Researcher still looking for the "gay cure"

[thermodynamics]

Yeesh...some people.

I say...let 'em look. They'll never find it. And besides, it keeps these idiots out of trouble--not the worst thing in the world.

 

[blackbeltninja]

"A deviant conduct"?

You know where you're at, don't you??

If you're infering that is deviant to be gay, you've visiting the wrong place. If you're saying certain sexual expressions -- behind closed doors or not -- among homosexuals are "deviant," I suggest you spell them out. And prepare to be taken on -- because just anything can be debated. But not everything can be believed.

Well, we do deviate from the norm - the norm in this case, as in all cases, being what is practiced by the majority of people - and thus we are deviant, by definition.

Perhaps the connotation attached to "deviant" is what gets one's back up in this sort of instance, but even though I've heard people say "we're different, not deviant" I propose that a shovel by any other name is still spade.

-d-

 

[Swellegant]

I propose that a shovel by any other name is still a spade.

So why do you suppose there are different words for them? "Shovel" has certain connotations and definitions, "spade" has other connotations and definitions. Both words can be applied to a certain object, but they don't mean exactly the same thing.

The practice of using a positive connotation instead of a negative connotation is how you come to terms with realities that might be strange or unpleasant to you: "different" is better than "deviant" though one can, in some instances, use them interchangeably to describe certain kinds of behavior.

For better clarity, look at it this way: "Nigger" and "African-American" mean essentially the same thing, too. Which do you think is the best word to use? Especially if you are in a room full of African-Americans?

 

[blackbeltninja]

Hmmm... but the n word is bastardised from another word. I'm not Captain Linguistic History, so I'm not sure whether it was just drift or intentionally bastardised with the purpose of offending - either way, I'm not sure that it is the best example to use here because it in an offensive term. I don't think that deviant describing sexual practices was intended to offend and is perhaps quite widely used by psychologists and the like as a biomedical/behavioural term. I'm open to correction here, of course, since psychology is not my area of expertise.

However, simply put, were the question proposd whether our sexual practice differed from the norm, we'd all have to put "yes," and that would make us deviants. Just because we don't like the connotation attached to it doesn't mean it's not true, unfortunately.

When push comes to shove - and this is an honest question; nevertheless, I'll prep for a bit of fire - is insisting on being called anything other than deviant any worse than insisting on a term like g0y or Same Sex Oriented or any of the other euphemistic terms bandied about by people who don't like the term gay?

-d-

 

[triple7]

since almost all the good arguments and debates have been made, what is say is this: I feel for the future 'potential gay' men who have against their will been forced to become heterosexual and have been denied the opportunity to live a healthy, exciting, gay life. Should the world ever go down the path of a 'gay cure', I can only hope there are those who develop the 'anti-cure' to give back what was stolen from those poor converted.

 

[Swellegant]

However, simply put, were the question proposd whether our sexual practice differed from the norm, we'd all have to put "yes," and that would make us deviants. Just because we don't like the connotation attached to it doesn't mean it's not true, unfortunately.

But why are you so attached to that particular word? "Deviant" denotes "different," but it connotes "bad-different." It connotes harm and ugliness. There are dozens of other words that will do just as well, "different" being probably the most neutral. Anormative, uncommon, unusual, diverse, variant, etc., are rather more positive. They're just as true, and they don't piss me off, so why not use one of them?

English is an immensely rich language, with positive and negative and neutral synonyms for most words; there's absolutely no reason to cling to a word that has obviously offended the people to whom you are speaking... unless your intent is to offend.

Furthermore, I think the use of "deviant" is not true, connotative or otherwise. Being a genius (IQ over 140), in your terms, is deviant, because it is Other Than The Norm; being able to read is deviant by your terms, being extremely good-looking is deviant, eating with a fork is deviant. None of these things are particularly normative, I expect they describe a rather wee minority of our species.

But we don't generally call geniuses deviants, do we? We usually reserve that word for psychopaths. We don't think of beautiful people, literate people, and well-mannered people as deviant, do we? Because they're not deviant... in many ways they are advanced, aren't they? Most of these things are considered, in our culture, rather nice things to be.

