Conversion Therapy vs. Bisexual Responsiveness

'Dear Alana' vs. Paglia, Freud, Brideshead, Dorothy, Franco, et al

*UNLOCKED*

In light of the slew of people who have asked me to comment on the ‘Dear Alana’ podcast (which I refuse to listen to as I haven’t the stomach for blatant psyops…I mean just look at their cover photo!), I decided to write this piece.

The fanfare over conversion therapy has become a laughable meme at this point. Those living in respectable society recognize that the attempt to turn someone from gay to straight is not only a scientific impossibility, it’s also morally wrong and downright dangerous. The DSM has removed homosexuality from its list of mental aberrations, and the APA has condemned the psychological dangers of attempting to change one’s sexual orientation. The great bureaucratic hegemons of culture have unequivocally declared that gay is ok.

Of course for us based gods and goddesses, this official position is insufferably cringe and, well, gay. But what to make of the equally cringe prospect of attempting to change one’s sexual orientation, the very category of which is suspect in itself…a construct of late-modern capitalism, an artificial invention with flimsy positivistic underpinnings? In this post, I’ll point to Camille Paglia’s idealization of “bisexual responsiveness” as an alternative to the standard conversion therapy discourse.

Before its more tame version known as “reparative therapy” emerged in the 1990s, conversion therapy involved horrors ranging from castration to electrocuting men’s testicles while showing them pornographic images of other males. But the milder approach of Joseph Nicolosi and his National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) focused less on directly altering patients’ responses to sexual stimuli, and more on healing from traumatic experiences related to sexuality and gender identity.

Appropriating ideas from Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian anthropology, Nicolosi asserted that most gay people’s homoerotic tendencies are rooted in father wounds or childhood sexual abuse. Gay men, in particular, suffer from a wounded sense of their own masculinity, and thus try to compensate by pursuing sex with other men. Alienated from their own manhood, the concept of masculinity becomes “otherized” and thus takes on a sexual charge. The solution can be found in psychotherapy as well as creating healthy, healing bonds with other men that are not sexual in nature (joining a sports team, going camping)…which ultimately can serve to restore the patient's comfort in his own masculine identity.

Surely anyone who isn’t categorically averse to Freudian psychoanalysis can recognize nuggets of truth within this approach. What’s most suspect, then, about reparative therapy is its foundational presuppositions. Its reliance on an essentialist view of sexual orientation, its fixedness as an “identity category,” reflects a highly modern medicalized view of the person. Surely such categorization holds weight on a psychological and cultural/aesthetic level. But the language they use runs the risk of giving the category a stronger, ontological weight that isn’t merited. Urban (Michael) Hannon’s infamous First Things piece sheds light on this issue, which we discussed on the pod.

The prospect of “changing” one’s orientation is a set up for disappointment…especially if a young person is forced into it by their parents. Surely the horror stories pushed out by the liberal media and by films like Boy Erased are not purely the stuff of delusion or ideological propaganda. But that being said, there are several insights worth saving from the failed project of conversion therapy, which Paglia expounds on in her argument for bisexual responsiveness:

I encourage bisexual experimentation, and I want a world in which people, throughout their lives, freely cross the gender lines in love. But it is absurd to say that one, two, or more homosexual liaisons make you "gay" — as if lavender ink ran in your veins. Young women are often attracted to each other during a transitional period when they are breaking away from their parents, expanding their worldviews, and developing their personalities.

It is worthwhile for gays to retrace their developmental steps and, if possible, to investigate and resolve the burden of love-hate they still carry for the opposite-sex parent. Behavior may not change, but self-knowledge — Socrates' motto — is a philosophic value in its own right. If a gay man wants to marry and sire children, why should he be harassed by gay activists accusing him of "self-hatred"? He is more mature than they are, for he knows woman's power cannot be ignored. And if a married man wants to pursue beautiful young men from time to time, why shouldn't he have the same freedom of sexual self-determination as husbands who patronize whores? Why must he be charged with vacillation or evasion, when his eroticism is the most fully developed? If counseling can allow a gay man to respond sexually to women, it should be encouraged and applauded, not strafed by gay artillery fire of reverse moralism. Heterosexual love, as Hindu symbolism dramatizes, is in sync with cosmic forces. Not everyone has the stomach for daily war with nature. 

