Technology

The reverse isn't really true [...]

If heterosexual people could learn to enjoy homosexual stuff why shouldn't homosexual people be able to learn to enjoy heterosexual stuff? In your words: they only have to put their mind to it.

There's solid evidence that homo-/heterosexuality in men strongly correlates with androgen hormone levels of the mother during pregnancy. Of course that is not binary. But if you are on either end of the spectrum you will not learn to enjoy the other. For women homosexuality is not as well (medically/biolgically) understood. But all research I know points to there being a deciding predisposition just like in men. Now, if of course you're on one side but not an end of the spectrum and have not had exposure/opportunity to discover that you might enjoy something that runs contrary to your perceived sexuality, it might feel like you're making an active effort to change/expand on your sexuality when the opportunity arrives and you decide to take it. The truth is, that for a substantial amount of men you can predict with 100% certainty that they will either be exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual simply by measturing their mothers androgen hormone levels during pregnancy. Again, you can discover, and also nurture and develop, your sexuality, but you cannot change it; only repress it.

[...] as repressing innate desire requires neurosis, [...]

I don't think so. Somebody repressing or hiding his (for example) homosexuality doesn't require neurosis. "Only" an environment that's out to kill them for it, like parts of Africa.

[...] while learning to enjoy something you don't instinctively enjoy very much doesn't.

I think our main issue might be language. You keep talking about learning and I keep talking about discovering. I never made a decision to like big tits. I didn't "learn" to enjoy them. Thanks to the internet I was presented with a buffet of almost all the porn industry has to offer. I saw everything, but big tits particularly appealed to me, so then I saught out that content deliberately. No doubt reinforcing that taste of mine, but the wiring was already there, before I knew it. You might say that I learned to love big tits. And to that I'd say: wrong. I discovered that I like big tits! Learning requires intent, and there was no intent whatsoever in me realizing I like big tits.

You can't go down the road of neurosis open-eyed and that "setting your mind to it" bit requires insight into your own mind so the two are at odds with each other. If it happens then that's ordinary repression, not a voluntary choice.

That's too esoteric for me or I do not understand at all what you're trying to say here

And even if it was true then conversion therapy would still be psychological torture:

Yes.

Nothing about conversion therapy is "setting one's mind to it", just like setting out to not dislike cleaning the toilet is not the same as someone flushing your head.

I guess I agree? I don't see how this relates to anything I said, though.

Or, differently put: Don't shove something down someone's throat that they don't already enjoy inhaling. SCNR.

Exactly my point. Predisposition and discovery. SCNR ;-)

And then of course there's the whole issue of why. Why change that stuff?

See, I'd say that's the wrong question. At least to begin with. Is change possible? If the answer is no, there's no point in asking why you would want that change.

Of course people might have individual reasons (which might be as simple as learning a psychological circus trick for the heck of it), but that doesn't mean that a social norm to have a particular sexuality (short of consent issues) makes any amount of ethical sense.

I fear you've lost me again. I really don't know what you're trying to convey here.

You valued it negatively all those years and presumably never tried to do the opposite, it's no wonder you continue to dislike it. And why would you, there's no reason to.

You're missing the point. Out of the wonderful bouqet of pornography I picked what I liked. That way I found out what I liked. I am absolutely sure that even if I tried to like foot fetish porn I would fail. The "set your mind to it part" is nonsense in this context. That's not how sexuality works.

All I'm saying is that the plasticity is there, not that it's particularly common that people use it.

I agree to some extent. Everybody has some basic sexual wiring (read orientation) whithin which one can take different routes to develop ones own sexuality. The end result could be very distinct but the way to it is not a conscious process. You can consciously choose to try something new, but you can't choose whether you like it or not.

Nothing is 100% reliable, and the purely sexual can only be a part of the overall solution. Additional things include making affected recognise the impossibility of consent, the amount of damage their behaviour would cause, and if that alone doesn't convince them that they should gladly distract themselves there's some ways to get a bit of a handle on dark triad traits though TBH the bigger bully argument works most reliably: Criminalisation. OTOH it would be naive to only crack the whip of criminal law without offering people aid in how to avoid it.

Partly to mostly agree. I think we're on the same page that criminalizing being pedophile helps noone, though. CSAM already is illegal. Long arc back to the beginning: I doubt the measures described in the article have any meaningful impact.