Perhaps in the scientific community, "deviant" might be a perfectly benign word; but here in my world, the world of English-language literature and communications, "deviant" is a negative word, a word that I am fully justified in finding offensive when applied to me.

I am telling you I find that term offensive; if you persist in using it on me, I will be offended. That's all there is to it.

And yes, I will refrain from calling people "gay" if they don't like the word; that's called good manners (though I won't call anyone g0y, for reasons I have elsewhere belabored at some length). I will refrain from referring to African-Americans as niggers, even though I don't intend it as an insult and even though they call each-other that all the time; that's just common sense.

Words have power, and you have to learn to wield them properly before you can communicate your feelings and ideas. If you use offensive words, you don't communicate your ideas, you don't build bridges: you just piss people off, which destroys your credibility and hurts your cause.

 

[ladygrey]

^
Exactly right.



There's a reason we call her royalty, eh?

 

[drhladnjak]

Well, we do deviate from the norm - the norm in this case, as in all cases, being what is practiced by the majority of people - and thus we are deviant, by definition.

Something doesn't have to be in the majority to be a norm or normal. For example, just because there are more women in the world than men doesn't mean that being a woman is the norm and being a man is deviant. Normal just defines an acceptable range of possibilities.

 

[luminum]

You know I'm not one to argue with you Robert, but I will say that you make a very important distinction:

Perhaps in the scientific community, "deviant" might be a perfectly benign word; but here in my world, the world of literature and communications, "deviant" is a negative word, a word that I am fully justified in finding offensive when applied to me.

If you are dealing with different realms of study and writing and talking within them, then you must adhere to the definitions of those terms. You have to adhere to the context and the realm that the term is being used in. If blackbelt is debating and making points scientifically, then it's justifiable and unremarkable to use the term 'deviant', sicne it would be an apprpriate term to describe soemthing in the realm of an experiment or data or observable occurances.

If he's speaking casually, or writing a paper, then he must consider connotations and denotations, since those are rhetoric considerations in literature and he's playing on that field and cannot take ambiguity/interpretation for granted.

But if you understand that he's speaking from a scientific context, then you should bear in mind what he means and shouldn't be offended, any more than he should think that you mean "falling on the ends of the bell curve" when you speak to him and tell him about a deviant who stole your wallet.

But I digress.

 

[Jory]

Maybe someone else can build on their research and find a "cure" for heterosexuality?

We need them who else is going bring forth the next generation of Homos?

 

[Jory]

Sorry Robert and hotdog, but when the object of the research is to wipe us out... I'm not going to celebrate.

All I can hope for is that the "Anti-gay patch" they'll be giving to pregnant women will cause breast cancer and every cunt who'd consider it won't live to see her baby born.

Would that mean on less right wing cunt?.....Some needs to find a cure for the cure.

 

[CoolBlue71]

Well, we do deviate from the norm - the norm in this case, as in all cases, being what is practiced by the majority of people - and thus we are deviant, by definition.

Perhaps the connotation attached to "deviant" is what gets one's back up in this sort of instance, but even though I've heard people say "we're different, not deviant" I propose that a shovel by any other name is still spade.

-d-

The "majority" deviated from their own norm. Once upon a time, no one -- especially not a "lady" -- would suck a man's dick. Nor would a "gentleman" eat a woman's pussy. That was behavior through a particular action not considered.

The word "norm" refers to what is expected. But when you get down to it, normal has become as much an oxymoron as the words "common sense."

 

[blackbeltninja]

But why are you so attached to that particular word? "Deviant" denotes "different," but it connotes "bad-different." It connotes harm and ugliness. There are dozens of other words that will do just as well, "different" being probably the most neutral. Anormative, uncommon, unusual, diverse, variant, etc., are rather more positive. They're just as true, and they don't piss me off, so why not use one of them?

[snip]

English is an immensely rich language, with positive and negative and neutral synonyms for most words; there's absolutely no reason to cling to a word that has obviously offended the people to whom you are speaking... unless your intent is to offend.

[edit]

Furthermore, I think the use of "deviant" is not true, connotative or otherwise. Being a genius (IQ over 140), in your terms, is deviant, because it is Other Than The Norm; being able to read is deviant by your terms, being extremely good-looking is deviant, eating with a fork is deviant. None of these things are particularly normative, I expect they describe a rather wee minority of our species.