Surely you might want to take Paglia’s moral conclusions with a grain of salt. And of course such Freudian causation theories rooted in trauma or matters of “nurture” make little consideration for those who have a strong genetic predisposition to homosexuality and thus are what Marc-Andre Raffalovich would call “inverts” (a condition not exactly the same as “gay” or “homosexual”...perhaps more akin to eunuchs). But the points Paglia raises deserve serious consideration, namely that:

1-Exclusive homosexual attraction and the prospect of pursuing a long-term same sex partnership (in a manner mirroring hetero marriage) is a rarity throughout history, even in societies where gay sex was widespread, and is often (though not always) a sign of (in the individual) affective immaturity/arrested development and (in a given society) moral decadence. And that it is noble to attempt to resolve the trauma, woundedness, and internal blocks tied to one’s sexuality (surely this would also be a worthwhile endeavor for str8s with sexual wounds.) 

2-Recognizing the beauty (aesthetically, ontologically) of people of the opposite sex is a marker of healthy development in affective and spiritual maturity. And that the capacity to recognize beauty in others of the same sex indeed has value as well, and that heteros should aspire to develop such a capacity.

I think here of Cara’s monologue about Charles and Sebastian’s friendship in Brideshead Revisited: “I know of these romantic friendships of the English and the Germans. They are not Latin. I think they are very good if they do not go on too long…It is a kind of love that comes to children before they know its meaning. In England it comes when you are almost men…” Sebastian and Charles’ homoerotic tension is clearly rooted in affective immaturity, which Charles grows out of and Sebastian stays tragically stuck in (though of course his tendencies seem to be more deeply rooted in him…a sign of “inversion”). Watch the clip from the film version here.

Her comments about Latins vs. Anglo-Saxons are telling: intimacy in same sex friendships is standard for most Italian males, and isn’t necessarily deemed romantic or sexual. Thus seeing men expressing physical affection on the streets of Rome isn’t automatically a sign that they’re “into” each other…though several Italian guy friends have told me that they had crushes on other guys when they were younger, and didn’t think much of it. And as such an aesthetically oriented culture, it’s not exactly “sus” for people to appreciate the beauty of others of the same sex. 

I also think of Dorothy Day’s experiences of attraction to other women. Her recounting of which provides a sort of chaste Catholic rendering of Paglia’s more decadent pagan argument. As I cited in my piece in America Magazine on Dorothy Day’s sexuality:

Prompted by the occasion of two longtime Catholic Workers coming out to her, she surprisingly opened up about her own experience of same-sex desire. Conflicted between her moral convictions about the procreative end of sex and the exhortation to “judge not,” she decided to examine certain “forgotten” memories in order to better understand love between people of the same sex. She remembers enjoying studying Latin in high school, doing her homework “with great zest,” though history bored her. The only thing exciting about her history class was a girl whose “face was transfigured with intelligence and to me at least seemed to glow.... I loved her. My own studies became more interesting. I worked harder at my studies.” Her crush on the girl “ennobled her in my mind and enlightened me. To me she was the embodiment of Sancta Sophia [Holy Wisdom].”

She remembers feeling a similar sensation after her conversion for a “tall Polish girl, who had a stately beauty, giving an impression of strength. Such strength, I suddenly thought, as the Blessed Mother had when pregnant she walked the hills of Galilee...how contemplation of that Polish girl deepened my faith, and love for Mary.” She remembers having submitted an essay about the experience to a Catholic magazine that rejected it: “[M]aybe they thought charitably that I was an unconscious lesbian and ‘least said, soonest mended.’”

She concluded the diary entry reiterating her moral reservations, but also recognizing that “falling in love...for the first time brings with it a new light on human and even Divine Love. One must be grateful for the state of ‘in-love-ness’ which is a preliminary state to the beatific vision, which is indeed a consummation of all we desire...it is this glimpse of Holy Wisdom, Santa Sophia, which makes celibacy possible, which transcends human love. Oh, if we could only grow in faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these virtues is love.”

