Background Pony #37A2
No need for hypotheticals: there is already a highly effective tool for treating a patient’s unwanted (note the important qualifier) urges for relations with the same sex. The proper term for it is “reparative therapy.” This type of therapy has been suppressed for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to:
1. The most popular examples of reparative therapy are ineffective, if not outright abusive.
I will not defend what goes on in the basement of Pastor Jim’s Baptist Church where effeminate boys are hit over the head with a Bible or whatever.
Like other forms of therapy, it is something that should be done by a trained professional and sought by someone who actually wants to change. The latter is especially part of the reason it’s often portrayed as - and indeed unfortunately sometimes is - abusive. There is no reason to expect positive results for therapy with an unwilling participant.
Without even appealing to “muh lib’ral mejya,” I will say that headlines about fundamentalist “pray the gay away” camps are enticing. You hear about the kind of stuff that goes on in those places and it’s something no one wants to defend. You wanna hear a boring headline? “Local Man Loses Unwanted Sexual Urges After Several Therapy Sessions.” Yawn. It’s rarely newsworthy when things go right.
That’s a big part of the reason we only hear about the abusive cases usually not even headed by anyone with any qualifications. So, in a way, I’m not too surprised that most people want to move to have this kind of therapy banned when they only see the bad examples. But just because it’s done so egregiously wrong sometimes does not mean it’s incapable of being done right.
Now is the part where I feel compelled to qualify that if I were Supreme Dictator or whatever, I wouldn’t round up everyone with an attraction to the same sex and put them in therapy. It’s not prescriptive, but I do think it should be available to people who want it.
2. The way you speak influences the way you think.
The reverse is also true but it’s easier to control someone’s language than their thoughts directly.
This is why conservatives and liberals (I hate that distinction since it implies a false dichotomy but it must suffice) have a different vocabulary. One side is pro-life, the other is pro-choice: nobody seems to want to claim themselves anti-anything. One side considers an act murder, the other calls that same act a woman’s right to make decisions about her own healthcare.
The linguistic engineers saw fit to dub this practice “conversion therapy” to limit its support. Notice the difference in the implications behind the terminology: “reparative therapy” acknowledges there is a solution. “Conversion therapy” implies a false notion that “sexual orientation” as such is something that actually exists. And if there are different sexual orientations, all equal, then making the attempt to go from one to the other is illogical and pointless at best.
The truth is that there is no such thing as a sexual orientation. You are not your sexual desires. You are not even your own sexual history. It should not be a part of anyone’s identity and that’s part of the reason I refuse to use the popular acronym. I don’t see people as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, or queers. I see people as individuals and I refuse to see them any other way.
3. The Influence of Certain Parties
If the second point was a little too abstract, ask yourself: why would anyone want to change the way people think about sexuality? Who benefits from that?
The answer is that psychiatry itself is a compromised field. I’m not saying it’s a pseudoscience, ineffective, worthless, or anything like that. I’m just saying that for decades, psychiatry - the sexual parts of it especially - has been under the control of intellectually dishonest individuals looking ways to rationalize their own sexual misconduct. Just look at the lives of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey.
And, let’s be real: we all rationalize our own sexual misconduct. But these people take it a step further: it’s not enough to do what most people do and convince themselves “what I’m doing isn’t wrong.” They have to convince everyone else to give up their sexual morals. And it’s a pretty tempting offer: “I won’t say anything about your sexual misconduct if you don’t say anything about my sexual misconduct.” That philosophy launched the so-called sexual revolution and our culture has been rapidly deteriorating ever since.
Not a lot of people know the history about how homosexuality was removed from the DSM. It wasn’t a case of people looking at it and saying “Gee, whoever wrote this was a bigot, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, let’s take this off.” No, it was done at political reasons. The cliff notes version is that those with a certain sexual predilection regularly and violently protested psychiatry conferences until they voted to remove it. It wasn’t done because they learned anything new. They decided truth can be determined by a show of hands. In retrospect, that means that was probably the most American thing the APA has ever done.
But it’s not just unscrupulous psychologists who promote it. Did you notice how many companies changed their logos to rainbow versions for Pride Month this year? Why do you think that is? To show how “woke” and PC they are? Please. They have an ideal consumer. People who can’t naturally have kids and thus have more disposable income are at the top of their list of people to exploit.There are other traits that community has that makes them ideal consumers but it’s too politically incorrect and you’re probably not ready for that red pill.
