Can sexuality be changed?

[Houseman]

Can homosexuals become heterosexuals, and vice versa?

Some anecdotes:
In high school I knew of three people:

1. A guy who convinced he was a woman in a man's body.
2. A straight girl
3. A bi girl
4. Another bi girl

As these people grew up, they all changed. Here's how they turned out:

1. Comfortably masculine, in a relationship with a woman.
2. Is now a lesbian.
3. Is now happily married to a man, with a child.
4. Attended a Christian college, is presumably happily straight.

Sure, teenagers are just figuring out the world, experimenting, and figuring out who they are. Or are they?
Are these examples of people who genuinely changed their sexuality?
Were these people merely confused at first, but later sank into their identities?
Were these people just lying for the attention that "being different" brings them?

If someone actually does change, and says "Nah, I was just fooling myself. I'm not really gay/straight/bi/trans", who says that someone else isn't just fooling themselves?

I've heard the argument before that someone was "never really gay" if a gay person switches to being straight. That just seems like a flimsy justification to preserve one's viewpoint that sexuality is inherent, and can never change. If later, that person switches back to being gay, they'd just as quickly say "Oh yeah, he was always gay. He just mistakenly thought he wasn't for a while."

It seems that, unless you believe that sexuality is fluid or imaginary, you have some hard questions to deal with regarding what it means when people "change teams".

Personally, I believe that you can trick yourself into liking or being anything you want.

 

[Ogoid]

From my own limited experience (which tends to align with your examples), women tend to be more flexible in this regard. I've known at least one bisexual woman who later decided she was a lesbian; pretty much all gay guys I've known, though, say they've always been gay, and that any heterosexual relationships they had before were either them lying to themselves, or trying to force themselves to be straight.

I can only really speak for myself, but me, I don't see any wiggle room in it at all... I'm hopelessly straight. Anything between the extremes of, I don't know, Chris Hemsworth and Marty Feldman, just registers in my brain as "a guy", and even in those cases, what beauty (or lack thereof) I can appreciate in them has no sexual component whatsoever to it.

I guess it varies from person to person.

 

[Signa]

I wouldn't doubt there are ways to get some positive reinforcement going with the right stimuli (ie, being straight and getting a handy every time you look at gay porn), but I doubt you would start seeking out gay porn or gay sex after the "therapy"

And what ogoid said appears to be very true: sexuality in females is completely different and much more malleable.

 

[bluegate]

Who knows, it might be possible I guess? I really don't care what sex people get aroused by or whether they change their preference at some point in their lives.

But I do feel sorry for the people who are gay and have been guilt tripped by their religion and community to think that they are somehow bad people for being gay and no matter how much they try, they can't ""cure"" themselves and feel even worse because of it.

 

[JoJo]

I think sexuality is fluid, to an extent. I've always swung both ways, as long as I can remember, but if you had asked me 7 or 8 years ago then I would have described myself as mostly straight. Now the opposite is true - if forced to pick a side, I would say leaning gay. That might have just been the time it took the default assumption of being hetero that I was raised with to break down, though.

That said, out of your examples, I would only consider 2) to be a definite example of someone's sexual orientation changing. 1) is gender identity, which is a slightly different kettle of fish (they might have still been attracted to girls, even when they considered themselves to be a girl). 3) and 4) may well both still be bisexual by orientation, too - they might have just decided to limit themselves to a particular partner, or to the opposite sex in general, for social or religious reasons.

 

[Samtemdo8]

I think that gender is not fluid and it is all the psyhchological delusions of people that are insecure and/or discontent about their own natural being. And in some cases, abused and results to fetishism. Basically I have an issue with the T in LGBT.

And I open to counter arguements.

 

[bluegate]

I think that gender is not fluid and it is all the psyhchological delusions of people that are insecure and/or discontent about their own natural being. And in some cases, abused and results to fetishism. Basically I have an issue with the T in LGBT.

And I open to counter arguements.

This topic wasn't about gender though.

Can homosexuals become heterosexuals, and vice versa?

 

[Samtemdo8]

I think that gender is not fluid and it is all the psyhchological delusions of people that are insecure and/or discontent about their own natural being. And in some cases, abused and results to fetishism. Basically I have an issue with the T in LGBT.

And I open to counter arguements.

This topic wasn't about gender though.

Can homosexuals become heterosexuals, and vice versa?

I will say why is Bisexuality so underrepresented and not discuessed about often?

 

[Houseman]

A theory that posits that everyone is just bi would cover all cases, it seems like. Someone once claimed to be gay, and now claims to be straight? They're just bi. The other way around? They're just bi. They've claimed to be bi and now claim something else? They're still bi.

But someone on the other board say that there's such a thing as "bi-erasure" (and that by recounting someone who said that was bi, and is now straight, I'm "participating in it"), so maybe that's why it doesn't get discussed so often, because of some sort of social rejection of the idea.

Let's go further and say that everyone is a pansexual. Children, animals, inanimate objects, whatever. No more explanations needed ever. But then I think people get disgusted and think that someone is sick in the head if they're attracted to children.

If being attracted to children is "sick in the head", why isn't homosexuality considered "sick in the head" the same way? What is the "normal" scope of human sexuality, and why does it only seem to be limited to consenting human adults?

