Gay Men and Straight Men as Friends | Psychology Today

Contents:

• HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE GAY, STRAIGHT, OR SOMETHG BETWEEN?
• IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?
• CAN SCTN MAKE STRAIGHT MEN GAY?
• THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS
• KEV SPACEY: I N’T TELL WHETHER MEN ARE GAY JT BY LOOKG AT THEM
• MEET THE STRAIGHT MEN WHO ARE TERRIFIED THEY ARE GAY
• I TRIED TO NVERT MYSELF OM GAY TO STRAIGHT. IT DON’T WORK
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS
• I WAS MARRIED WH 2 KIDS WHEN I REALIZED I’M GAY
• GAY STEREOTYP: ARE THEY TE?
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY
• IS GAY TO DATE A TRANS WOMAN?
• WHY SOME STRAIGHT PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE GAY SEX
• ARE WE BORN GAY?
• AM I GAY, STRAIGHT, LBIAN, BISEXUAL OR LGBTQ+?
• HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?
• PEACHY KEENAN: EVERYONE IS GAY, N YOU BLAME THEM?
• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR SPOE COM OUT AS GAY
• THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT
• I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?
• GAY MEN AND STRAIGHT MEN AS FRIENDS
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• THE V-SPOT: AM I GAY/QUEER BEE OF SEXUAL TRMA?

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE GAY, STRAIGHT, OR SOMETHG BETWEEN?

"If [a patient] n accept his bodily homoerotic experience while stayg nnected to the therapist, " he wrote The Paradox of Self-Acceptance, "the sexual feelg soon transforms to somethg else: the regnn of eper, pa-generated emotnal needs which have nothg to do wh sexualy.

The few that did have "high-qualy" evince "show that endurg change to an dividual's sexual orientatn is unmon, " and that treatments tend to change sexual orientatn may e harm, cludg prsn and mental Dark AgHomosexualy was officially labeled a mental illns the U. Another method was satiatn therapy, which a subject was told to masturbate over and over while verbally scribg his homosexual fantasi, until they disappeared — or, at least, "therapi" were generally effective — the person remaed attracted to the same sex — or over-effective — the person was trmatized and lost all sexual aroal entirely. " His view mirrored the belief of many clicians at the time: that homosexualy was based on a phobia of the oppose non-aversive treatments followg this theory foced on buildg "tnal skills" like datg techniqu, assertivens trag, and affectn achg to crease teractns wh women.

“As a teenager tryg to unrstand myself and unrstand my sexualy, I looked at the ter for “the gay gene” and obvly me across Xq28, ” said Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a study -thor and senr scientist at 23andMe, which he joked once led him to believe he hered his gayns om his mother. The basels claim that chemils – particularly tap water – uld turn people gay has gaed populary wh nspiracy theorists over the years, most memorably wh nservative rad host Alex Jon, who said chemils the water were “turng the igg’ ogs gay.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?

Osr-wng actor Kev Spacey has said he is attracted to mascule men but is not able to tell whether someone is gay jt by lookg at cross-examatn durg his trial on sex abe charg, the Hollywood star nied he was a “sexual bully” and told the jury he did not have a “power wand” to make people want to sleep wh about his sexual preferenc, Mr Spacey said he had prevly had romantic enunters wh men who would not scribe themselv as homosexual. " Homosexualy is a s that you need to purge om your system, and the only way to do is to follow their three-parts-a-day the app is only downloadable om Google Play (iTun and the 69, 822+ people who petned them don't believe nversn therapy for some reason), there is an abridged versn available on the mistry’s webse.

Realize That Beg Homosexual Mak You Feel Alone Fet that we told you to shut yourself away om most of the world, and ignore the ia that maybe gay people feel so alone bee of the discrimatory and hateful attus that they face, helped by people like . And for a very short while, did, bee even the gayt gay n’t ignore the culture we live , the very real dangers and hostili and rejectns we still face om our iends and fay and loved on, even the Year of our Lord knowg that the dark thgs were possible, I still uldn’t ny the parts of myself that ached to experience the light.

CAN SCTN MAKE STRAIGHT MEN GAY?