1. The most popular examples of reparative therapy are ineffective, if not outright abusive.
I will not defend what goes on in the basement of Pastor Jim’s Baptist Church where effeminate boys are hit over the head with a Bible or whatever.
Like other forms of therapy, it is something that should be done by a trained professional and sought by someone who actually wants to change. The latter is especially part of the reason it’s often portrayed as - and indeed unfortunately sometimes is - abusive. There is no reason to expect positive results for therapy with an unwilling participant.
Without even appealing to “muh lib’ral mejya,” I will say that headlines about fundamentalist “pray the gay away” camps are enticing. You hear about the kind of stuff that goes on in those places and it’s something no one wants to defend. You wanna hear a boring headline? “Local Man Loses Unwanted Sexual Urges After Several Therapy Sessions.” Yawn. It’s rarely newsworthy when things go right.
That’s a big part of the reason we only hear about the abusive cases usually not even headed by anyone with any qualifications. So, in a way, I’m not too surprised that most people want to move to have this kind of therapy banned when they only see the bad examples. But just because it’s done so egregiously wrong sometimes does not mean it’s incapable of being done right.
Now is the part where I feel compelled to qualify that if I were Supreme Dictator or whatever, I wouldn’t round up everyone with an attraction to the same sex and put them in therapy. It’s not prescriptive, but I do think it should be available to people who want it.
2. The way you speak influences the way you think.
The reverse is also true but it’s easier to control someone’s language than their thoughts directly.
This is why conservatives and liberals (I hate that distinction since it implies a false dichotomy but it must suffice) have a different vocabulary. One side is pro-life, the other is pro-choice: nobody seems to want to claim themselves anti-anything. One side considers an act murder, the other calls that same act a woman’s right to make decisions about her own healthcare.
The linguistic engineers saw fit to dub this practice “conversion therapy” to limit its support. Notice the difference in the implications behind the terminology: “reparative therapy” acknowledges there is a solution. “Conversion therapy” implies a false notion that “sexual orientation” as such is something that actually exists. And if there are different sexual orientations, all equal, then making the attempt to go from one to the other is illogical and pointless at best.
The truth is that there is no such thing as a sexual orientation. You are not your sexual desires. You are not even your own sexual history. It should not be a part of anyone’s identity and that’s part of the reason I refuse to use the popular acronym. I don’t see people as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, or queers. I see people as individuals and I refuse to see them any other way.
3. The Influence of Certain Parties
If the second point was a little too abstract, ask yourself: why would anyone want to change the way people think about sexuality? Who benefits from that?
The answer is that psychiatry itself is a compromised field. I’m not saying it’s a pseudoscience, ineffective, worthless, or anything like that. I’m just saying that for decades, psychiatry - the sexual parts of it especially - has been under the control of intellectually dishonest individuals looking ways to rationalize their own sexual misconduct. Just look at the lives of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey.
And, let’s be real: we all rationalize our own sexual misconduct. But these people take it a step further: it’s not enough to do what most people do and convince themselves “what I’m doing isn’t wrong.” They have to convince everyone else to give up their sexual morals. And it’s a pretty tempting offer: “I won’t say anything about your sexual misconduct if you don’t say anything about my sexual misconduct.” That philosophy launched the so-called sexual revolution and our culture has been rapidly deteriorating ever since.
Not a lot of people know the history about how homosexuality was removed from the DSM. It wasn’t a case of people looking at it and saying “Gee, whoever wrote this was a bigot, there’s nothing wrong with being gay, let’s take this off.” No, it was done at political reasons. The cliff notes version is that those with a certain sexual predilection regularly and violently protested psychiatry conferences until they voted to remove it. It wasn’t done because they learned anything new. They decided truth can be determined by a show of hands. In retrospect, that means that was probably the most American thing the APA has ever done.
But it’s not just unscrupulous psychologists who promote it. Did you notice how many companies changed their logos to rainbow versions for Pride Month this year? Why do you think that is? To show how “woke” and PC they are? Please. They have an ideal consumer. People who can’t naturally have kids and thus have more disposable income are at the top of their list of people to exploit.