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!
Orientation refers strictly to desire. Arousal is what your body does, and it categorically does not have an orientation.
It’s important to remember that a consequence of the gender binary not being real is binary attraction not being real, either. The physiological default is pan, with a lean towards one gender or another that would put the vast majority of people at either Kinsey 2 or 4 if the world weren’t yelling at them about it all the time. An orientation is effectively the filter your internalized phobias apply to your personal taste.
Yes. It is psychologically incorrect. Reducing one’s sexuality causes harm to the mind and body for no gain. Well… You do become more normie- and especially Christian-passing. That can be a pretty big gain, socially, but if you’re willing to rip out parts of yourself for that, yes, I would call it morally wrong.
If you’re claiming you reduced a desire on purpose and it did you no harm, I frankly just don’t believe you. You’re disregarding a harm that was done. “Wanting something you’re not supposed to” is the essence of a moral conflict. You don’t get in a moral conflict with yourself without suffering. You may not have framed it as one, because it’s the most common thing ever to apply standards to oneself that one would not apply to others. That’s what it is though; the moral system you feel, as opposed to the one you think, still hates you.
There are times when an addiction, compulsion, or dependency makes it necessary to reduce a behavior, and time away from something that has that kind of hook in you can make the desire less intense over time. This is because that kind of desire is not something built into your body, the way a sex drive is.
Most psychs worth talking to are skeptical about the mainstream approach to addiction in general, but especially with respect to sex. “Sex addiction” is more propaganda than psychology. The scientifically supported way to deal with desires that would be harmful if realized is to sublimate, i.e., fictionalize them. Art, literature, consensual fantasy play. You cannot get rid of the desire in a healthy way. You must manage the behavior.
No. Conversion therapy always seeks to reduce. The term was invented to describe the attempt to reduce, remove, or replace homosexuality. They always try to give you a het partner at some point, because “replace” is seen as the most humane and successful form of it and most importantly you’re doing your duty to anglocapitalism by making Christian babies. But they fully expect you to not actually have sex with that partner 99% of the time because they know that it doesn’t actually work and you’re just powering through dysphoria the whole time you’re continuing with the charade they put you in.
And the queers do it, too. Sissy hypno doesn’t work so I’m not mad at it, but it is literally fantasy play conversion therapy to make you gay instead of straight. There’s no cultural phenomenon of people having a particular way of trying to make others bi or pan, because almost nobody does that by any method other than just being a slut. Coercively altering peoples’ sexuality, either as fantasy or for real, is pretty much always about taking away a targeted part of it. You can’t really add things; they’re already there, buried under your current orientation.
Not this one. Thinking that it is generally good to be able to change what you want is a category error. That being a thing people can do would just put a bullet in even the appearance of free will. Very quickly, the socially acceptable answer to you disliking anything about your life would be to change what you like and deal with it. It’s easier and more convenient to everyone else than fixing your silly fake problem. You totally didn’t need legs.
If you think that’s the same logic, you’re effectively saying internalized phobias do not exist. I don’t think you can believe that unless you’re straight. How can you not have noticed it happening to you, otherwise?
It definitely is not the same logic, however, simply because orientation and gender are not similar. A person’s gender is the region on a spectrum between “male” and “female” that they are most comfortable living in. Orientation is a set of rules society makes you follow instead of “I do what I want.” Gender presentation certainly has lots to do with that kind of bullshit as well, but gender itself is more directly affected by genetic and neurological factors which cannot be socialized away. Being transsexual (I use this word in this case specifically because I’m talking about people who medically transition) is inherently different from other forms of transid because none of the other ones are something it makes any kind of sense to take a pill about.
This is a really, really, really bad approach for transrace specifically but I don’t think I want to elaborate because I have a feeling that discussion will get so awful I’ll get banned.
It’s pretty pointless to say you want something that you think the correct amount of time spent on it, even in your brain, is zero. That’s the opposite of wanting it. That’s some POCD nonsense. You’re describing an intrusive thought rather than a desire at that point.
Also, if you value sex that little, I think it’s fair to call it sex negativity. Of course that’s not good or healthy.