Gays can become heterosexual?

I was flipping through radio channels and ended up listening to the Dr. Jenn Mann show. She is apparently a radio psychologist/therapist specializing in LGBT issues.

The caller to her show said she was a lesbian in a long term (4 year) relationship, in the course of the call she said she was not attracted to men and was a lesbian. Her partner had decided to become a man and was going to start the hormone therapy and eventually undergo the surgery to have male anatomy.

The caller said she fully supported her partners decision to become a man, but was concerned because her partner got "physical" during sex, and she was worried that when she started the hormones (testosterone) that the "physical" would escalate to violence.

Now, the question that immediately came to my mind:

The caller was a lesbian, not bisexual but a lesbian who was in a long term lesbian relatinship. Yet she was perfectly fine with her partner becoming a man. In other words she was fine with being in a relationship with - and having sex with - a man.

Doesn't that mean that lesbians and gay people can switch from homosexual to heterosexual?

 

Sounds to me like she's in love with the person rather than their gender. In all likelihood most people are somewhat bisexual, and lie on a spectrum as to how much they prefer one sex or the other. Personally I'd still be heterosexual even if society told me to be homosexual, so I'd be on the extreme heterosexual side as far as I can tell. People who think that homosexuality is a choice must themselves be bisexual to some degree if they think it's a choice.

 

Who knows? Maybe some can but the vast majority probably can't. You're dealing here with a situation where two people are already in love and one has decided to transition. I don't know if you've ever personally been in love with someone but it can be a very powerful force that can seemingly overpower all kind of reason and rhyme.

The statement implies that the caller is concerned that her transitioning partner "got physical" during sex. Most heterosexual women don't really object to their male partners getting physical in this way but she obviously has no frame of reference on how to deal with sex from a male perspctive. Her sexuality has always been based around female wants and needs. This is new territory to her. To say she's:

is a very glib interpretation. Maybe she's so in love with her partner that, at the moment, she can't face the prospect of being without what she still considers to be "her"? It's not like she's saying she'd be fine with meeting up with and having sex with any random male or that she finds males attractive in any way but this is a person whose journey she embarked upon when they both identified as female. Maybe she feels that's a very hard or near impossible habit to break? Or maybe she's bigger than that and her worldview is more transcendent?

I don't want to speculate on what the outcome will be. They may end up very happy or the caller may realise that she needs to be with a demonstrably female partner. Whichever way it goes I don't think the result will support the rather simplistic notion you convey in the OP.

If a woman marries a man and he decides to transition (which I'm sure is much more common) and she decides to stay with him/her for whatever reason: kids, financial or emotional security, abiding and already existing love that transends physical identity etc, does that mean she's "become" a lesbian? Because that's the filp side of the question you're asking.

In reality, most people and most relationships straight or gay stay that way throughout time. The odd rare and immensly complex situation is not proof of a reliable and repeatable thesis.

 

I don't think most people are bisexual. I am not, not even close. You don't seem to be. Most of my close friends - when the subject comes up - react with disgust, I don't think they are bisexual in the slightest degree.

I think heterosexuality is the norm and the way nature intended humans to be, and nature has also instilled a desire to be heterosexual. There is no incentive for evolution to encourage homosexuality, and a lot of evolutionary incentive to remove homosexuality from a species.

But the point is that the gay community claims homosexuality cannot be reversed and they oppose (and try to ban) any process to assist in the reversal of homosexuality on the grounds it is an unnatural process. This radio caller seems to indicate its all about choice. Even if its just because she loves her partner, it still shows that its a choice.

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So love - which can be a very transient emotion - can overcome homosexuality and convert a lesbian into a heterosexual. It still disproves the claim by gays that homosexuality is not a choice.

 

So that's what you got from that? OK.

 

It will turn to violence.

 

I suspect it’s more complex than such simplistic terms can really cover. We know that romantic love and sexual attraction are complicated things in general and we know that while we might define ourselves as, for example, attracted to females, there will still be loads of females who we have zero attraction to in any way while there will be men who we can at least intellectually recognise as being physically attractive and nice people to spend time with. We also know that the one thing we can rely on the human mind to be is inconsistent.

