Homosexuality as a disorder

[Helmholtz Watson]

"Average" is a human concept that has little bearing on reality, and the dictionary is not the ultimate authority- medical science has an entirely different definition of disorder.

eh, I always thought that they stopped calling homosexuality a disorder because of political pressure not science.

There is actually an interesting history involved here. Prior to the 1960's homosexuality was largely considered a willful and perverted deviation from the norm. Homosexuals wanted to be abominations that stood against and threatened the fabric and sanctity of "healthy and normal" heterosexual relationships. Because homosexuals were seen as being such sinful deviants, they must've chosen to be exactly to be that when they chose to engage in homosexual acts. Much like a murder or rapist knows (should know) that they have done wrong and then try to hide and lie to cover up the horrible things they have done.

I am paraphrasing here, but this is what I have come to understand of the social attitudes towards gays prior to the modern gay rights movement. And, how they changed as that movement got started and as the mental health institutions become more objective and enlightened.

What I have learned (but not done enough research of my own to confirm), was that it was a gay rights activist(s) that persuaded the American Psychological Association to classify homosexuality as a disorder in order for gays to receive a degree of compassion and fair treatment, not only from the health industry but from the public as well. No one chooses to have a disorder. Prior to this gays were subjected to all forms of adversion therapy, electroconvulsive shock therapy and even lobotomy. Now they were (more likely) to be treated like someone suffering from depression or PTSD. They were no longer willfully anti-social or psychopathic. Notice how the perception of choice factors heavily into this distinction. Also, it is/was generally accepted that a depressed person can function more or less normally and still be trusted to make moral decisions. A psychopath cannot.

Fast forward to the 1980's/early 90's. I cant say if people made a concious decision to re-examine that earlier classification, or if the newer generation of activists and professionals could no longer stand/support homosexuality being classified as a disorder.

no disrespect but lets see some academic level sources please, because I have never heard that before.

It is possible (likely) that this was negotiated under the table, so a direct source would not be easy to find. I did a google search, and to my embarassment not only could I not find any evidence, but the timeline doesnt really support my claims. I did find an article that suggested the same thing I did, but not durring the time-line I suggested.

Here is the timeline fault... The Stonewall riots took place in 1969. The consensus is this is when the modern gay rights movement started and maintained it's momentum to present day. Psychoanalists as far back as Freud were saying that homosexuality should not be considered maladaptive when present on its own. The debate went back and forth for decades. The paradigm that prevailed in the 1950's and 60's was established LONG before the Stonewall riot of 1969. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973. 4 short years after the gay rights movement began.

I humbly appologize for diseminating information that at worse was wrong, and at best is impossible to prove. I fully accept that it should be disregarded.

However, through the research I did learn- That many prominant psychologists did not consider homosexuality to be a disorder 70 years before the definition was officially changed. And it was not just activists (political/social pressure) but also many psycologists that petitioned the change in the DSM. Especially from the perspective of the psychologists, that change was warrented precisely because of the lack of scientific evidence to prove it was a disorder. Science FTW!

Here is one article that cites sources that I thought was really good.
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_mental_health.html

interesting, I'll give it a look

 

[JJMUG]

All definitions in this come from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. This is written using American figures because those are what I have researched.

edit Read this whole post before you post in this thread. If you do not, you did not get the point I was making and can go right back to tl;drville. By the end of this, you should NOT be commenting on the idea of homosexuality being a mental disorder. The chain of logic regarding that is put forward as a startling example of a greater truth about human discourse as is made perfectly clear at the end of this post. It was supposed to be a shock ending, but everyone is too fucking lazy to read it and get the full impact, so this warning became necessary.

This is not a discussion of homosexuality or of the word disorder by itself. It is a discussion of the way in which the language can be manipulated for control.

By definition, homosexuality could be described as a disorder, which is defined as "an abnormal physical or mental condition", condition simply meaning "a state of being" abnormal simply meaning, "deviating from the normal or average".

So, in essence, a disorder is "a physical or mental state of being that deviates from the normal or average state of being".

Now, average is defined as "not out of the ordinary" and ordinary is defined as "of a kind to be expected in the normal order of events".

Now, in my country, as of April 11th of this year, only 3.5% of the population is gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

http://wiwp.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Gates-How-Many-People-LGBT-Apr-2011.pdf

You might argue that that is a large enough percentage to say that it is not something that could not be expected in the normal order of events. However, in such a case, I would have only one question for you: would you expect an "average" or "ordinary" American to support a shift to Communism? No sane person would answer yes, unless of course they thought the 3.5% could be considered ordinary, because a full 11% or Americans support a shift to Communism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/congress-approval-problem-in-one-chart/2011/11/15/gIQAkHmtON_blog.html#excerpt

Clearly, 3.5% is not enough to be considered ordinary. In this way, it is not average and meets our extended disorder definition "a physical or mental state of being that deviates from the normal or average state of being".

So, where am I going with this? Well, I am not going to conclude that homosexuality is in any way wrong just because it can be considered a disorder. Nor am I honestly suggesting that homosexuality be considered a disorder. I am, instead, using this as a way to highlight a question as to how the fundamental building block of our interaction as humans, language, can be used to trick us into believing some rather horrendous things.

And this cannot just be applied to homosexuality. As a Communist, I see the threat of this sort of usage of the language, this totally technically logically sound use of the language I will add, to have my beliefs classified as a mental disorder. After all, only 11% of the population would support a shift to Communism while a full 16.6% of the population have a "Major Depressive Disorder".

http://www.mentalhealth.com/

"Of course a belief in Communism, being even more rare, is a disorder" they will say just as I have said to you "of course homosexuality, being so rare, is a disorder".