 

[Signa]

An theory that posits that everyone is just bi would cover all cases, it seems like. Someone once claimed to be gay, and now claims to be straight? They're just bi. The other way around? They're just bi. They've claimed to be bi and now claim something else? They're still bi.

But someone on the other board say that there's such a thing as "bi-erasure" (and that by recounting someone who said that was bi, and is now straight, I'm "participating in it"), so maybe that's why it doesn't get discussed so often, because of some sort of social rejection of the idea.

Let's go further and say that everyone is a pansexual. Children, animals, inanimate objects, whatever. No more explanations needed ever. But then I think people get disgusted and think that someone is sick in the head if they're attracted to children.

If being attracted to children is "sick in the head", why isn't homosexuality considered "sick in the head" the same way? What is the "normal" scope of human sexuality, and why does it only seem to be limited to consenting human adults?

When it comes to being attracted to children, you are attracted to a situation that does not involve consenting adults. At least with objects and animals there is no way for them to consent, and both are generally considered property that you could do whatever you want with them.

I do feel bad for pedos, because all the same arguments that allow me to give the gays a pass still apply to pedos, but the whole fucking-kids thing is putting it on a different level that just simply can't be allowed, even if the pedo was "born that way" like gays. It's a no-win situation.

 

[JoJo]

If being attracted to children is "sick in the head", why isn't homosexuality considered "sick in the head" the same way? What is the "normal" scope of human sexuality, and why does it only seem to be limited to consenting human adults?

"Normal" is determined by the values of the culture you live in. In twenty-first century Western culture, we value both personal autonomy and the protection of the vulnerable. When in conflict, the latter generally takes precedent over the former. Therefore, sex with a consenting adult of either gender is viewed as normal, whereas sex with those considered unable to consent, such as children or animals, is seen as immoral. Inanimate objects are not sentient, and so you might be considered a bit odd, but no one would really care if you wanted to make sweet love to your microwave.

 

[Monoochrom]

If being attracted to children is "sick in the head", why isn't homosexuality considered "sick in the head" the same way? What is the "normal" scope of human sexuality, and why does it only seem to be limited to consenting human adults?

"Normal" is determined by the values of the culture you live in. In twenty-first century Western culture, we value both personal autonomy and the protection of the vulnerable. When in conflict, the latter generally takes precedent over the former. Therefore, sex with a consenting adult of either gender is viewed as normal, whereas sex with those considered unable to consent, such as children or animals, is seen as immoral. Inanimate objects are not sentient, and so you might be considered a bit odd, but no one would really care if you wanted to make sweet love to your microwave.

I don't disagree with you, but that's not how norms and therefore normality works. That's really more of a statistical likelyhood thing. So if being attracted to children were widespread, it'd be perfectly normal, that however does not mean it would be moral.

Being Gay is far from normal, hardly anyone is, that however doesn't make being gay immoral.

And no, I don't really think you can change your sexuality, though I'm sure a person could condition themselves to do homo/hetero acts, that wouldn't change the baseline which is attraction. So a Gay guy who forces himself to live in a Hetero relationship is still totally gay.

 

[Houseman]

And no, I don't really think you can change your sexuality, though I'm sure a person could condition themselves to do homo/hetero acts, that wouldn't change the baseline which is attraction. So a Gay guy who forces himself to live in a Hetero relationship is still totally gay.

So someone who said "I used to be gay/straight but I'm straight/gay now" would be either mistaken or fooling himself, either now, or in the past?

 

[Monoochrom]

And no, I don't really think you can change your sexuality, though I'm sure a person could condition themselves to do homo/hetero acts, that wouldn't change the baseline which is attraction. So a Gay guy who forces himself to live in a Hetero relationship is still totally gay.

So someone who said "I used to be gay/straight but I'm straight/gay now" would be either mistaken or fooling himself, either now, or in the past?

Personally I'd ask what exactly they mean.

Are they simply celibate? Are they in a relationship? If yes, I'd yhen ask their partner.

But though I wouldn't put it the way you did, yes, I think they'd be "fooling" themself. Whoch isn't to say that they couldn't have simply figured something out about themselves sexually. It's would be entirely possible

 

[Kaleion]

I'm not sure, I'm mostly antisocial and I have such a low sex drive that a lot of people tend to assume I'm asexual, I personally do not care enough about the debate of what each sexuality means to bother defining what I am as I think that's unimportant, to be honest people come off as fairly stupid to me, with their debates of what it means to be a man, woman, gay, bi, pansexual, etc.. I to be honest just don't care, I don't see what we win from defining this and like the OP says people change their mind all the time, and let's be honest we're all on a permanent journey of self-discovery and there are things we won't find out about ourselves until we're dying and that's fine, until then I won't trouble myself with such things, I won't deny that I find the topic to be interesting but that is because I know it's one of many things I simply can't possibly understand because I can't relate to it.

As for myself I'm going to be honest here, I prefer women but I've been with men before and it's good too, that being said I'm not particularly into sex and I don't get why people crave it so much, might be worth mentioning that I think of my body as something I inhabit rather than as an extension of the self, not unlike a house, except I can't move out... yet.