone for large swaths of the population. Could a local government mandate exposure to effective gay conversion therapy in a school environment (just exposure, not forcing a course of therapy)? Culturally whether conservative parents would allow their children to play with gay children or children from gay families would likewise take on an additional urgency. Many issues of policy have basically been decided on the assumption of "whether you like homosexuality or not, it's immutable so you may as well as treat it as if it were to stay," which is already controversial enough. If that's not true, then policy must grapple with the question of whether sexual orientation is an intrinsically valuable thing (and given that mainstream society is predominantly heterosexual, that would inevitably morph into whether homosexuality is an intrinsically valuable thing, since I suspect most people who identify as heterosexual value their own heterosexuality), which is an even more divisive topic in the U.S.
epidemian 6y ago
> The big question that this viewpoint misses is what to do with fears that certain things "turn people gay" I think "the big question" some people still have is whether being gay is perfectly fine or not. If it is, then that question of things "turning people gay" is not so important. It's like asking if watching the Simpsons will make people like the Simpsons. Well yeah, it might, but there's nothing wrong with liking the Simpsons, so what's the problem? Put into other words: thinking that having more gay people is a problem depends on thinking that being gay is problem in the first place, and that is the primary issue. > and the flip side of that fear: that the straight community might use successful conversion therapy to eliminate the gay community. Nobody will bat an eye if someone discovers they are straight after thinking they were gay. I don't know, maybe they saw one of the million heteronormative movies that are constantly produced and it somehow clicked on them; whatever, it's fine. What is objectionable though, is to try to force someone into a given sexuality, instead of letting them be and discover their sexuality in their own terms.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  > I think "the big question" some people still have is whether being gay is perfectly fine or not. I think this is very true and is a more fundamental question than what I've posed here. Another way of stating my point is that the question of "innateness" allowed large swaths of the community to sidestep this question. And this question is a very deep rabbit hole for the current cultural and political situation in the U.S. Ask anyone who is comfortable in their sexuality whether they would be willing to take, say a course of therapy, that would change their sexuality. I think the majority would be unwilling, far more than the number of people who would be willing to sign up to a lecture that would promise to make them love the Simpsons. And I think that would be true for people who cherish, abhor, or are even indifferent to homosexuality (the exact proportions among those populations are probably different, but I suspect all of them would rise into the majority). There is of course, often due to mainstream pressure, many homosexual people who are intensely uncomfortable with their sexual orientation and wish to change it, but even taking them into account I still don't think they would make up the majority. > Nobody will bat an eye if someone discovers they are straight after thinking they were gay.... What is objectionable though, is to try to force someone into a given sexuality, instead of letting them be and discover their sexuality in their own terms. The problem is what counts as discovering their sexuality on their own terms. To borrow an example from one of my sibling comments, should schools be allowed to offer a gay conversion therapy course? Should schools be allowed to offer a straight conversion therapy course? I suspect your answer would probably be "yes" if they're electives or both if they're mandatory, but this would already demonstrate how thorny of an issue this is. Nobody would care if a school only offered a "Simpsons' appreciation course" and not a "Simpsons' criticism course" or vice versa. (Of course the riposte is that sexual orientation, as a central component of one's identity, is a far more important topic, but there is yet another endless set of back-and-forths to be had on that topic). But the important thing is that these questions fade into irrelevancy if sexual orientation is immutable, but come immediately to the forefront if sexual orientation is mutable. To recap my point is not to say that mutability of sexual orientation is the only big or even among the biggest questions, but to emphasize that it is a big question with many implications. To say that the mutability of sexual orientation is irrelevant is to miss a lot of the policy implications that hinge on its truth or falsity. EDIT: A more apt comparison is probably religion, to the extent that you accept beliefs to be mutable. Should parents be allowed to send their children to religious camps? If yes, should parents be allowed to send their children to conversion therapy? If conversion therapy is too coercive, should they be allowed to send them to conversion camps? At what point does it become coercion? All of these questions are very nicely sidestepped by immutability. No parents shouldn't send their kids to conversion therapy or conversion camps because they're ineffective and because they are ineffective at best they're a nuisance, at worst they inflict psychological trauma. But if they are effective then all of a sudden the parameters of the conversation shift drastically.

suizi 6y ago

I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight. The exception would be where they're bi, but they would already have had some interest in the same sex, and it wouldn't have come from social conditioning.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
> I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight. Indeed if that's true, i.e. that there is an innate immutability between the two, then the whole question is conveniently moot and we can instead turn our attention to figuring how to combat these fears at a rhetorical and cultural level (still a Herculean task but at least a step forward). The fear, on both sides of that coin, comes from if that's not true.
tomp 6y ago
Why do you think that? I’d say it’s very much cultural... these days, bisexuality is much more acceptable for women than for men, and more women identify as bisexual... in Ancient Greece, men having sex with men were much more common than these days (AFAIK).
- danbolt 6y ago
  I feel like the culture seems to be the big variable there than the preferences, to be honest. Or, people are going to express what they like based on their environment and how they perceive it will respond.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jsmith45 6y ago
  But even in ancient Greek culture there was still something akin to homophobia. While err... screwing a guy as a guy was just fine, being screwed by a guy is not. I.E. being the receptive partner as a male was heavily socially stigmatized. It seems this was viewed as being basically being effeminate, and unsurprisingly that was viewed negatively. It seems to be extremely common over the ages that women acting like men is more accepted than men acting like women. Even during times when women acting like men in some respect was highly taboo, the reverse almost always seems to be viewed as worse. (I.E. back in the days when a woman wearing pants was scandalous, it generally seems like a guy wearing a woman's dress was even more scandalous). This dislike of men acting like women definitely seems to be one factor in modern homophobia (although it is not the only factor). It also seems to factor a lot into transphobia (which seems to be much more focused on trans women than on trans men). Of course I suspect that transphobia in men is frequently intertwined with homophobia. The idea being the revulsion found in the idea of finding out that the woman you are dating "is really a man" (in the bigot's mind), making them effectively gay.