I’d also point to the examples of James Dean and James Franco (the “reincarnation” of Dean’s archetype). Both very much masculine and attracted to women, their appreciation of male beauty and sexual experimentation (though morally questionable) embody much of what Paglia is arguing for. Take Dean who once said, “no, I am not a homosexual. But, I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.”

And Franco is no stranger to making frank statements about his sexual fluidity: “Well, I like to think that I’m gay in my art and straight in my life…Although, I’m also gay in my life up to the point of intercourse, and then you could say I’m straight. So I guess it depends on how you define gay. If it means whom you have sex with, I guess I’m straight. In the twenties and thirties, they used to define homosexuality by how you acted and not by whom you slept with. Sailors would f*** guys all the time, but as long as they behaved in masculine ways, they weren’t considered gay.” (Watch Franco’s film I Am Michael on the topic of conversion therapy.)

Paglia’s argument in favor of bisexual responsiveness also serves, in her eyes, a pragmatic function: it offers an alternative solution to gay bashing, one that she deems more rational than PC language policing and pushing for greater tolerance.

All the protesting in the world is not going to stop gay bashing, until gay men understand what the roots of gay bashing are. It's not just homophobia, it's the very nature of masculinity itself, and how imperiled masculinity is in a world that, I have constantly argued, is ruled by women. There are real and legitimate reasons for most men's anxiety about homosexual expression. What I have been trying to do in my work is take the tack of trying to stop the false polarity between gay and straight…The argument in my work is to try to convince heterosexuals that they have in them potential homosexual impulses that are pleasure-giving, and that there is absolutely nothing to fear from now and then expressing them…I think the only way true tolerance will come is for people to be convinced that bisexual responsiveness is a perfectly achievable ideal…I'm trying to convince people that, "So you had sex with another man, oh, big deal." You don't want a situation where [taunting voice], "Oh you had sex with another man? You're really gay! And the fact that you're with a woman now, oh, you're secretly homophobic. You're suppressing you're real instincts." That kind of talk coming from gay activism is shallow, stupid, and self-defeating…There's the idea that [mocking tone] "Oh, you can't change homosexuality, it's innate, how dare you [suggest otherwise]! You're homophobic." Please! If there are gay men who want to develop their ability to respond to women, why not let them? What we should be arguing is the fluidity of sexual response, not its harnessing in these false, opposed categories.

(Surely, I’m not advocating for predominantly opposite sex attracted people to start having gay affairs. It would be most prudent [and chaste] to follow Paglia in principle rather than in deed.)

Lastly, a word about the Kinsey Scale. Most tend to think of sexuality in terms of Alfred Kinsey’s 0-6 scale evaluating people’s sexual attractions, ranging from exclusive heterosexuality (0) to exclusive homosexuality (6). The issue with this scale is that it assesses sexuality according to (a) instinctive/sexual impulses and (b) affective/romantic attraction, ignoring other “layers” or levels of attraction like (c) aesthetic or “artistic” attraction (as in appreciating someone’s beauty), and (d) metaphysical/ontological/spiritual attraction.

As Paglia notes, it may not be realistic for all people to expect to be able to move down (or up) the scale on levels a and b (though no one should be blamed for trying), while aspiring to move on levels c and d is much more realistic and is certainly a noble endeavor. (It’s worth noting that several Paglia-fans have expressed to me that they’ve slid down the Kinsey Scale after reading Sexual Personae and Vamps and Tramps).

From a Christian perspective, point d is perhaps the most worthwhile…though the ultimate goal for a Christian to aspire to (regardless of the way their sexual desire manifests) is to offer their sexuality to God through obedience to their given vocational path (whether consecration or marriage) and to pursue total unity with Him (as Dorothy Day did). At the end of the day, it’s God’s plan for us that matters most, and receiving what he gives us is much more valuable than any of our attempts, noble as they may be, at “self-improvement.” Thus making a “project” out of one’s healing–especially trying to “change” one’s “orientation”–really loses sight of the whole point of it all. 

For more on these topics, check out my articles The (Post-)Pride Reading List, Paglia’s Second Wave, What Paglia Got Wrong, and my podcast episodes on Sexual Personae, Vamps and Tramps, James Dean/Franco, orientation essentialism, on Urban’s article Against Heterosexuality, and Brideshead

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graphic designed by Patrick Keohane @revolvingstyle