He rried out the same tt almost every night for the next three weeks, always wh the same searchg Inter mental health foms for answers to his private impasse, Darren beme nvced that he was sufferg om 'HOCD': a not officially regnised form of Obssive Compulsive Disorr fed by the fear of beg or beg homosexual. While he asserts that 'HOCD', an acronym ed by sufferers sharg their stori onle, isn't officially classified the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs (DSM), he says that the irratnal fear of beg or beg gay falls firmly wh the umbrella of Obssive Compulsive Disorr. Nowadays, the majory of tablished OCD chari – cludg OCDUK, OCDActn and Md - addrs tsive sexual thoughts as a mon trope of the disorr, but that has done ltle to stem a backlash om some high-profile skeptics wh the psychologil muny, who believe that HOCD is at bt misguid, and at worst homophobia s most pernic guise.

"My psychologist jt looked bored and hand me a leaflet"In November 2015, BuzzFeed UK's LGBT edor Patrick Stdwick published an article tled '"World's Leadg Anxiety Expert" Offers Treatment For People Who Worry That They're Gay' that heavily cricised the practice of a Harley Street therapist named Charl Ln who, acrdg to the se, boasted of a "100% succs rate" the treatment of "HOCD" the time the article was wrten, Ln's publishers were dubbg him as "the world's leadg thory on anxiety", and his webse ma hefty promis to sexually-nfed OCD sufferers.

Elizabeth Peel, chair of the Brish Psychologil Society's 'Psychology of Sexuali' sectn and a profsor of Communitn & Social Interactn at Loughborough Universy, stat wh the piece that: "The term 'Homosexual OCD' is simply nversn therapy unr another guise and somethg we strongly nmn as damagg.

THERE IS NO ‘GAY GENE.’ THERE IS NO ‘STRAIGHT GENE.’ SEXUALY IS JT PLEX, STUDY NFIRMS

And an age where even the Vice Print of the Uned Stat has exprsed tac support for the practice, 's unrstandable that high profile figur the psychologil muny would nmn anythg that uld fuel the rhetoric of homophobic 'therapists', or provi party-le approval of their methods.

"Over the years, therapists here […] have treated many homosexuals (male and female) who are plagued by obssive fears of beg "straight", and who suffer equally when OCD attacks their sexual inty, " stat their webse, which also offers an onle HOCD tt. This was regular, sual and normal: every lson I’d ever imbibed about homosexualy was that was I’d grown up watchg a fundamentalist Christian show, The Donut Club, which preached, a creepy kids’ song, how “life whout God’s love is like a donut, ’e there’s a hole the middle of your heart”. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

KEV SPACEY: I N’T TELL WHETHER MEN ARE GAY JT BY LOOKG AT THEM

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance. “It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists.

MEET THE STRAIGHT MEN WHO ARE TERRIFIED THEY ARE GAY

The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure.

The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors. ”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way?

Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at. ”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc.

I TRIED TO NVERT MYSELF OM GAY TO STRAIGHT. IT DON’T WORK

I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy. “Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric?

Crics, though, say the study's subjects may be ludg themselv and that the subject group was scientifilly valid bee many of them were referred by anti-gay relig Robert Spzer, a psychiatry profsor at Columbia Universy, said he began his study as a skeptic — believg, as major mental health anizatns do, that sexual orientatn nnot be changed, and attempts to do so n even e Spzer's study, which has not yet been published or reviewed, seems to dite otherwise. Spzer says he spoke to 143 men and 57 women who say they changed their orientatn om gay to straight, and nclud that 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of women reached what he lled good heterosexual functng — a staed, lovg heterosexual relatnship wh the past year and gettg enough emotnal satisfactn to rate at least a seven on a 10-pot said those who changed their orientatn had satisfyg heterosexual sex at least monthly and never or rarely thought of someone of the same sex durg also found that 89 percent of men and 95 percent of women were bothered not at all or only slightly by unwanted homosexual feelgs.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

Spzer argu that highly motivated gays n fact change that preference — wh a lot of Study, Old DebateBut crics have challenged the study, even before was formally unveiled at today's ssn of the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn's annual meetg New Orleans, which was jammed wh televisn meras reportg on the prentatn. "In fact, he said, many of his subjects had been sponnt and even suicidal themselv, for the oppose reason — "precisely bee they had prevly thought there was no hope for them, and they had been told by many mental health profsnals that there was no hope for them, they had to jt learn to live wh their homosexual feelgs. "The sample is terrible, totally tated, totally unreprentative of the gay and lbian muny, " said David Ellt, a spokman for the Natnal Gay and Lbian Task Force Spzer says while the people his sample were unual — more relig than the general populatn — don't mean their experienc n be dismissed.

