What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [78]
It is tempting to put forward the same theory for female homosexuality, viewing it as slight masculinization of a 46XX female fetus. I will resist the temptation for now. Too little research has been done on lesbians to know. It is possible, but still uncertain, that lesbianism is the mirror image of male homosexuality. There is evidence for a sizable genetic contribution to lesbianism: Out of a sample of more than one hundred female twins, one of whom was lesbian, the second twin was lesbian in 51 percent of the identical twins, but only in 10 percent of the fraternal twins. There is no evidence as yet, however, that the anterior hypothalamus is larger in lesbians than in straight women. No one has looked because lesbians, fortunately, are not dying in great numbers from AIDS. Even the rat evidence is clearer for male than for female rats. Finally, there are no outcome studies of change of sexual orientation in therapy with lesbians.12
Homosexuality and therapy. Can exclusive male homosexuality change? Many homosexuals are happy with their sexuality and don’t want to change. In contrast, a man who is unhappy with his homosexuality is called an ego-dystonic homosexual, and he typically comes to therapy depressed, desperately wanting to change his sexual orientation. He wants to have children, he can’t bear the stigma of being “queer,” and he despises the promiscuity he perceives in the single, homosexual world. Twenty-five years ago, behavior therapists gave this problem their best effort, ignoring the clinical lore declaring that psychotherapy has no effect on homosexuality.
They tried using sexually arousing pictures of naked men flashed on a screen followed by a long, painful electric shock. When the shock went off, the picture of an attractive woman appeared. The idea was to make sex with men aversive and sex with women more attractive by pairing women with relief.
“Hopelessly naive,” you’re probably thinking. Actually, it worked surprisingly well. Around 50 percent of men so treated lost interest in men and began having sex with women. A great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality swept over the therapeutic community. On closer inspection, the findings turned out to be flawed—but revealingly so. When a man was bisexual—sometimes had sexual fantasies about women—therapy usually worked. But when a man was exclusively homosexual, therapy usually failed.13
Exclusive homosexuality and exclusive heterosexuality are very deep. Lack of change in therapy, lifelong fantasies of one sex only, anterior hypothalamus withered, high concordance of identical twins, and fetal development all point to an inflexible process. Homosexuality is not quite as deep and unchangeable as transsexuality, however. MF transsexuals almost never marry women and have natural children, whereas homosexual men sometimes marry and have children. They manage this feat by a trick of fantasy. During sex with their wives, they manage to stay aroused and climax by having fantasies about homosexual sex (just as heterosexual men restricted to homosexual release in prison do). So some measure of flexibility is available to exclusively homosexual men—they can choose whom they perform with sexually, but they cannot choose whom they want to perform with.
Layer III: Sexual Preference: Breasts, Buttocks, and Bisexuals
Do you remember the first time you saw an oyster, glistening slimily on half its shell, and somebody suggested that you eat it? “What, put that repulsive thing in my mouth?” you probably thought, and shriveled inwardly.