kergonath 6y ago

> Saying that it's "genetically determined" (or at least innately determined) very nicely sidestepped that But nature does not care whether it’s convenient or not. If this gets disproven, then what?

dwohnitmok 6y ago
Indeed nature does not care. But the point of the parent comment, summarized in a single sentence as far as I understand it is "the issue of whether homosexuality is innately determined is irrelevant, policies and attitudes should be entirely unaffected by whether it is innately determined." Taken at face value that is a far stronger statement than "nature does not care about convenience." This is saying "in this instance, we should not care about the truth of nature. There is no policy value to be attained by finding out the truth of the matter." We certainly should not let convenience dictate our policies. That a statement happens to be convenient should not be why we accept its truth. But that's a different statement than the parent comment. All I'm trying to explain is why certain segments of the population would believe it valuable to figure out whether innateness is true or not. EDIT: > If this gets disproven, then what? There are significant policy repercussions if this were to be conclusively disproven (the unlikely extreme would be if it turned out that sexual orientation was entirely mutable given the right external situation). In education alone, arguments of whether certain curricula or environments "turn people gay" or "turn people straight" would take on a far more urgent tone for large swaths of the population. Could a local government mandate exposure to effective gay conversion therapy in a school environment (just exposure, not forcing a course of therapy)? Culturally whether conservative parents would allow their children to play with gay children or children from gay families would likewise take on an additional urgency. Many issues of policy have basically been decided on the assumption of "whether you like homosexuality or not, it's immutable so you may as well as treat it as if it were to stay," which is already controversial enough. If that's not true, then policy must grapple with the question of whether sexual orientation is an intrinsically valuable thing (and given that mainstream society is predominantly heterosexual, that would inevitably morph into whether homosexuality is an intrinsically valuable thing, since I suspect most people who identify as heterosexual value their own heterosexuality), which is an even more divisive topic in the U.S.

epidemian 6y ago

> The big question that this viewpoint misses is what to do with fears that certain things "turn people gay" I think "the big question" some people still have is whether being gay is perfectly fine or not. If it is, then that question of things "turning people gay" is not so important. It's like asking if watching the Simpsons will make people like the Simpsons. Well yeah, it might, but there's nothing wrong with liking the Simpsons, so what's the problem? Put into other words: thinking that having more gay people is a problem depends on thinking that being gay is problem in the first place, and that is the primary issue. > and the flip side of that fear: that the straight community might use successful conversion therapy to eliminate the gay community. Nobody will bat an eye if someone discovers they are straight after thinking they were gay. I don't know, maybe they saw one of the million heteronormative movies that are constantly produced and it somehow clicked on them; whatever, it's fine. What is objectionable though, is to try to force someone into a given sexuality, instead of letting them be and discover their sexuality in their own terms.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
> I think "the big question" some people still have is whether being gay is perfectly fine or not. I think this is very true and is a more fundamental question than what I've posed here. Another way of stating my point is that the question of "innateness" allowed large swaths of the community to sidestep this question. And this question is a very deep rabbit hole for the current cultural and political situation in the U.S. Ask anyone who is comfortable in their sexuality whether they would be willing to take, say a course of therapy, that would change their sexuality. I think the majority would be unwilling, far more than the number of people who would be willing to sign up to a lecture that would promise to make them love the Simpsons. And I think that would be true for people who cherish, abhor, or are even indifferent to homosexuality (the exact proportions among those populations are probably different, but I suspect all of them would rise into the majority). There is of course, often due to mainstream pressure, many homosexual people who are intensely uncomfortable with their sexual orientation and wish to change it, but even taking them into account I still don't think they would make up the majority. > Nobody will bat an eye if someone discovers they are straight after thinking they were gay.... What is objectionable though, is to try to force someone into a given sexuality, instead of letting them be and discover their sexuality in their own terms. The problem is what counts as discovering their sexuality on their own terms. To borrow an example from one of my sibling comments, should schools be allowed to offer a gay conversion therapy course? Should schools be allowed to offer a straight conversion therapy course? I suspect your answer would probably be "yes" if they're electives or both if they're mandatory, but this would already demonstrate how thorny of an issue this is. Nobody would care if a school only offered a "Simpsons' appreciation course" and not a "Simpsons' criticism course" or vice versa. (Of course the riposte is that sexual orientation, as a central component of one's identity, is a far more important topic, but there is yet another endless set of back-and-forths to be had on that topic). But the important thing is that these questions fade into irrelevancy if sexual orientation is immutable, but come immediately to the forefront if sexual orientation is mutable. To recap my point is not to say that mutability of sexual orientation is the only big or even among the biggest questions, but to emphasize that it is a big question with many implications. To say that the mutability of sexual orientation is irrelevant is to miss a lot of the policy implications that hinge on its truth or falsity. EDIT: A more apt comparison is probably religion, to the extent that you accept beliefs to be mutable. Should parents be allowed to send their children to religious camps? If yes, should parents be allowed to send their children to conversion therapy? If conversion therapy is too coercive, should they be allowed to send them to conversion camps? At what point does it become coercion? All of these questions are very nicely sidestepped by immutability. No parents shouldn't send their kids to conversion therapy or conversion camps because they're ineffective and because they are ineffective at best they're a nuisance, at worst they inflict psychological trauma. But if they are effective then all of a sudden the parameters of the conversation shift drastically.