Most of us have read 1984 and we thought with horror about our language being stripped from us for control. However, such is unnecessary. The tools for atrocity are already present in the dictionaries and definitions we use every day to understand the world around us.

So, is homosexuality a disorder? No. Is being a Communist a mental disorder? No. Is being a Fascist or a Libertarian or any of those other unpopular states of being I disagree with a disorder? No.

However, they might be, if you trust Merriam-Webster or any other dictionary.

I suppose the point of all this is then, be careful out there, and don't let even the most beautiful wording and manipulation of fact persuade you to bigotry.

This has to be post of the year.

 

[RaNDM G]

@JJMUG Really? It's descriptive and whatever, but I wouldn't call it Pulitzer material.

 

[JJMUG]

@JJMUG Really? It's descriptive and whatever, but I wouldn't call it Pulitzer material.

Its the best one if sen in a bit, with how the thread has played out, I also don't often post or pay much attention to the forms. The last time i posted was the 5th of October.

 

[jimbob123432]

Wow, this is like one of those tests you get in middle school, where if you don't read to the end, you waste an hour of time and once you get to the end it says "you don't have to do the test. Just hand it in". Kudos on tricking oh so many people!

 

[RaNDM G]

@JJMUG The OP does know what he's talking about, which is pretty rare on a forum like this.

 

[Therumancer]

You might want to check what year that dictionary is. Homosexuality hasn't been classified as a "disorder" since, I think the 70s (not sure when exactly it changed).

Well, sort of. It's no longer classified as a form of insanity.

We know what "causes" homosexuality biologically speaking, the same thing that causes any kind of sexual behavior. In fact most people on all sides of this discussion know this but many choose to forget it when deciding to make arguements.

All sexual behavior is governed by chemicals and pheremones that people emit and receive, this is why it's possible to castrate someone by removing the relevent organs and removing their sex drive. Neutering or spaying an animal, or removing the testicles of a male human... you do that and the behavior goes away as the person is no longer giving, receiving, or reacting to the impulses.

Granted we do not fully understand all of these interactions with the brain, but really most people know how it works for everyone. Humans really aren't all that complicated despite how we like to see ourselves, on a fundemental level we're much like any other animal, which is one of the reasons why we can be so easily predicted through things like psychology and sociology (and people make fortunes by exploiting this through things like advertising). Granted our form of self awareness does give us some resentment of our condition.

At any rate what a homosexual or bi-sexual is, is someone who is reacting to the emissions of their own gender as opposed to the opposite gender, or in the case of bi-sexuals are reacting to both. Like any form of biological reaction it seems normal and natural to the person involved because it is very much how they happen to be wired. Despite what we might want to think we tend to build a lot of ourselves up around our instincts rather than surpressing them rationally, and that is a big part of why things like psychology and sociology work.

Homosexuality is thus not a condition unto itself, but more of a symptom of other problems. Something that can be caused by a lot of problems, just like say a sneeze, an ache in your arm, or other symptoms. A sneeze could be anything from the flu to an allergic reaction for example. Albiet we're dealing with something less transient here. Thus some homosexuals might be born receiving pheremones that way, others might have their bodies adapt due to psychological stimula since part of the reception is mental (and the body can react to outside trauma in some pretty extreme ways), and for others it might come from a plethora
of medical conditions and malfunctions. We do not have a full understanding of this system and all of the things that influance it yet even if we know the basics.

None of this is pseudo-science, junk science, or anything else. After all anyone who has ever had a pet fixed knows this. Incidently the same medical conditions that afflict humans also afflict animals in many cases, so it's not surprising that as many people have pointed out there have been cases of animals responding sexually to others of their same gender.

Of course this gets clouded by politics. The gay rights movement generally tries to define homosexuality as something magical and beyond understanding out of fear that it will be "treated" largely because to the people involved it seems perfectly normal and natural.

There is a lot of political baggage behind it, but basically it's a medical condition. One that is biological more than psychological, but which can be influanced psychologically. But then again it can also be argued that with enough effort anything can be influanced psychologically, with enough time and effort spend brainwashing someone you could pretty
much turn them into anything you wanted mentally and even see physical changes in support
of it depending on what you did.

 

[Aerodyamic]

I'm not certain, but I think what the OP is trying to get at is "Sanity is statistical", or the theory that if you define a society by it's norms (or it's mean/average behavioural patterns), any individual that doesn't conform to them is insane. As several people have pointed out, by that very definition, any North American that hasn't eaten at McDonalds' is outside the norm, and is the subject of a disorder.

Interestingly, most of the forms of Communism that humanity has practiced in the last 100 years have valued conformity over individuality, which makes me wonder how doublespeak WOULDN'T benefit any of the established styles of Communism.

 

[USSR]

I have no idea why I still come to this site. I try to make an interesting point via giving a very startling example and nobody reads long enough to fucking get it.

I seem to be asking myself that question everytime I post nowadays.

I'm honestly astounded by the amount of laziness in this thread.
Your opening post wasn't even long.
I swear, it ticks me off.

OT- I thought you proved a nice point and thought you did it in a unique way.

And for goodness sake people.
"Homosexuality as a disorder"
It's called a hook to get you to open the thread with curiosity, not a petty cry for attention.

 

[MisterDyslexo]

... Wha?

First of all, has nothing to do with homosexuality. So yeah, nice baiting. If you wanted to talk about Doublespeak, just title the thread "Doublespeak".

And anybody can manipulate language to fit their needs. I've done it quite often. Sometimes I post without thinking too much, somebody I use certain words, or phrases, or style of writing/speaking to support my point further. It takes nothing more than charisma for somebody to manipulate another with words, even if the other person is much smarter.

 

[rabidmidget]

Walks in

Oh look, a semantics based thread.

Walks out