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The understating of the fluidity of sexual orientation

Bad Lieutenant said:
I guess this is a social issue, what with the furror over the "homosexuality is a lifestyle choice" opinion and the fact hardly a day passes without some state declaring same sex relations criminal (Nigeria) or legalising same sex marriage (Australia).

Somebody posted in another thread that people don’t choose who they’re attracted to, but I would argue people make a choice circa:

Appropriate target for sexualisation or Inaproppriate target for sexualisation [...]
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Sexuality may be fluid throughout a person's lifetime without being a "choice" or involving any voluntary decision making whatsoever. The statement that people can choose "appropriate targets for sexualization" is a wildly different statement than the claim that people can choose their sexual orientation.
 
Dessi said:
Sexuality may be fluid throughout a person's lifetime without being a "choice" or involving any voluntary decision making whatsoever. The statement that people can choose "appropriate targets for sexualization" is a wildly different statement than the claim that people can choose their sexual orientation.
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Exactly, and this was born out in the Prop 8 trials. Experts testified that while there is sociological evidence for fluidity that is not the same as there being simply a choice. In any event, the controversy about choice arises in part due to ignorance of sexuality.

The following is not from the trial but I think it is the most succinct statement on the issues.

"Choice", homosexuality, and the law

To determine whether sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic, and whether being gay is indeed a matter of choice, it's important to understand what it actually means to be gay. In their efforts to show that homosexuality is not immutable, the defendants have confused three separate aspects of sexuality: sexual orientation, sexual identity, and sexual behavior. These characteristics are not interchangeable, and treating behavior and self-identification as equivalent to orientation is a mistake.

Sexual behavior, being voluntary, is obviously a matter of choice, but it is not reliably indicative of sexual orientation itself. Gay people having been in prior relationships with opposite-sex partners does not mean that they are actually any less gay, or that they weren't gay before. Conversely, straight men in prison who choose to have sex with other men are not gay in their orientation, and almost always resume a pattern of heterosexual behavior upon their release. Bisexual people are not constantly in transit between being gay or straight depending on the gender of their partner at any given time - they remain bisexual throughout, whether their behavior is homosexual or heterosexual. And people who are celibate do not cease to be gay, straight or bisexual - their lack of sexual behavior does not translate to a lack of sexual orientation. People's behavior can vary independently of their actual orientation.
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Bad Lieutenant said:
...

Appropriate target for sexualisation or Inaproppriate target for sexualisation

This results in people growing attracted to others in a sexual way; not simply riding their visceral desires. Not being attracted to the spouses of friends and family would be another example.

"some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime".

Working on the level of individuals attractiveness, a scenario where some features are attractive, but because the “appropriate target for sexualisation” button isn’t pressed a person is not fully attracted to that person.

...

I’m tired of sexual orientation change being rubbished and glossed over just because of the political environment (ie. if people can change then Christians/Muslims/homophobes might force their kids through ill conceived sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) or make homosexuality illegal). It’s just wrong and unscientific, given the available evidence.
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I'm sorry but I find the post confused. You are conflating sexual orientation, sexual identity, and sexual behavior. Sexual Fetishism does not determine orientation.
 
Arcade22 said:
Well again it seems to make more sense for me to consider human sexuality to be less about 'gayness' or 'straightness' and more about specific stimulus than turns people on. Sex and gender might be included but I'm uncertain to which degree it's of real importance to people.
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Let's say the proposition is that most men have a basic fixed attraction to a certain type, either through genetics, environment, socialization, or whatever. And let's say the particular hypothetical man we're talking about is what we usually call "heterosexual."

I don't see that his underlying desire needs to change much, if he's only tempted by a male partner who seems as feminine as possible. In fact, it just reinforces the claim that he's attracted to attributes that one usually finds in women.

Sure, society is going to label that attraction "homosexual," with whatever cultural baggage that entails. But the underlying assumption is still: heterosexual males are only attracted to feminine-seeming people, so to tempt them with male partners, those partners need to seem feminine.
 
Caper said:
I was wondering before, but never wanted to start a separate topic.

I ask this just out of sheer curiosity. Has there ever been a case where an open homosexual male, lost his attraction to males and became straight?

I'm not talking about gay men that went to some christian course and then lived in denial and married a woman. I'm talking flamboyantly gay male all of a sudden just changing his sexuality......say through maybe a stroke or brain tumor or something that could alter brain chemistry.

I read Dan Savage, so it seems to me I read everything. I'm just wondered if there ever was a documented case of what I wondered about above.
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I know of one case but it's very extreme and therefor useless for comparison - My first college boyfriend. His mother was extremely abusive and fanatically religious. Pretty much the mother from Carrie except with a son.

