Gay on straight
by Fred Penzel, PhD
This article was initially published in the Winter edition of the OCD Newsletter.
OCD, as we know, is largely about experiencing severe and unrelenting doubt. It can cause you to question even the most basic things about yourself – even your sexual orientation. A study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that among a group of college students, 84% reported the occurrence of sexual intrusive thoughts (Byers, et al. ). In order to have doubts about one’s sexual identity, a sufferer need not ever own had a homo- or heterosexual experience, or any type of sexual encounter at all. I possess observed this symptom in young children, adolescents, and adults as well. Interestingly Swedo, et al., , start that approximately 4% of children with OCD encounter obsessions concerned with forbidden aggressive or perverse sexual thoughts.
Although doubts about one’s own sexual identity might seem pretty straightforward as a symptom, there are actually a number of variations. The most noticeable form is where a sufferer experiences the consideration that they mig
Gay Conversion: I Slept With Over Men, Now I'm a Happily Married Heterosexual Dad
In an strive to present both sides of the gay conversion debate, IBT invited a man whose sexuality changed through therapy to tell his story.
James Parker's article is packed, frank and ardent, and we grasp our readers may not agree with his views. Please note the perspectives expressed below do not reflect those of IBTimes UK.
I guess I became straight by accident. It was never a grand plan; the therapy was an attempt to resolve commitment issues, rather than sexual identity. I never had any want to change my sexuality. But that's what happened – in fact I changed everything.
Having had hundreds of lgbtq+ partners, I eventually married a female and had a child. And my whole outlook on life changed. I grew from a loud and arrogant person, trying desperately to mask my deep insecurities in group situations, into a strong, assertive guy who loved sports and war films. At the age of 46, I've never felt better in my own skin.
But before we get into the details of my conversion,
Hi. I&#;m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I&#;m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O&#;Neill Library at Boston College. In the online planet, I live in this blog. You might say I contain multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren&#;t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.
I have some human assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O&#;Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often allude to to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.
If you&#;d like a quicker react to your question and don&#;t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.
Long-suffering Spectator readers deserve a seasonal break from yet another Remoaner diatribe from me. My last on this page, making the outrageous suggestion that the populace may sometimes be wrong, is now entity brandished by online Leaver-readers of my Times column as proof that I am in fact a fascist; so there isn’t anywhere much to travel from there.
Instead, I rotate to sex. There is little time left for me to write about sex as the thoughts of a septuagenarian on this subject (I twist 70 this year) may soon meet only a shudder. But I contain a theory which I have the audacity to think important.
What follows is not written here for the first time, and much of it is neither original nor new; but on very several subjects have I ever been more sure I’m right, or more sure that future generations will see so, and wonder that it stared us in the face yet was not acknowledged. My firm belief is that in trying to categorise sex, sexuality and — yes — even gender, the late 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries have taken the medical and social sciences down a massive bl