[snip]

Words have power, and you have to learn to wield them properly before you can communicate your feelings and ideas. If you use offensive words, you don't communicate your ideas, you don't build bridges: you just piss people off, which destroys your credibility and hurts your cause.

Well, in all honesty, which of the following might you regard as being deviant?
a. Rubber fetish
b. Watersports (not the kind involving boats or Olympic swimming)
c. Coprophilia
d. Felching (both the kind leading up to but not necessarily including snowballing, and the kind involving rodents crawling up someone's backside, since it apparently has two meanings)
e. Sadomasochism and its variants
f. Autoerotic asphyxiation (the alleged Michael Hutchence variety, or the kind as seen in the film Ken Park by the rather loopy, granny-murdering Tait)
g. all of the above

These are all regarded as sexually deviant practices, since they are markedly different from the norm. Is this why we object to the term so strongly, because we don't want to be mixed up with them? "I may be different, but I'm not a fucking weirdo!" Please note that we all are aware of - and some participate in - these practices; however, nobody is going to be arrested for doing any of them in their own home, and this sort of deviance is remarked upon by the general public, sometimes with horrified fascination, without the appearance of pitchforks and lynch mobs. To engage in sexually deviant practices is hardly a big deal, is it? If no, why should we worry when someone describes our sexual behaviour as deviant?

I punched the word into dictionary.com and you can see the results here. Notice that in only one case out of 6 (it says 7, but #5 and 6 are both from the same source) does it come up with something which can be construed as having a negative connotation - item #3 from Princeton University's WordNet - and it's only possibly offensive because it links to the synonym "pervert." Incidentally, you'll notice that item #5 from the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary does list intelligence as something which can indeed be noted as deviant, and apparently is.

Just because something is deviant does not make it taboo, but something which is taboo is always deviant.

Please note - I am not calling us all "deviants," because one would need to look at so many social/behavioural aspects of our lives to decide whether or not someone might be categorised properly as being deviant. I am calling our sexual behaviour deviant, however, until it is practiced by humankind as a majority - 50% +1 person. And until then, I believe I am wielding my words properly and responsibly.

-d-

 

[Swellegant]

Well, in all honesty, which of the following might you regard as being deviant?
a. Rubber fetish
b. Watersports (not the kind involving boats or Olympic swimming)
c. Coprophilia
d. Felching (both the kind leading up to but not necessarily including snowballing, and the kind involving rodents crawling up someone's backside, since it apparently has two meanings)
e. Sadomasochism and its variants
f. Autoerotic asphyxiation (the alleged Michael Hutchence variety, or the kind as seen in the film Ken Park by the rather loopy, granny-murdering Tait)
g. all of the above

Well, of course, since I consider the word "deviant" insulting, I would not use that word on anything that I didn't consider bad. Of your list, only C, D, and F would be considered remotely bad, merely because they're horribly unhealthy... the bacteria at one end of the digestive tract does not belong in the other end, and playing about with suicide is dangerous and too frequently is suicide.

Still, I don't think it's my business to approve or disapprove of anyone's behavior so long as it does no harm to others against their will. I am of course interested in understanding why things that I find repulsive can be so erotic to others, because anything that increases my understanding is a good thing; but whether or not it deviates from the norm is not really of interest to me, nor do I consider the "norm" very interesting. What difference does it make, after all? Why do we have to group thing by "normal" and "deviant" anyway? What does any of it have to do with anything?

But fine, go ahead and use "deviant" all you want since you went to so much effort to support your belief that it's a neutral word. I still find it offensive, but I find so many things offensive that I guess it doesn't really matter. It gives me a chance to brush up my martyr act.

And none of it has anything to do with the topic of the thread.

 

[Swellegant]

I don't know why I can't leave this one alone... the whole "deviant" thing just sticks in my craw, and I am not satisfied with how I've expressed myself so far. Blackbeltninja, I am not attacking you here, I hope I haven't given that impression; I just want to understand where you're coming from, and am trying to get you to see where I'm coming from.

