I live in San Francisco, the gay capital of the United States.
Interestingly, while gays and lesbians are celebrated here, bisexuals still get short-ended, since the het communities regard them as gay, and the gay communities regard them as
traitorous or
confused. Fortunately, there's also a sizable pansex community that is more about accepting who you are, whatever you are.[footnote]There's a lot of crossover between the wiccans, the neopagans, the polyamorists, the BDSM folks and the nerverts. It's the community in which we crazy gamer geeks not only get laid, but are considered hot.[/footnote] But I get miffed that my bi- friends have to hide the fact when hanging with the regular gay and lesbian sectors.
TheYellowCellPhone said:
In my school, everyone is (of course) absolute assholes on the subject. One thing that made me sad was when I heard a discussion asking if gays have a mental condition.
I'M SERIOUS.
Best of the 3 said:
I think it was classed as a mental condition until recently if I remember my psychology teacher correctly. It was wrong, but it was.
Homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the 1990s.
Homosexuality is classified as a
paraphilia or
fetish[footnote]Or rather, it would be, if not for the severe political controversy that encompasses all discussions of the relationship between sexuality and mental health.[/footnote] which are, themselves, regarded as normal (id est, normative in the population. compare: spanking, leather, or foot fetishism). Contemporary psychological guidelines do not consider regard paraphilias as
dysfunctional except regarding how it interferes with one's ability to function in life.
Regardless, homosexuality is not diagnosed or treated by the psychiatric sector, any more than liberalism or atheism would be. Rather conditions emergent from being ostracized due to one's identity (say, depression, paranoia or in egregious cases, post-traumatic stress disorder) would be considered for treatment.
Gender confusion, on the other hand, along with a whole body of gender issues are still regarded for treatment, but there really is no way around it once one has determined a mismatch between sex and genitalia (or that correction surgery was inappropriately decided by the parents).
238U.
