Gender confusion a symptom of borderline personality disorder

Again, we fail to communicate. I do not deny that training is an important component of achievement in most of these areas. You seem to be denying that anyone is born with ANY physiological bias in any direction. I doubt you believe this, so I think you are oversimplifying.

As a boy, I loved table tennis, and I practiced several hours a day. I joined the local club, and played against the best in the city. And I watched kids younger than I, who could barely score a point off me when they started, soon match and then exceed my skills, with FAR less practice than I put in, and against weaker opponents to boot. If you can't see that this is talent they had and I lacked, and think it's entirely environmental, then I can't talk to you at all.

 

Hopefully, your concerns are moot most of the time. The children well discover their own intractable sexual orientations in due time, and nothing the parent does or fails to do beforehand will change a thing -- EXCEPT that a thoughtful parent might counsel their kids that they might be advised to disguise nonstandard orientations as a defense against hostile bigots.

 

Yeah, I know. People for some reason think sexual orientation is a choice (EXCEPT for themselves, of course). And they think it's a terrible choice. So somebody must be to blame. If the gay peson is young, blame the parents. If he's old enough to have changed his "choice" and chose not to, then blame him. I don't understand the sheer intensity of antagonism - do they themselves feel threatened? Overly righteous? Or (and here is where crank is correct) was this hatred trained into them as children by misguided parents?

 

You are right, I know at that age, 10 years old, the only comfort and sympathy I had was from my best friend, I see all the hostility aimed at LGBT kids today and is it any wonder so many of them commit suicide ???

I felt lots of misplaced hostility when I related my account, and it was sad, I had hoped it might help someone, Perhaps I should have kept my big fat mouth shut, just as I did when I was naught but ten years old.

 

Why would a parent even be thinking about a child's future sexuality? It's not their concern. It's not the child's concern, at age 8 or 10. Do such parents also burden their kids with just how stressful it is to have a mortgage, or hold down a job when your boss is an (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) and your colleagues are loafers? Do they talk to them about how it feels to be clinically depressed and on meds? Do they encourage them to consider how divorce feels? How about alcoholism?

PS: Your parents didn't avoid the topic, they said plenty on it. Hence your confusion. I'm saying parents are better off not mentioning it at all - either way. Doing so only reveals your bias (either way), and adult biases on such deeply personal things have no business influencing kids.

 

I don't think it's a choice, so I'm not sure who you're referring to.

Also, you're revealing your own learned bias in demonising those who have every right and reason to believe it's a choice.

 

A thoughtful parent won't turn their maybe gay kid into a hostile bigot by suggesting that anyone who disagrees with him is a monster.

 

However, there is one factor overlooked here, real attraction is spontaneous, like a petrol fire, I had no idea until it happened, my heart beat like a trip hammer, I blushed and stammered like an idiot, before that, I had no clue, then POW ! After that, I noticed more and more.

It is not a choice, at age 10, I had no real idea about attraction until it happened, at a funeral no less !

 

It made Me understand the folly of confessing, Gee Mom, there is this boy I am in with.

And they would have split us up too !

So yeah, a parent does influence their children to not tell their parents everything.

 

yes, but parents really shouldn't conduct an inquisition on their kid's early crushes. how positively awful for the child. and how utterly pointless - other than as some sort of control exercise on the part of the parent (cunningly disguised as concern and support). crushes are as natural as farting. we all have them when young, no one needs instructions or complex adult thinking applied to them. they're biological imperatives, just like farting.

- - - Updated - - -

Yours did, because they made their biases plain. What does the effeminate straight boy do when his parents are convinced he's gay, and even unconsciously reveal their satisfaction that he 'is'?

 

Yeah, poor examples all, my parents, well Mom mostly, conducted the Spanish Inquisition, we spoke Spanish, Spain etc..... I did not have a crush, a crush does not last 10 years two shillings and sixpence, and yes there was concern and support, just not in the manner I needed.

 

so it wasn't concern and support. it was adult bias. genuine unbiased support would be forthcoming even for things parents personally are opposed to. example, if rainbow flag waving parents had a kid who expressed his considered disdain for homosexuality at age 14 or 15, what ought those parents do about it? tell him he's wrong and bad for thinking that way? or would they regard his right to his own opinion? we're not talking about an active homophobe/latent type situation, simply a philosophical one. do these 'well meaning' parents respect his right to a different opinion from theirs? how about politics? hard left leaning parents raise a kid to think for himself and he decides he's a hard right conservative. do they respect his right to make that choice, or do they 'support' him by demonising his choice (gently and with the a veneer of concern, naturally)? or the atheist parents .. when a kid decides in their teen years to dabble in Christianity. will he have their support?

 

I'm referring to those who think it's a choice, of course.

It is NOT a choice. This is no longer even regarded as a legitimate position. This has by now risen to the level of incontrovertible fact. So what remains to be done is to correct those who fall into this error, and that probably means trying to understand WHY they have fallen into this error.

