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It's also entirely possible that cultural factors can influence the number of people who develop a homosexual sexual orientation. Humans are highly malleable an

It's also entirely possible that cultural factors can influence the number of people who develop a homosexual sexual orientation. Humans are highly malleable and affected by culture.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Not malleable enough for conversion therapy to work.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  I believe it's not proven that it can work, not that it's proven not to work at all. I suspect there is a strong motivation to discourage research into its effectiveness and discredit that research which has been done, and for understandable reasons, like not wanting people who are homosexuals to see their orientation as a psychopathology. In any case, I suspect that sexual orientation develops and crystalizes long before conversion therapy is generally resorted to. I also wouldn't be surprised if conversion therapy has the opposite effect of that intended, of re-inforcing homosexual orientations, by presenting it as central to the subject's identity.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  To my mind, that's a little like saying "Wow, it sure is shocking how forcible rape fails to get people all hot and bothered and learn to love sex." Conversion therapy is the opposite of someone deciding "Hmmmm. You know, I never thought about it before but now that I am in some new circumstance with people with different traits, I'm finding myself weirdly attracted to categories of people that never did a thing for me before and maybe, just maybe, gender per se was not the trait that really mattered to my ability to get turned on." Conversion therapy is forced on people in an ugly fashion by other people who hate them for what they are and desperately want to "fix" them. Regardless of the reason for therapy, this approach is almost always counterproductive.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Not all conversion therapy is forced on people. I suspect the vast majority is voluntary. I also would not be surprised if it increases, rather than diminishes, homosexuality. Interventions can have counter-intuitive effects.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I suspect the vast majority is voluntary. I find that a questionable assertion. A lot of therapy is pursued because someone is being given the message by a great many people around them "You are broken and you need to go get yourself fixed" in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. It's really rather hard to achieve a mental state of "I am going to therapy because I choose it for my benefit because I want this." A lot of people are there because the entire world likes to blame individuals as being somehow at fault for their lives not working rather than having compassion for the myriad ways in which the world likes to crap on all kinds of people for the crime of existing. I've done it. I went to therapy for me. But even then it was an act of defiance and some of the people closest to me were assholes acting like "It's about damn time you went and got fixed, bitch!" rather than going "Glad you are at a place where you feel comfortable confronting your personal demons from other people doing really amazingly shitty things to you, like raping you when you were just twelve years old."
      - CryptoPunk 6y ago
        I meant voluntary in the sense that the patient wants to be there and wants to be converted. As opposed to the patient being physically forced to be there and having no desire to be converted. I think the contextual factors, like what is causing the patient to want to be converted, are not relevant to how effective the therapy would be. This is not to say that those factors are not generally important, for other reasons. I think it's important not to just assume everything that is being done for the wrong reasons, is ineffective. It can be mentally comforting to believe that consequences of malevolent actions are always negative, and that argument can also be used to create public support against those malevolent forces, but I think the fallacies that get built up over time from this kind of wishful thinking undermine the objective and scientific foundations of perception that society needs to collectively reason about and tackle its major challenges, which tend to be extremely complex and necessitate more than just compassion/good-intentions to solve.

It's also entirely possible that cultural factors can influence the number of people who develop a homosexual sexual orientation. Humans are highly malleable and affected by culture.

pseudalopex 6y ago

Not malleable enough for conversion therapy to work.

CryptoPunk 6y ago
I believe it's not proven that it can work, not that it's proven not to work at all. I suspect there is a strong motivation to discourage research into its effectiveness and discredit that research which has been done, and for understandable reasons, like not wanting people who are homosexuals to see their orientation as a psychopathology. In any case, I suspect that sexual orientation develops and crystalizes long before conversion therapy is generally resorted to. I also wouldn't be surprised if conversion therapy has the opposite effect of that intended, of re-inforcing homosexual orientations, by presenting it as central to the subject's identity.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
To my mind, that's a little like saying "Wow, it sure is shocking how forcible rape fails to get people all hot and bothered and learn to love sex." Conversion therapy is the opposite of someone deciding "Hmmmm. You know, I never thought about it before but now that I am in some new circumstance with people with different traits, I'm finding myself weirdly attracted to categories of people that never did a thing for me before and maybe, just maybe, gender per se was not the trait that really mattered to my ability to get turned on." Conversion therapy is forced on people in an ugly fashion by other people who hate them for what they are and desperately want to "fix" them. Regardless of the reason for therapy, this approach is almost always counterproductive.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Not all conversion therapy is forced on people. I suspect the vast majority is voluntary. I also would not be surprised if it increases, rather than diminishes, homosexuality. Interventions can have counter-intuitive effects.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I suspect the vast majority is voluntary. I find that a questionable assertion. A lot of therapy is pursued because someone is being given the message by a great many people around them "You are broken and you need to go get yourself fixed" in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. It's really rather hard to achieve a mental state of "I am going to therapy because I choose it for my benefit because I want this." A lot of people are there because the entire world likes to blame individuals as being somehow at fault for their lives not working rather than having compassion for the myriad ways in which the world likes to crap on all kinds of people for the crime of existing. I've done it. I went to therapy for me. But even then it was an act of defiance and some of the people closest to me were assholes acting like "It's about damn time you went and got fixed, bitch!" rather than going "Glad you are at a place where you feel comfortable confronting your personal demons from other people doing really amazingly shitty things to you, like raping you when you were just twelve years old."
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      I meant voluntary in the sense that the patient wants to be there and wants to be converted. As opposed to the patient being physically forced to be there and having no desire to be converted. I think the contextual factors, like what is causing the patient to want to be converted, are not relevant to how effective the therapy would be. This is not to say that those factors are not generally important, for other reasons. I think it's important not to just assume everything that is being done for the wrong reasons, is ineffective. It can be mentally comforting to believe that consequences of malevolent actions are always negative, and that argument can also be used to create public support against those malevolent forces, but I think the fallacies that get built up over time from this kind of wishful thinking undermine the objective and scientific foundations of perception that society needs to collectively reason about and tackle its major challenges, which tend to be extremely complex and necessitate more than just compassion/good-intentions to solve.