Clearly heterosexual attraction is an evolutionary feature for all species that procreate sexually but there are all sorts of other complications. Genetics isn’t a simple or controlled process and there are hypotheses that some genetic factor in homosexuality could be linked to other directly beneficial characteristics, hence it propagating despite it’s obvious disadvantage for procreation. Human beings also complicate matters with our intelligence, allowing us to decide to go against out evolutionary instincts, even knowingly, for other reasons (however irrational they might be). If it were a simple system, it would just be a case of every healthy adult male wanting to have sex with every healthy adult female and vice versa.

It’s not going to be a matter of her actively choosing to be attracted to males so she remains attracted to her partner after gender transition though. She just is still attracted to her partner after transition regardless of her perceived of labelled sexual orientation – it’s not a conscious choice, indeed it sounds like that element wasn’t a factor at all. She’s still unlikely to be attracted to any other men in the same way that there will be lots of other women she happens not to be attracted to.

I think this is just more evidence that the whole area is much, much more complicated and varied than most of us give it credit for.

 

It's hard to separate how we've been taught to feel from how we could feel. In ancient Greece where bisexuality was encouraged, it was common. Given that, it seems most people are capable of bisexuality to some degree, but wouldn't necessarily know it especially if they were raised to be disgusted by it. By analogy we can think of Victorian women who were raised to think of sex as a pleasureless duty. So were they truly asexual, or was their heterosexuality repressed? Depends on how you look at it.

There's always a choice in terms of actions, but not attraction. Somebody who is 100% homosexual but thought homosexuality was wrong could choose to avoid sex altogether, or do it only to have kids. But that would likely be an unhappy condition that they shouldn't have to endure.

 

Even if they could, why would they? Why should they?

 

I did too prior to accepting my sexuality. So that isn't really a good gauge.

 

Well, a heterosexual is born that way and a Gay person is born that way but there are some cases where a heterosexual decides later on in life to try out the Gay scene, likewise, there are some Gay people who later try out the Straight scene. In this particular case on the Dr. Jenn Mann show involving the lesbian relationship. the one partner loved her significant other so much that her choice to become a transgendered man took a back seat to the love she has for her partner. In her mind, her significant other still remains as a lesbian to her.

 

That relationship will be over once the woman becomes a man if the other partner is, in fact, a lesbian. Probably before that...

 

That would be a difficult thing to deal with.

 

I believe people can love other people for more than their physical appearances, especially as they change throughout lifetimes.

Here is a random picture of what appears to be an old couple. If they had been married for say 60 years, do you think they looked the same the entire time? Do you think he would love her for how she looks now, or for who they grew together?

 

There is a world of difference between growing old (and growing old together, spending a lifetime together) and getting a sex change.

 

The question is NOT whether a person can change, but whether a person can force themselves to change and end up happy they did so.

 

Hey, I don't disagree. But I know one couple, a friend of mine married a fellow and he had a sex change. She stayed with er...um...him/her through it. I found that admirable. I don't fault others for not doing so. That seems like it would be very difficult.

 

Same here.

 

I'll add, that some people actually become mentally 'ill' from trying to "change" their sexual-orientation; I was one of them.

 

Gays can become heterosexual?

Sure, can heterosexuals "become" gay, too?

 

Yeah, I guess in the straight world, bisexuality does not exist. Either you are gay or you are not..... no opportunity to be in love with someone without gender being a factor.

 

If its a choice, then yes. And that's the point. Gays insist its not a choice, but clearly it does not seem to be genetic or pre-ordained.

 

You are making the assumption that there are absolutes in the world of human sexuality.
What are the odds of that being reality? 7 billion people - and in your world - what?

Next.

 

It's best to wait until after the sex change operation and see whether or not this woman is actually attracted to her partner once she is a he.

And I'm not sure that a case where a lesbian in a relationship with a woman who during the course of that relationship has an operation to become a man is a good indicator of whether anyone can just change from one to the other. That person's gender may be changing on the operating table but the woman's perception of her partner will not change quite so quickly. There's history there. It would be impossible to determine whether any continuing emotional feelings and attraction this woman feels after her partner's operation had now shifted in reality to heterosexual or were still based on that much longer mental and emotional history she had shared with this woman when she was still a she.

 

Of course it's not a choice.

A man may choose to pursue women romantically and sexually, but they don't choose to want to pursue women. Nobody does.

That's part of your consciousness that goes far beyond active "thought" and is not something that a person chooses. You can only choose your actions, not your innate desires.