Democratic printial ndidate Pete Buttigieg – who, like me, is his late 30s and, like me, me out publicly jt a few years ago – put this way: “It’s hard to face the tth that there were tim my life when, if you had shown me exactly what was si me that ma me gay, I would have cut out wh a knife. If we lived a culture which havg some gree of same-sex sexualy did not imply that you th had to be the “dread” lbian, gay, or bisexual, would be easier for dividuals who stggle or n’t ci their sexualy to be te to their thentic self.

Sex rearchers have examed the factors related to women and men's sexual aroal and have found that women of all sexual orientatns were more likely than heterosexual and gay men to bee sexually stimulated rponse to erotic imag of both women and men, heterosexual and homosexual . Fally, some progrsive adolcents and young adults wh same-sex attractns do not label themselv or intify as gay bee they refe to center their inti on their current sexual feelgs and behavr--which they expect will change pendg on who their partners are.

SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS

We n be attracted to people irrpective of their genr, do not mean we need to label ourselv as gay, straight, pansexual - unls we choose to do so, ’ explas Marianne Oak, lead unsellor for and a specialist sexualy, genr and diverse relatnships. ” Some people’s doubts are further plited by havg such experienc as hearg other people talkg or lookg their directn and thkg that the people mt be analyzg their behavr or appearance and talkg about them – discsg how they mt be gay (or straight).

When I was young, I was told the whole world was divid to heterosexual men and heterosexual women, bar a small number of unfortunate ‘homosexuals’ of both genrs and possibly an even smaller number a third tegory, ‘bisexuals’, who ‘swung both ways’; pl, fally, a ty band of wretched creatur who were physilly not que one thg or the other.

S., before there was such a thg as a gay inty, some straight men would, wh ltle shame, engage sexual ntact wh other men (ually allowg themselv to be fellated) when female partners were otherwise unavailable (see Gee Chncey’s semal book, Gay New York: Genr, Urban Culture, and the Makg of the Gay Male World 1890-1940) and there is good reason to believe this still occurs other untri and cultur.

I WAS MARRIED WH 2 KIDS WHEN I REALIZED I’M GAY

Robert Epste, the pro-gay edor--chief of Psychology Today, noted that gay rears who were upset wh an ad that ran his publitn 2002 sent him letters assertg “that gays have a right to be or abive bee they themselv have been abed” (this obvly clud beg sexually abed).

)As for the notn that people are born gay, not only would that suggt that fants n relate to the ncepts of sexual and romantic attractn (which they obvly nnot), but would also ignore the fact that our upbrgg and environment have profound effects on .

GAY STEREOTYP: ARE THEY TE?

”But aga, none of this should surprise the least, sce the environment which we are raised, pecially if upled wh major, trmatic childhood experienc, has a profound effect on our ongog mental and emotnal and social when to homosexualy, is taboo to nnect childhood sexual abe wh subsequent gay inty sce: 1) this would ntradict the “born gay” myth; and 2) would unrsre the fact that homosexual attractns are not natural and explaed ndidly by the lbian femist and amic Cale Paglia, “Every sgle gay person I know has some sort of drama gog on, back childhood. )In keepg wh this, all the profsnal unselors I have spoken wh (cludg traed pastors and psychologists or psychiatrists) have told me that the vast number of gays they have unseled were sexually abed as mors (some told me this was the se every stance they enuntered) might say, “But gays hardly have a monopoly on this. More disturbgly, gay circl, such relatnships are often looked at as posive and nurturg, sce, is surmised, the boy was already aware of his same-sex attractn and the olr man served as a mentor of the words of Harry Hay, the gay in and founr of the Amerin gay movement, “If the parents and iends of gays are tly iends of gays, they would know om their gay kids that the relatnship wh an olr man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anythg else the world.