It took a year of trial and error before we were able to have sex without him having a panic attack. Right after that he turned into a total slut and started sleeping with anyone who expressed interest, so we broke up. After a few months of broadly playing the field, he settled down with a boyfriend for a year. He's currently married to a wonderful woman and self-identifies as straight.

The abuse left him thinking that all sex was equally bad, he had absolutely no boundaries. In order to form those boundaries, he tried everything and then narrowed it down to what he actually liked. Which turned out to be a monogamous relationship with a woman.
 
Pup said:
Let's say the proposition is that most men have a basic fixed attraction to a certain type, either through genetics, environment, socialization, or whatever. And let's say the particular hypothetical man we're talking about is what we usually call "heterosexual."

I don't see that his underlying desire needs to change much, if he's only tempted by a male partner who seems as feminine as possible. In fact, it just reinforces the claim that he's attracted to attributes that one usually finds in women.

Sure, society is going to label that attraction "homosexual," with whatever cultural baggage that entails. But the underlying assumption is still: heterosexual males are only attracted to feminine-seeming people, so to tempt them with male partners, those partners need to seem feminine.
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Again, we need to understand that behavior is not necessarily indicative of orientation. And I would be skeptical of such ad hoc reasoning for behavior. Yes, I understand that you are simply positing a hypothetical but it is overly simplistic. The underlying assumption is at best overly simplistic to the point of absurdity (males are people with beards) and at worst wrong.
 
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Since the sanctions against homosexual behavior in Iran are so Draconian, it's not difficult to believe they are....Discrete.
Maintaining that Iran is free from homosexuality is a political position; it has nothing to do with reality.
 
RandFan said:
Again, we need to understand that behavior is not necessarily indicative of orientation.
Bad Lieutenant said:
So you're saying Ted Haggard could well be straight? Good luck.
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Your question is so indicative of the kind of black and white thinking that causes people to miss the point. Haggard is an example that argues for me.

"...straight men in prison who choose to have sex with other men are not gay in their orientation, and almost always resume a pattern of heterosexual behavior upon their release."

To understand why behavior isn't necessarily indicative of orientation we need to understand the circumstances of the behavior. Haggard had much to lose by engaging in homosexual behavior. He was an evangelical preacher who made a fortune, in part, by preaching against homosexuality. He new what the risks were yet he chose to engage in homosexual behavior (in fact when he was caught he paid a steep price). Which raises the question, why would a straight person do that? You cannot divorce the circumstances from the determination.
 
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Bad Lieutenant said:
This "feminised" male may then identify with the mother more than the father, causing gender role model identity confusion. The Oedipus complex develops unusually, and that causes the homosexuality.
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Freudian psychology on a site for skepticism and critical thinking? Freud definitely wasn't a quack, but it seems that the whole of psychological has moved along and abandoned his theories as a historical curiosity.

People may "identity with" (whatever that speculative phrase means) their mother, father, both, or neither independently of their sexual orientation. Decades of studies of children raised in single-parent homes, as well as longitudinal studies of children raised by gay parents indicates that children of these families are no more or less homosexual than children raised by opposite sex couples. The evidence for "gender role confusion" stemming from attachment to one parent or the other is, quite frankly, absent.

It may be the case that people can identify primarily with the opposite sex, instead of the same sex, at later points in life, causing their libido to switch at that time.
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There's no necessary connection between sexual orientation and gender identity. Gay men nearly always have male gender identity, present in an unremarkable masculine manner, while transgender women who are attracted to men are pretty much indistinguishable from heterosexual women. In terms of social interaction, there is very little overlap between gay men and transgender women.

Drinking excessive quantities of alcohol had been shown to result in reduced testosterone levels for males (perhaps leading to their identifying with the opposite sex) and causing homosexuality that way.
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[citation needed]

Almost all gay men report being gay from the first time they had a crush on anyone, long long before they've ever had a drop of alcohol. Jokes about temporary lesbianism in drunk girls aside, I've never heard of men suddenly finding other men sexually attractive as a result of alcoholism. I would be very much interested in evidence to back up the claim. Is there an equivalent claim that, since all men experience a decrease in testosterone as they age, there is a corresponding increase in homosexuality or transsexuality among these groups?

The reverse effect would be if an average in-uterine-testosterone-dosed male had a feminine father and a masculine mother, leading to their identifying with the mother instead of the father.
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Note the stereotyping: that gay men must, by some requirement, be effeminate. Some are, most aren't. Go to any LGBT group in your area and you'll find a variety of people, very few are living stereotypes.
 
Bad Lieutenant said:
So you're saying Ted Haggard could well be straight? Good luck.
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tedhaggard.jpg


Those lips say it all, he's bisexual.
 
Randfan,

Are you ex-mormon? Just an off topic question that came to mind by reading above your avatar.
 
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