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The truth of NARTH: Can gender and sexuality change?


Jogols

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I am a 20 yr old male and have recently come out as biromantic asexual. I also identify as a genderqueer. I was not too feminine in childhood but I do feel I have more of a feminine energy inside me than anything masculine. I have always avoided rough sports, war games and have been mostly into feminine jobs at home. I do think I have intense love of female aesthetics and beauty and I find masculinity less appealing.

But recently I was reading articles on NARTH about various causes and roots of homosexuality and gender dysphoria. This one below for instance, clearly states that our gender is based more on what we learn after being born rather than something inborn.

http://www.narth.com/docs/1996papers/silverman.html

I am totally confused. I don't really relate much to the circumstances mentioned here. I did not of course have an overbearing mother or missing weak father. Infact, I do think it was my and my own decision, something very innate, to have chosen feminine things, as my tastes were innate. I do still believe that our sexual/romantic and gender identities are firmly inborn traits and even if something is environmental, chances are that its contribution is very low.

I would like to know your opinions however and also how much you agree or disagree with NARTH on this matter. Could our GID be environmental and can we really cure it?

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Eli Dupree

"The truth of NARTH" is an oxymoronic phrase.

recently I was reading articles on NARTH

That's your problem right there. :angry:

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I'd say its both true and not true that you can change your sexual orientation. There are mainstream views in psychology, such as by Carl Jung, that everyone is bisexual to varying degrees. Those who lean more toward the middle may be able to reorient themselves, while those on the ends probably won't be able to. Everything about us, including our psychology, is a physical characteristic. Our brains and thoughts are all physical regardless of whether we understand the specifics of the chemical processes. Cognitive behavioral therapy proves that nurture affects nature; changing your behavior changes your thinking.

However, the key in the mission statement from NARTH is "unwanted homosexual attraction." I'm actually very much like you. I also identify as a biromantic asexual with many female characteristics, though I am biologically male. The question is, does it make sense based on who you are and what you foresee for yourself to try rigorously to change yourself from the natural path that you are on. I used to think that it made sense for me, but being older and wiser now I realize that I can lead a much fuller life by recognizing who I am, rather than trying to suppress certain elements of it. On the contrary, I have a very close friend who is sexual and knows that he is gay, not even bi, but strongly does not want that attraction. I think he is making a mistake that will negatively affect his life experience, but he disagrees, and he has a right to make that choice for himself. For him, homosexuality runs contrary to everything he deeply believes about the world. So, while many would say that it would be a horribly destructive choice to fight against his natural inclination, no one but he can truly determine which would be more destructive: 1) acting on his natural sexual orientation, and sacrificing everything that he firmly believes about his existence, or 2) changing his sexual orientation and sacrificing that natural instinct for the preservation of his view of reality. Despite choosing to try to change through therapy, my friend fights a daily battle against his natural urges, and it seems will remain single for a long time to come.

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I see NARTH is an anti-gay propaganda organization. Be very wary of their pseudoscience.

Note that they qute old reports by John Money. He believed that gender identity could be altered. He conducted an experiment on identical twin boys, and had one raised as a girl, to show that gender identity could be changed. The experiment failed, Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer transitioned back to boy, and in the end, both twins committed suicide.

The article also states:

More and more clinicians and researchers are coming to the conclusion that boys with gender dysphoria require intensive, incisive, dynamic, individual psychotherapy combined with vigorous, effective work with their parents that focuses upon their parenting.

In my opinion, that is the wrong method. That is punitive, and seems more to placate the parents who want a non-gender dysphoric child. Such children should not be punished, but rather loved, and the parents should accept the way that their child was born. I also opine that a better treatment would be to let the child live and grow as their inborn identity suggests. So, rather than punish the child for being gender dysphoric, I would rather they be allowed to be themselves, and even transition to their inborn gender if such a transition is best.

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Wow, another NARTH controversy out here. By the way I have had interactions with several gay men and women who have been into NARTH. The truth is that even after nearly 20 years of starting the daylong struggle to change their homosexuality/gender issues, none of them had truly changed at all, just learned to repress them. One 45 yr old ex gay-man confessed to being turned on only by thoughts of guys while having sex with his wife. But he believes that since the actual sex is with his wife and not a guy, he is still as committed as any other man and he is a true straight man-> "Most straight men don't think of their wives during sex anyways, they think of other women. So if I am able to get aroused by whatever thoughts and can manage to have sex with my wife on a regular basis, how less straight I am?"