”That’s why “man-boy love” has been celebrated homosexual culture through the centuri, that’s why there’s a page listg “Historil perastic upl” on a gay Wikipedia se, and that’s why Gee Takei uld speak glowgly of his first sexual enunter at the age of 13 (wh a 19-year-old male mp unselor), at a time when he adms he didn’t know he was this light, the outrageo statement by philosopher Michael Foult, argug for lowerg the age of nsent, don’t sound as outrageo: “It is que difficult to lay down barriers [particularly sce] uld be that the child, wh his own sexualy, may have sired the adult. This too is sickeng beyond realy is that children, pecially pre-teens and young teens, are tremendoly imprsnable and malleable, as nfirmed by this acunt shared by a Christian fay activist (reflectg on his pre-Christian youth): “When I was about 14 or 15, I spent an afternoon smokg pot wh a ‘gay’ guy his 20’s who explaed that young people durg puberty have a very fluid sexual inty and how easy had been for him to turn young teen boys to sex partners.... ”Ex-gay Robert Lopez, raised by his mother and her lbian partner, had this to say: “In a society soaked porn where sexual orientatn is discsed openly ont of small children, there will certaly be 12- and 13-year-olds who thk they want sex and thk they are ready for .

And wh the terribly paful issue of childhood sexual abe g to the fore recent days, let’s e this as a teachable n do this by: 1) beg on the lookout for signs that our own children may have been abed; 2) refg to allow our kids to be experimental pawns the culture wars, bee of which we strongly oppose sex-based LGBT curricula the schools; and 3) no longer nyg the mon nnectn between childhood sexual abe and adult homosexualy, thereby providg a path for healg and dog the thgs, we will not only make this a teachable moment, we will make a remptive one.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

A group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexuals get that tra om their oppose-sex parents: A lbian will almost always get the tra om her father, while a gay man will get the tra om his heredary lk of homosexualy has long been tablished, but scientists knew was not a strictly geic lk, bee there are many pairs of intil tws who have differg sexuali. Scientists om the Natnal Instute for Mathematil and Blogil Synthis say homosexualy seems to have an epigeic, not a geic thought to have some sort of heredary lk, a group of scientists suggted Tuday that homosexualy is lked to epi-marks — extra layers of rmatn that ntrol how certa gen are exprsed.

"There is pellg evince that epi-marks ntribute to both the siary and dissiary of fay members, and n therefore feasibly ntribute to the observed faial herance of homosexualy and s low nrdance between [intil] tws, " Rice and his team created a mathematil mol that explas why homosexualy is passed through epi-marks, not geics.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

Rice not that the markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will rult a homosexual scientists have long spected some sort of geic lk, Rice says studi attemptg to expla why people are gay have been few and far between.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM GAY? SIGNS YOU ARE GAY

" Homosexual behavr has been observed black swans, pengus, sheep, and other animals, he 's mol still needs to be tted on real-life parent-offsprg pairs, but he says this epigeic lk mak more sense than any other explanatn, and that his team has mapped out a way for other scientists to tt their work. It’s possible that people go to prison unaware of their sexualy, and then once they are exposed to homosexual behavr as an mate, they realize that they are gay or bisexual, Helen Eigenberg, who also studi prison sexualy as a profsor at the Universy of Tennsee at Chattanooga, said an terview wh PoliFact.

Greg Herek, a psychology profsor at the Universy of California Davis who studi sexual orientatn, poted to a natnally reprentative study that shows the vast majory of gay men and women do not perceive their sexual orientatn as a rult of choice.

IS GAY TO DATE A TRANS WOMAN?

WHY SOME STRAIGHT PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE GAY SEX

ARE WE BORN GAY?

AM I GAY, STRAIGHT, LBIAN, BISEXUAL OR LGBTQ+?

HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?

PEACHY KEENAN: EVERYONE IS GAY, N YOU BLAME THEM?

HOW TO COPE WHEN YOUR SPOE COM OUT AS GAY

THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT

I LIKE GUYS BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE GAY. HOW DO I STOP BEG GAY?

GAY MEN AND STRAIGHT MEN AS FRIENDS

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

THE V-SPOT: AM I GAY/QUEER BEE OF SEXUAL TRMA?