Test on sexual orientation.

[_Daniel2]

In my view, tests like this one are entirely too subjective to be a useful measurement of the innateness of any one's actual sexual orientation.

Relying on human answers--within an all-too-limited, concise construct, don't really offer a true, accurate, or whole view of the whys, hows, and whens of human sexuality vs. sexual behavior vs. personal motivation, etc.

For example, this test didn't ask about motivations (I had sexual relations with my wife for eight years--even though I was not innately attracted to doing so--NOT because I WANTED to have heterosexual sex, but because my religious convictions overrode my sexual orientation).

I believe TRUE measurements of one's sexual orientation are documented best by testing involuntary but verifiable biological indicators of sexual arousal (such as the intruments that have been developed to test penile and vaginal-wall blood engorgment, indiciating a sexually-aroused/attracted state) when volunteer subjects view gender-specific pornography related to the orientation being considered and questioned about. Such biologically-based studies are more accurate than individuals' own answers--which are skewed by any image an individual WISHES to project, or the subjects' own self-deception, and are not reflective of the true, innate sexual orientation.

My view,
Darin

[_John Waite]

http://drrobertepstein.com/esoi/

It's kinda funny...in the 1980s there were a lot of academics who said we needed to embrace homosexual behavior since it was "natural" and that most people were not really purely heterosexual. Then in the 1990s it shifted to pushing for acceptance because people were "born that way". I actually feel that it is practically impossible to label homosexuality because it truly is a behavior, not a set, genetic, trait. I would like to elaborate on this a bit more but I challenge people to take the Epstein test and see where they fall -- totally heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual.

Stupidest test ever.

[_Blixa]

[
So what was your score, Blixa? Or did you bother taking the test? Just curious.

I fed it random answers so I could click through the questions and see if it was worth taking. It didn't seem interesting to me, so I didn't bother. The whole issue is much more complex...and by issue, I mean human sexuality itself...than such surveys are usually equipped to handle. Never mind the history of sexuality and the history of theories of sexuality.

[_Fiannan]

I believe TRUE measurements of one's sexual orientation are documented best by testing involuntary but verifiable biological indicators of sexual arousal (such as the intruments that have been developed to test penile and vaginal-wall blood engorgment, indiciating a sexually-aroused/attracted state) when volunteer subjects view gender-specific pornography related to the orientation being considered and questioned about. Such biologically-based studies are more accurate than individuals' own answers--which are skewed by any image an individual WISHES to project, or the subjects' own self-deception, and are not reflective of the true, innate sexual orientation.

Not quite. I read about a study conducted recently on how pornographic images affected women. What that showed was that biologically most heterosexual women get aroused watching two women perform sex on each other. They also get aroused by a man and a woman but not by two men. As for heterosexual males they get aroused watching two women or a man and a woman but not by two men.

Now here is what I consider interesting. In college I had a professor say that a study was conducted on males and pornographic images. When they had no alcohol they did not get aroused by gay porn. However, they were given non-alcoholic drinks they believed were alcohol and they did show arousal when seeing the images. Explain that.

One wonders, if a hard-core KKK guy were shown a pornographic movie with only black women, would he get aroused? Or if a homosexual male had a lap dance from a beautiful woman would he remain totally unaffected?

[_Blixa]

Well, not sure Sigmund or Anna Freud would have agreed with the idea that psychoanalytic thought was so much a "big tent" since Anna occaionally had people kicked out of the organization she led, which not only carried on her father's work, but was extremely influencial in government in the 1940s - 1960s.

Huh? My point was there is no single school of psychoanalytic thought as per your statement, "the psychoanalytic school of thought would say something is going on in the sub conscious..." Obviously, various people have created various organizations. I wonder, though, what government in the 1940's through the 1960's was under the influence of Anna Freud???

The thing is, few people thought about the sub conscious prior to Freud.

Because Freud created the theory of the Unconscious---a theoretical construct, like all his theoretical constructs, which he continually critically refined and remade throughout his life. The Unconscious (and I capitalize it when I teach or write about Freud to distinguish it from the commonsensical notion of a "subconscious") for Freud was part of the price of becoming a social subject, a necessary split impossible to completely access, fathom or "fix." The simplistic notion of "repressed" desires triggering opposite behaviors (I am secretly a homosexual so I hate homosexuals) is a popularized and watered-down mischaracterization of the theory of the Unconscious. That is why I would not call that online survey "freudian."

I would place Freud into the category of those who believe that homosexuals should be treated fairly, but that it is totally improper for the society to equalize it with heterosexuality. He felt that all people were born with a form of bisexuality but that instincts to reproduce, coupled with society's expectations, steered most towards heterosexuality. Other "inverts" as he called them were not to be judged as "sinners" but they were genetic dead-ends.

