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alienist comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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It may not always work, or even usually, but it worked for someone I know.
Eh, it's not that it has a 100% failure rate, the main issue is that it very frequently has utterly catastrophic mental health consequences. Trying to change your sexuality is dangerous. As in "has a significant chance of killing you".
There are reasons the lbgt community is so down on attempts at curing the gay - "suicides and mental breakdowns".
I'm not aware of any statistics on the results of people trying to become gay, but a: I would be surprised if enough people have tried this to make a valid sample. and b: I do not recommend the experiment for obvious reasons of safety.
There are safe..ish. ways to turn sexuality off entirely, but just being gay is not generally enough for people to want to volunteer for those.
I've met enough people who reported their sexuality changing over time that I wouldn't be shocked if tommorow a pharma announced an novel sideeffect / off-label use for the latest anti-depressant of resetting your sexuality to "Healthy adult humans" but the history of attempts at deliberate intervention in this field is horrifying.
As opposed to, you know, ordinary tribal feelings against defection. There are elements in the deaf community that oppose attempts to cure deafness as well.
Those too, but the negative impact and severe paucity of efficiency are quite real enough. About the only people still trying this today are religiously motivated quacks, with predictably depressing results, but even the historical attempts by people honestly trying to help as opposed to following the mandates of their imaginary friends in the sky had very bad results. Sometimes sexuality shifts over time. We have nothing even resembling a clue why, or how to do that deliberately.
If you tell me you know people conversion therapy worked for, I will not doubt you. People given chalk tablets for treatment routinely get better from very fatal diseases in double blind studies Not often, but it happens.
This does not mean chalk tablets are a panacea. Or, you know, medicine at all.
Details? What exactly did they do, and how large was the change? How long ago was it?