The practice of looking at heterosexuality as the standard and homosexuality as the anomaly strikes me as premature. It doesn't encompass the complexity of human sexuality, either biologically or sociologically. And that is why the original article and many of the comments springing from it are so problematic to me... when your research is based on an unproved assumption, it's going to be rather shaky in its findings.

A lot of loose talk about Bell curves has been thrown around, perhaps because statistics is one of those few places where "deviation" is (to me) a neutral word, as in "standard deviation." But if we try to apply a Bell curve to human sexuality, and homosexuals are at a deviant end of the curve, either left or right, and heterosexuals are at the center... well, what's at the other end? Standard deviations have to go in both directions in order to be standard deviations, don't they?

See, here's the thing: I don't think heterosexuality is the standard. Biologically it is the standard, but humans aren't merely biological mechanisms as other animals are: we are social creatures, and we are psychic creatures (psychic meaning having psyches, not ESP) as well. We have our instincts, and the strongest among these is the instinct to reproduce and to survive; but we have overriding sociological and psychological motives that override those two instincts all the time.

Therefore, since our sexuality has different bases, I don't think we can look at it in a Bell curve format of norms and deviations. Homosexuals can and do breed, so our "deviant" sexuality isn't based only in biology. Socially, since we live in a heterosexist society, a lot of homosexuals and bisexuals are forced into heterosexual relationships, where many of them stay; this skews our statistics so far off the Bell curve that it's impossible to use that as a base for further investigation. So that leaves us with psychology, which is still an infant science and has proven so complicated that such issues as norms and deviations are still being debated.

What I'm trying to say is that biologically speaking, any sexual behavior that does not, and is not intended to, result in reproduction is questionable; but since nonreproductive sex is one of the hallmarks of our species, we can't call it deviant. From there we go into sociological and psychological study, and that's just a hell of a lot more complicated, and such terms as normal and deviant are a little difficult if not impossible to pin down.

As one of the researchers in this issue (though not this particular article) has pointed out, people are not sheep. It would be interesting to see if you could prevent or encourage homosexuality in sheep; but only preventing it would have a commercial purpose and is probably the source of their funding and therefore their chief focus. But to apply the same technology to people is a whole other kettle of fish. Biologically, we are infinitely more complicated organisms.

For example, in the realm of organ and tissue transplants, scientists were able to transplant enormous amounts of organs from one animal to another, a whole head taken from one dog and put on another, with very little ill effect, decades before the first attempt at a human transplant... which didn't go very well (the patient died after three weeks) and is still, forty years later, a tricky procedure.

And then on top of all that, we are psychologically more complicated. Even if you could supress the genetic and perinatal aspects of homosexuality, there are quite probably a number of other aspects that go into it as well. Not all gay people are gay because they can't function with a member of the opposite sex; they are gay because they'd simply rather not.

I suspect that, if we did not have a heterosexist society forcing us psychologically to choose on or the other, bisexuality would be the sociopsychological norm and exclusive homo- or heterosexuality would be the deviation... as it was in ancient civilizations, when homosexual behavior was pretty much a given in youth, and marriage a given for later. Both were equally useful in their societies, so both were encouraged, and both flourished.

Basing your biological and psychological research solely on modern civilizations is erroneous because it ignores too much contrary evidence. It's just bad science, and that's why I object to the description of heterosexuality as normal and homosexuality as deviant.

To return to the problem of words, "deviant" is really only negative in a conformist society, and it is from our recent history as a conformist society that this word takes its negative connotation. I am reacting to this word as negative because it is most often used, by conformists, negatively. I admit I am a little oversensitive about it, but I do believe I have a right to be. I mean, when a word has been used against you more often than not, you tend to get a bit defensive about it.

I have to go to work now, or I suppose I'd belabor the point some more. Toodles!

 

[innocentbychoice]

WE ARE THE CURE.

I keep thinking one day we'll evolve (or a meteor shower will affect us or some aliens will give us special abilities) so that some of us will have superpowers just like the X men.

Anyway i hate how people feel we're wrong cuz we're different.