Freud countered the notion of homosexuality as mere sinful behavior with a theory of it as natural, a natural part of a series of stages through which the socialized heterosexual subject is created. People were not born "bisexual" in Freud's view, but rather come into the world as an unspecified mass of physical desires which eventually become channeled into socially acceptable, and rigid, categories. In other words, the Freudian child is pure sexual possibility, or perhaps just pure desire as even calling such impulses "sexual" is part of the inevitable narrowing down and diminishment of primal desire. Freud saw such processes as inevitable, but also tragic, as a deep form of loss. He did not make moralistic judgments like "it is totally improper for the society to equalize it with heterosexuality." Nor was he concerned with anything or anyone as "genetic dead-ends;" such an idea is completely outside of his work.

My only point here is disentangle Freud from that online survey. I also bristle whenever I see the term "subconcious" in close proximity to the name Freud because it signals a whole host of common misperceptions.

[_Fiannan]

Not quite Blixa. Freud weighed in on the subject of homosexuality when his more "tolerant" collegue, Carl Jung, suggested that society leave homosexuality as an option so that certain types of males, more neurotic, could see homosexuality as an option and not try to marry and have a family. Freud said that if society did this then it would add to confusion as people grew up and refined their sexual aims.

As for Anna Freud's influence chekc the BBC documentary Century of the Self, parts 1-3. Add to this the influence she had through both the Freud's family's prestige coupled with the Tamistock Institute.

Also, I would not be so fast to dismiss reaction formation. Seen too many cases of extreme people hiding what they truly are by behaving opposite to those shameful desires.

Freud also believed the ultimate minifestation of maturity was basically a person growing up, taking an opposite sex mate, and perpetuating the species. Various forms of inversions were chastized as fixations or evidence of not maturing properly through one of hte critical stages.

Freud's basic belief was that the human being was still an animal but had an advanced brain that tried to deny agressive as well as sexual urges -- which were, in his opinion, the main energies that propelled civilization as long as these urges were sublimated towards positive ends. I do believe that Freud would be seen as a total puritain today in how he would judge what we expose society, and children, to.

[_Daniel2]

Not quite. I read about a study conducted recently on how pornographic images affected women. What that showed was that biologically most heterosexual women get aroused watching two women perform sex on each other. They also get aroused by a man and a woman but not by two men.

Although I am skeptical of the results of the study, I'd be interested in reading it. Can you provide a link...?

Now here is what I consider interesting. In college I had a professor say that a study was conducted on males and pornographic images. When they had no alcohol they did not get aroused by gay porn. However, they were given non-alcoholic drinks they believed were alcohol and they did show arousal when seeing the images. Explain that.

My explanation would first depend on you verifying your source. Can you likewise provide a link to the study that you've described in a second-hand account of what this college professor claimed...?

One wonders, if a hard-core KKK guy were shown a pornographic movie with only black women, would he get aroused? Or if a homosexual male had a lap dance from a beautiful woman would he remain totally unaffected?

This first question is rather odd to me, given that I don't think "racial attraction" and "sexual orientation" are always comparable.

As a homosexual male who fathered three children within a heterosexual marriage, I can attest to the fact that "lap dances from beautiful women" are actually totally unaffecting, to me. In fact, the point highlights one of the challenges of these types of tests: it is what is going on inside one's head that most often helps the biological processes fulfill "the measure of their creation" with regards to sexual performance--not what is going on, externally--and sometimes that can be virtually impossible to determine, even in the tests I mentioned previously.

My view,
Darin

[_Fiannan]

Here is an article on the study -- http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=31047

As for the article on male heterosexuals and pornographic images of males I already said that it was something a psychology professor brought up. I doubt the study would be online since it was in the 1980s. It's just like a study I ran across in a graduate level endocrinology class when I was researching the topic of sexual orientation and whether it was a factor of nature or nurture. The study was conducted on women who had been introduced to the swinging lifestyle after the age of 30. All reported that prior to 30 they had not even fatasized about sex with a woman (would presumably scored a 1 or 2 on this test). However, after six months of having sex with various men and women they all reported they were bisexual. While all reported they were in strong marriage relationships with their husbands many reported that they preferred sex with other women. So had they not been in such an environment I suppose they would never have vered away from total and complete heterosexual sex or elf-identification.

I knew an ex-stripper who said that it was common for women who were totally heterosexual to wind up in relationships with women after working in such an environment for a while. Read the same thing in a book for a class in "Deviant Psychology" in college. Again, the environment is a huge factor.
Now is male homosexuality hard wired from the way one is raised early in life -- as Freud suggests, or is it genetic? Guess the results would be the same but the Freudian perspective might leave the possibility of switching orientation open if the person desired it.

[_MCB]

Talking about endocrinology, the assessment did not explore another related issue. I checked "other", because I am celibate. Where is the third scale on intensity of sex drive? I have been accused of lesbianism by men who think that is the reason why I am not very responsive. And I have been anti-male at various points in my life because of those who have penis-brains. Racists who pick up on my Native facial characteristics may have been part of the problem.

I am a two on both scales.

Agreed--people change a lot throughout their lives. I drank to be "normal". <eye roll>