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Originally Posted by washoe
I dont know yet what to believe, what do you believe?
I'd say that one of your favourite sources, Wikipedia, sums up my beliefs pretty well:
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Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms. In contrast to evidence-based medicine and clinical guidance, such practices typically view homosexuality and gender variance as unnatural or unhealthy. There is a scientific consensus that conversion therapy is ineffective at changing a person's sexual orientation or gender identity and that it frequently causes significant, long-term psychological harm in individuals who undergo it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy
Quote:
Originally Posted by washoe
newsflash: those are first person testimonials. but you pretend they do not exist.
I've done no such thing.
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Originally Posted by washoe
Do you think all the people in all the articles are liars?
One of the links is to the Spitzer study, and one is to an article about the same study - a study that Spitzer himself came to believe was wrong, and apologized for - which you hand wave away because he was old and that maybe he broke under pressure. LOL.
As for the other links, well, let me try and help you out with this.
I have a very close family member that is pansexual. To make things simpler, just think of her as bisexual. It may well be that she one day settles down with a guy, gets married, has kids. She would still be bisexual; nothing has changed.
Now instead, imagine that rather than having loving parents who accept her as she is and just want her to be happy, she had homophobic parents who are disgusted and appalled when she comes out to them, and they send her off to conversion therapy. She one day settles down with a guy, gets married, has kids. Has she been "converted"? Or is it possible that she's repressed her feelings to make her family happy? Or that nothing at all has changed, but things worked out with a guy and she's allowing her family to believe that she's chosen to "go straight" when it actually just happens she found a guy she loved?
Obviously that's not going to be everyone's story, but I believe that among these anecdotes that you can go scouring the Internet for, there will be a whole lot of different varieties of repression (consciously or not) and/or saying what makes the homophobes in their lives happy - doing what they have to do to fit in, Because as the Wiki article says:
Quote:
Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms. In contrast to evidence-based medicine and clinical guidance, such practices typically view homosexuality and gender variance as unnatural or unhealthy. There is a scientific consensus that conversion therapy is ineffective at changing a person's sexual orientation or gender identity and that it frequently causes significant, long-term psychological harm in individuals who undergo it.
And the bolded is by far the most important part of that quote. Is it possible that there are some people for whom conversion therapy has actually changed the way they feel about their sexual orientation? Honestly, I don't really care, because people's sexual orientation doesn't need to be "fixed", especially when the cure is generally much more harmful than the (non-existent) "disease".
Last edited by Bobo Fett; 01-24-2023 at 02:05 AM.