Can you change sexual orientation? - Is "born this way" just a meme?

[Syaoran Li]

Is "born this way" even the mantra anymore? Exploring fluidity is in fashion now I thought.

I honestly am not sure anymore. I think the mantra of being "born that way" was a response to the Religious Right and their tactic of conversion therapy and their rhetoric of homosexuality/bisexuality being a completely premeditated conscious choice instead of a thing that just sort of happens with no single precise cause.

The last time we saw it bandied about in the mainstream was in 2010 with that Lady Gaga song, and that was back when same-sex marriage wasn't legal in all fifty states and the Westboro Baptist Church and conversion camps were getting a lot of media coverage, but the Religious Right was also entering a state of decline with Bush no longer in office.

 

[ZeCommissar]

5. There is something strange about a culture that simultaneously attacks incels and defends homosexuality. Neither offers societal benefit (children, perpetuation of culture). Yet the latter defended on the basis of their innate desires, whereas incels are attacked for it. Okay. So why aren't incels defended on their innate desires? It's a strange hipocrisy of a hedonist/feminist culture.

Because being a incel is not something that is innate at all compared to sexuality. No one is forced to be incel excluding extreme examples of someone being massively deformed/maimed. In fact I would even go so far as to say in most cases inceldom doesn't even exist since almost anyone on this Earth can make themselves more attractive in one way or another. Some people bitch about having to "settle" like they had a choice in the first place.

Nevermind the fact that we have examples of incels going out and killing people. While i'm sure it exists out there somewhere there aren't too many examples of gay people killing people for the LGBT community.

 

[Banditotron]

I'm bisexual, and I dont think one can change their sexuality. However, I dont believe in the "born this way" philosophy nor the "everyone is varying degrees of bisexual; explore your fluidity" philosophy either.
It stands to reason that, like many other behavioral oddities, one's sexuality is the result of multiple factors. It's possible that in-utero environmental factors might predispose people to particular sexualities (like fetal testosterone). Then, over the course of one's growth to puberty, certain environmental or social factors might change the chances yet again, but I think whatever those factors are are currently unidentifiable. Then, during puberty, the hormones kick in and further alter one's brain chemistry.

I think that we are lightyears away in figuring out what determines a person's sexuality in the first place. Even IF changing a person's sexuality after it is set in stone IS possible, how the hell are we even supposed to start figuring it out?

Also I think being straight or gay or lesbo or bi is a-okay and it would be pretty immoral to try to alter another person's sexuality.

 

[Idiotron]

At this point, I don't know.
Can you even try to change someone's sexuality with modern technology? I don't think so.
If we can't even try, how can we know?

Homosexuality might go away once "designing" your baby will become a reality for an average person.
All deviations might go away and that's only a few generations away.

Until then, we'll just going to have to live with them bundles of sticks.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

As I understand it, it's not that uncommon for pubescents' sexuality to be kind of amorphous, not really solidifying until further down the line. Like a boy being aroused by gay porn at a young age, but completely disinterested later in life, or the same being true of a girl with lesbian stuff.

That may not be quite what you had in mind, OP, but I think that's kind of a case of it. The child either willingly adopts a sexual orientation or they just naturally fixate on one. And it's not really "changing" your sexuality, so much as the sexuality changing itself.

"Born this way" is a complete meme pushed by the gay rights movement to legitimize homosexuality as an immutable "identity" group for political purposes. It's not that you can pray the gay away or anything, but sexual behavior is a lot more subject to social and environmental factors, such as ending up in prison for a decade or more or being too ugly to find a partner of the opposite sex, or trooning out as a result of persistent exposure to fetishism and propaganda.

Of course these sorts of things are going to sound like heresy to the average first worlder, who's been indoctrinated with "born this way" propaganda for decades at this point and takes what they've heard as fact without even thinking about it anymore.

I think the most logical way of looking at it is that "homosexuality" is not a single disorder with a single cause but more like a wide range of disorders that share common symptoms. Some homosexualities are genetic in nature. Some of them are caused by nurture.

Nature or nurture? Either, potentially.