You speak of "right and reason", and this lumps together two very different aspects of philosophy. There is no valid reason to think it's a choice, since it is not. At all. But I suppose there might be a philosophical issue as to whether we have the "right" to hold opinions contrary to fact. Surely we do, but there are problems with people believing known falsehoods and then imposing laws enforcing those falsehoods on others. Somehow this strikes me as poor policy, guaranteed to lead to trouble sooner or later.

 

I'm not sure I can parse this. What do you mean? The hostile bigots are those gays face in everyday life. Parents might possibly turn gay children into anti-gay bigots with a big religious stick. People like Ted Haggard and Eddie Long fulminated against gays from the pulpit for years, while having male lovers on the side. But these are surely not people to be admired.

 

In the words of Crosby, Stills and Nash:

Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would die
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.

(from Teach Your Children)

 

I come across bigots (in regards to LGBT issues) all the time. Here and elsewhere. They actively demonise any who hold a different opinion. They actively despise and belittle those who don't think exactly as they do, always claiming the moral and intellectual high ground (while shouting insults and slurs). They very often arrive at this 'high' ground via emotions and a desire to appear virtuous. Just like fundamentalist Christians.

 

I agree there ought be no laws preventing people from having the same rights as his her fellows. Beyond that, there is merely a cultural and popular imperative to demonise private opinion if it differs in the least. That is worse than religious fundamentalism, because it's not contained by media etc.

And there is considerable quality work on environment being the key in this, and in other 'innate' conditions like autism. People who are interested enough in these things should research both arguments and positions, else they are merely behaving as ideologues. How is ideology helpful to progress? It demands a particular position while shunning reasonable alternatives. But yes, we are entitled to hold different opinions. I will not demonise someone who believes homosexuality is entirely a choice, even though I differ on this. There is enough evidence to suggest there is some grey area on this to allow that (albeit slight) possibility, and I will assume those who believe it have thought it through - something few rainbow ideologues appear willing to do.

 

Well, you all don't get it I suppose, none of you were ever in the fix I was in, there was no way on this Green Earth / Terra, that My parents would support My telling them of Us, day-em if people here could not hear of it without freaking the flock out, today something in the past, 30 years ago !!! Imagine how that would have worked out, no, I handled it well, We had weekends, Summer, most Holidays, and it was so special, I couldn't wait for him to get home !

Even better., when I visited his home......
I think his Mom sussed on to us, however, She never let on She knew, Her smile was a give away.....

 

Insanity is a legal defense in criminal court.

 

A big maybe, spend some time in Court, the McNaughton defense is one approach, to indicate the inability to know right from wrong at the time of an act, or diminished capacity, and sometimes a jury will find a person not guilty by reason of insanity, such as a person that comes back from a War, and suddenly thinks he is back in the War etc....

 

I have noticed the same thing. Tolerance is not infinitely extensible, I think. Even pacifists must occasionally defend themselves, and the most tolerant societies survive only by placing strict limits on their tolerance. I personally have limits where people are actively injuring others, either directly or indirectly. If the goal is to do injury (however sincerely one believes their intentions are good), then I find this a good place to limit my tolerance.

 

Not all beliefs are the same, and not all are arbitrary personal idiosyncrasies. Some beliefs are simply WRONG. In this particular case, there doesn't seem to be any gray area. "Reparative therapy" was undertaken by people who were truly desperate to "choose to be straight". Some of them subjected themselves to this program several times. It always failed. Always. Sexual orientation is not a choice. It's permanent, lifelong. When there is no alternative, dubbing some impossibility "reasonable" doesn't change the reality.

As far as I know, the jury is still out on autism (which might be a term being applied to a range of conditions, possibly with a range of different causes).

 

Autism is defined as a wide range of signs, the DSM-5 contains current information.
Asperger's syndrome is defined as a type of Autism disorder.

https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/diagnosis/dsm-5-diagnostic-criteria

http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html

 

No, insanity is a legal defense. No maybe about it.

 

Of course not all beliefs are equal. Some people believe there's a magical invisible jewish man in the sky watching them poop, for example. Some believe that a woman's place is in the home, uneducated. Some believe that grown men and young boys can form romantic and sexual relationships. But being unconvinced that homosexuality is innate is nowhere near any of these. Not even on the same planet. More importantly, those who've elected to believe that it IS innate, are very uncomfortable with the idea of anyone who doesn't believe the same. They often react very badly to the idea of it even being up for debate. Reactions are similar (if not identical) to those seen in religious people when asked to 'question god'. That is deeply worrying, for obvious reasons.

Who said anything about 'reparative therapy'? But since it's been mentioned, why would that be evidence of genetics? Heroin addicts also have a very poor history with rehab programs, so ought we assume being high on smack is something we're genetically predisposed to? There is as much evidence for homosexuality being an addiction which forms early in life, as there is for genetics. I'm not saying it's a better argument, but I am saying none of these possibilities should be ruled out simply to please the ideologues. These are NOT the people we want to be driving us forward. We want open debate and unfettered research.