Someone said here, i think it was iryon, that being gay isn't good at all for a person cuz nobody deserves to suffer a much as we do or something like that. Well I feel like without all that suffering and self acceptance I would be just as intolerant and ignorant as the rest. I feel like being gay has taught me a lot of things, to treat everyone right, to not make fun of people or making them feel bad cuz they're different, to know and accept myself, it has made me stronger cuz I decided to be openly gay even though it's not a 100% accepted and it has given me a purpose in life. My purpose in life is to make this world better for us and give the gay comunity a great reputation. I want everyone to know that we're not bad people, we're not crazy and we're just as normal as everybody else.

The human being is beautiful, women and men equally. I love men, let ME love men...That means more women to str8s anyways so why all the hate ?

 

[blackbeltninja]

I don't know why I can't leave this one alone... the whole "deviant" thing just sticks in my craw, and I am not satisfied with how I've expressed myself so far. Blackbeltninja, I am not attacking you here, I hope I haven't given that impression; I just want to understand where you're coming from, and am trying to get you to see where I'm coming from.

Of course you aren't attacking me - this is just a debate. One would not do well at JUB or anywhere without expecting to encounter a contrary position from time to time; personally I appreciate having my assumptions and arguments challenged because I do believe that getting your comfort zone renovated from time to time is a good thing. It's an added bonus when the person challenging them can do it eloquently and politely, such as you have, and not resort to mere mud-slinging.

Perhaps we all have thicker skins than we should have after spending some time as JUBbers; but I'm not convinced that it is necessarily a bad thing.

but since nonreproductive sex is one of the hallmarks of our species, we can't call it deviant.

Us and dolphins, apparently - no other species seems to get it on without it specifically being mating season. And apparently dolphins do it in a frenzy - everyone with everyone, multiple couplings in the space of a few minutes, the filthy bastards.

As one of the researchers in this issue (though not this particular article) has pointed out, people are not sheep. It would be interesting to see if you could prevent or encourage homosexuality in sheep; but only preventing it would have a commercial purpose and is probably the source of their funding and therefore their chief focus.

If I could defend the scientists here, since I am one by trade... look, NOBODY gets money for mere biological research anymore. Money is only given for research which potentially could have commercial biomedical benefit - either someone can make money from it, such as the pharmaceutical corporates, or someone can save money from it - state health departments.

While researchers may genuinely have a purely academic interest in finding something, the only way to procure and secure funding for the research is to spin it as having a long-term therapeutic goal. Not to say that there won't be a long-term therapeutic goal, of course, but you do have to kinda have that as a primary aim to lure investors on-board.

I'm pretty sure these researchers have no eugenic or mass-sterilisation programmes in mind with anything they may discover; however, people who are going to paying for the study want to know that there is a potential to get their investment back. And any benefit here would be the same as that for any genetic therapy; in addition, insights gleaned here could push other genetic studies along very positively since the techniques developed with any genetic work can be applied to any other genetic work. Principles applied here to find the gene/s (if it/they actually do exist) are the exactly the same as those applied for finding the root cause of inherited breast cancer which runs through some families, and Huntington's Disease and Parkinsons and the whole lot of them. We shouldn't necessarily panic and want to get this kind of thing stopped on a knee-jerk reaction. I could go into lengthy debate at this point about the usefulness of stem-cell research and the benefits of cloning, but I'll abandon my soap-box for the moment.

Incidentally, I do wonder sometimes about people not being sheep. Herd-mentality seems much more prevalent these days than can actually be healthy for us as a species.

I admit I am a little oversensitive about it, but I do believe I have a right to be. I mean, when a word has been used against you more often than not, you tend to get a bit defensive about it.

No doubt I do to - some guys in some threads use terms I identify with like "bisexual" as if it were ebola. But that's a whole other issue.


-d-

 

[luminum]

I'd say that non-heterosexual behavior is merely poorly studied/understood/advertised in the scientific community.

 

[blackbeltninja]

^Good sir, I do believe you are forgetting the Bonobos. They fornicate all the time, with the same sex, opposite sex even when it's not mating season.


Plus a few weeks ago I saw a grey squirrel have sex with a black squirrel, deffinatley not mating season my dear boy.

Well... just telling you what I heard. As for it not being mating season... maybe because of El Nino? Global warming?

-d-