NARTH has never gone anywhere beyond making helpless people feel guilty for their identities and indirectly making them get subjected to endless mental torture just for being born different.

Another thing to be noted is that they are a bunch of junk pseudo-scientists who don't have any idea of natural diversity of human population. They directly assume a girly guy is gay, a manly woman is lesbian, that all transsexuals are gay and what not. All of their assumptions have been proved totally false by various men and women in our society who have been of diverse sexualities and gender identities.

Modern science has clearly stated that both sexual identity and gender identity are inborn and any attempt to change them will only result in severe depression and even suicidal tendencies.

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What terribly harmful nonsense.

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I wonder if these NARTH and Reparative Therapy folks ever feel remorse for the pain, depression and even suicides they are responsible for causing.

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NARTH is a big scam. It's just a bunch of "Christians" out to make a buck. They should be disgusted with themselves. NARTH is probably made up mostly of gays and lesbians. Just check out the latest story on John Rekers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/05/george-rekers-anti-gay-ac_n_565142.html

This rhetoric about overbearing mother and absent father ultimately just produces a destructive psychological response. These people have no respect for psychology, life, or the beauty of God's creation. Their ideology is harmful to their supposed patients, their parents, and their whole family. The pain this ideology causes is shameful and disgusting. I can't imagine how much money they are making from this sort of treatment. I don't know how they sleep at night.

I believe nature and nurture can both play a part in determining our characteristics. How much? That's debatable and impossible to determine on a case-by-case basis. Can we change our nature? To a certain degree, I imagine we could. The better question is: should we? We should be happy the way we are! And we understand ourselves better every day! That's the beauty of being alive!

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Part of the problem with NARTH is they operate from antiquated Freudian ideologies. Further, the techniques, philosophies and other so-called 'findings' and 'research have been PROVEN false for the last 10 years. And, even nowadays, with current understandings which are being discovered demonstrates how obsolete, antiquated and irrelevant NARTH is.

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NARTH is a big scam. It's just a bunch of "Christians" out to make a buck. They should be disgusted with themselves. NARTH is probably made up mostly of gays and lesbians. Just check out the latest story on John Rekers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/05/george-rekers-anti-gay-ac_n_565142.html

Who was this George Rekers by the way? Was he also some NARTH activist or something? What a big hypocrisy really!!

This rhetoric about overbearing mother and absent father ultimately just produces a destructive psychological response. These people have no respect for psychology, life, or the beauty of God's creation. Their ideology is harmful to their supposed patients, their parents, and their whole family. The pain this ideology causes is shameful and disgusting. I can't imagine how much money they are making from this sort of treatment. I don't know how they sleep at night.

Surprisingly, many of the gays and lesbians joining NARTH and practicing day and night to change their sexual orientation through its pseudo-scientific techniques themselves say they had either a poor male (or female) role model, or some broken childhood history. In my case however, I never found any such broken history for me and by reading its very first webpage I realized its lies. Maybe there are people who have some such "broken history" indeed and are the only ones who end up joining NARTH. And I suspect that NARTH activists hence mistake this "broken history" as representing the whole population of gays and lesbians because that is what it cares to see.

I believe nature and nurture can both play a part in determining our characteristics. How much? That's debatable and impossible to determine on a case-by-case basis. Can we change our nature? To a certain degree, I imagine we could. The better question is: should we? We should be happy the way we are! And we understand ourselves better every day! That's the beauty of being alive!

I agree. We need to be ourselves to get more out of this life.

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Guest member25959

I think Gender can be given at birth, and/or learned. It depends really. I would say it was more learned, pressured onto us, social pressures and all that.

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I think Gender can be given at birth, and/or learned. It depends really. I would say it was more learned, pressured onto us, social pressures and all that.

If that were true then, lots of people would never experience the phenomenon of GID as much of society already forces all of us to conform to gender binary system.

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The NARTH scientists are actually quacks who believe that an individual can be programmed through repression techniques. And that is the point where things go awry for the individual. The individual begins to consider her true feelings as mere fantasies which need to be repressed and in case she doesn't, feels guilty and sinful. That is suicidal. Lots of people have got depressed due to the misapprehensions of NARTH, which does not respect natural human diversity and tries to program all individuals to conform.

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Darkfire Prophet

I am having trouble figuring out how NARTH is not considered a hate group. I'm going to start a program to teach people how not to have red hair and freckles, pray away the ginger.

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