ps418

A while back, I remember hearing that the leader of Exodus International, which I think is a pray-to-be-not-gay type of program, and is affiliated with Dobson's Focus on the Family, was caught in a gay bar himself.

Patrick

Alonzo Fyfe

To the degree that a desire exists, but is overridden by another, it is repressed. However, to a degree that a desire is weakened, to that degree the agent simply does not care as much.

A person who simply does not enjoy any more something that once was a favorite past time (e.g., playing in the mud) is not suffering any repression.


It depends on what you mean by 'corrected' -- let us instead say, 'eliminated'. The desire would be gone. The agent would have no such interest any more. That seems to fall from the very definition of 'eliminated'.

One does have to be careful whether one is talking about changing the desire, or changing behavior. There are two ways to change behavior. (1) weaken or eliminate the desires fulfilled by the behavior, or (2) place an even greater aversion in the way of performing the behavior.

It is option (2) that counts as repression. The original desire continues to exist, at its original strength, but does not manifest itself into action or behavior.

Something of relevance here:

The body goes through two phases of gender determination during fetal development.

Phase 1, early in pregnancy, creates a male body. It is caused by a burst of testosterone caused by the presence of a Y chromosome.

Phase 2, a while later, creates a male brain. It is caused by a burst of testosterone from the testes created in Phase 1.

If Phase 1 goes along as planed, but something interferes with Phase 2, then you end up with a person having a male body but a female brain.

Note that these are not "either/or" options. There are degrees of masculanization in both instances, so a person can have a heavily masculine body and a lighly masculine brain.

Or vica versa; the amount of masculanization of the body does not strictly determine the amount of testosterone released in the Phase II or the brain's interaction with that testosterone, plus testosterone can come from other sources (e.g., from the mother).

There are instances where the pregnant mother may suffer some sort of stress or trauma or for some reason release testosterone into her own blood stream, which may weakly masculinize a female fetus -- creating -- under one set of possibilities, a tom-boy. Or, this testosterone can add more masculinization to an otherwise heavily masculine brain.

All things considered, whatever the degree of one's masculanization or femininization, unless one has desires that are a threat to others, I do not see much justification in worrying about it. A person who is concerned about these things has acquired inappropriate beliefs as to what counts as a good desire or a bad desire.

Desires are good or bad only in virtue of their capacity to fulfill or thwart other desires. They have no intrinsic prescriptivity, no natural "ought to be-ness" or "ought not to be-ness."

Of all the desires to change, I think the easiest desire to get rid of is the aversion to being what one is in fact. It is not a natural desire, but was learned -- taught by the culture one happened to have been raised in. Because it was learned, it can be unlearned.

seebs

The same way you can meet children that aren't sexually attractive. There's some stuff fairly far down in the brain which filters which sorts of people are "attractive". I don't think it's subject to change once it's wired.

This is like an ambidexterous person saying "how can anyone honestly say he has better reaction time with his right hand". Some people do.

seebs

Yup. The guy who founded Courage Trust, one of the UK organizations, finally admitted that he was still gay, too - although he's married to a woman, and he's staying with her, because he really loves her. Last I heard, anyway. Actually a pretty cool guy.

Amen-Moses

So what you are saying is that no choice is involved at all.

So let's say that you meet someone who happens to be identical to someone you currently or have previously been attracted to except that their sex is different, are you saying there will be no attraction at all? Isn't that sort of saying that sexual attraction is all physical that those who claim personality, sense of humour etc are equally important characteristics are just deluding themselves?

Why not just reduce it further and admit that the only thing that matters is pherenomes, iow it's just chemistry after all?

(after all people who completely lose their sense of smell typically report a sessation or mass reduction of sex drive)

Amen-Moses

seebs

I have had no experience of any such choice.

What do you mean "identical"? Same build, or just same personality?

Yes, no, and maybe.

All of those things are obviously very important; I've met maybe five people in my LIFE that I found attractive. Indeed, I *could* theoretically be bi, and just never have met any attractive men... but in practice, the things that turn me on physically are found on women, not on men.

Sexual attraction has a *number* of necessary conditions, for most people. So, personality is *necessary* - but not *sufficient*.

In that sense, yes, all of these things are all equally important. For raw physical attraction, physical qualities dominate... For instance, someone who looked just like the woman I eventually married might interest me... but if I tried to get to know her and she was stupid, I'd *lose interest*. I once knew a woman that I started to develop a crush on until I got to know her, then lost all interest.

So, I'm not sure how you would decide which things are "more important". Any of the things I react to, if sufficiently absent, can be a veto, no matter HOW cool someone is in other ways.

Because that's empirically not true. Or, at least, if it is, there's an ASTOUNDING correlation between pheremones and mental attributes.

ps418

I can't speak for Seebs, but I would say that, no, there is little or no choice as to who and what features one is sexually attracted to. There is obviously choice involved in how one acts on one's attraction, however. For instance, if I'm a starving man in a steakhouse, I do not choose to be attracted to the steak, but I can choose whether I'll eat it or not.

If there was a same-sex person that truly looked identical to an opposite-sex person that I was sexually attracted to, then obviously there would be sexual attraction. This would however likely disappear once the true sex was known. I've seen drag queens before that I though were sexy -- until I found out they were drag queens. Luckily, however, looks are a extremely good indicator of sex, even if not perfect.

No, absolutely not. I'd say instead that, again as a generalization, certain physical/anatomic features are necessary --but not necessarily sufficient-- for sexual attraction. No matter how great the personality and sense of humour, most heteroexuals are not going to be sexually attracted to members of the same sex. But this doesn't mean that those qualities are unimportant components of sexual attraction.

Patrick

MortalWombat

Maybe your answer to this should have been "I am seeing somebody, and boy does he ever confirm it!"

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, this is not the question. It may well be the case that many people DO NOT make a choice, that they simply let the chips fall where they may (nature makes the choice for them).

However, the relevant question is not whether people DO choose, but whether they CAN choose (or can influence the decision) -- if that can rearrange the chips if they do not like the way the chips have fallen.

In at least one context, there clearly is a choice. It may, indeed, be difficult to acquire a new set of interests, yet it is very easy to be rid of the desires one does have. Again, this would be done through chemical castration. One would no longer have interest in sex -- same sex, different sex, it does not matter.

Whether or not to undergo this treatment is a matter of choice. And those who do not undergo this treatment have, also, made a choice.

So, with respect to not being attracted to a particular type of person (same sex, different sex, whatever) there is clearly a choice. With respect to being attracted to a particular type of person, the issue is a lot more problematic.

ps418

Sure, you can choose to chemically castrate yourself and diminish your sexual attraction to other people altogether. My point however was that you cannot for the most part choose to be attracted to one sex or the other.

Patrick