I question the utility of transorientation. It feels like it’s based on a misframing of what orientation is and how it works. I certainly understand the desire to change the sort of sex you can emotionally handle, but we already have a very excellent model for this from regular queers: internalized phobia. Your orientation is already “the direction you move towards.” That’s what the word means completely out of the context of sex, and it’s used to describe sexual desire because you generally spend your life “moving towards” the sexual partners you want. Unless, of course, you hate yourself for it, because God said don’t fuck that way. You don’t have to think of it as God; if there’s something stopping you, I promise that’s what it is, because the fake bullshit anglocapitalist protestant God is ultimately source of all modern mind control.

With that said, I also don’t hate it? I can see how maybe saying it this way could be a sort of shorthand? I just want you to be aware of the sort of things psychs would be likely to say about this idea. With more cussing and criticism of the status quo.

An important reason why I don’t think it’s a great idea though is that it strongly implies that a desire to reduce one’s range of attraction would also be valid. You know, the whole “I wish I didn’t want this illegal thing.” This is how you get to the normie framing of treating it like an addiction. This would be paramisia!

  • KnotweilerOP
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    3 months ago

    That mostly seems to be the case here so far, sure. The issue is that if this concept exists, it includes the other direction.

    To the extent there is a physiological default, it’s unfettered pansexuality. I feel like a better framing is to view orientation as a set of rules to try to get rid of.