Last October, the UK Office for Equality and Opportunity confirmed its intentions to push forward a bill banning gay conversion therapy. Should Britain prohibit the practice, it would become the 29th country in the world to do so. While some have expressed reservations about the proposal, it is receiving wide support from a variety of advocacy groups, government agencies, and Labour party politicians.
But the debate over conversion therapy is increasingly disconnected from the experience of people who once might have been described as gay. I recently spoke to several men and women in their 20s and 30s who are turned off by both the “born this way” account of identity and by conversion therapy. These people all thought of themselves as exclusively gay during their early adolescence, but have since then developed attraction to people of the opposite sex to varying degrees—and for varying reasons. Their stories don’t fit neatly into pre-existing ideological categories as they are resistant to—as one person put it—having “a label slapped on” their sexuality.
Some started exploring opposite-sex attraction due to bad experiences with the same sex, or due to their frustration with the progressive ideology that they felt treated them as political footballs. Others were creative types who were curious to explore the other side. Some had moral reservations about homosexuality. But all of them welcomed the changes they experienced in their sexual attractions—none of which were the result of conversion therapy.
Several of the men I spoke to told me that their friends and family members had long assumed they were gay due to their interests and affect. Matt (I have excluded the last names of my interviewees to protect their privacy) told me, “the idea that a woman would be interested in a man like me didn’t seem socially possible.” After several negative experiences with male partners who made him “feel very hurt in a serious, foundational way,” he tried dating women, eventually ending up with his current girlfriend. Similarly, Robert told me that he started dating women after going out with several “narcissistic, emotionally immature men,” and feels that both the “born this way” ideology and conversion therapy are disturbingly “puritanical.”
While none of the people I spoke with had tried conversion therapy, some did cite therapy as one of the factors that contributed to their development of attraction to the opposite sex. Lily told me that though she was “completely” gay growing up, she started to find men attractive after starting to see a male therapist in her early 20s, which made her feel “less cut off from” men. Diana sang the praises of exploratory therapy, which unlike conversion therapy, is “a type of person-centered practice which leaves space for people to grow and change, especially if they are coming to therapy without an actual clear sense of identity.”
“Smacking a label on someone before they are cognitively or developmentally ready is a red flag.”
Diana—who at first identified as bi, then as a lesbian, and now as mostly straight—went on to say that “therapy needs to be a place of deep and full exploration of yourself, your past, your present, your future, your family, your complexes,” and that “smacking a label on someone before they are cognitively or developmentally ready is a red flag.” Nathaniel expressed similar reservations about the way he feels the “vapid politics of queer ideology” has been pushed more overtly in recent years. He also admitted to starting to “experience more interest in the opposite sex” after making “a conscious effort to stop consuming porn.”
While most of the people I spoke to were not particularly religious, some said that beginning to practice religion played a role in their shifts in desire. Sven told me that his experience of heterosexual desire coincided with his move from a city with an active gay scene to a more rural area where he started attending mass again. Jason, who started discerning monastic life after converting to Catholicism, found himself “attracted to certain women and desiring a girlfriend”—an awakening he initially found “confusing, suspicious, and quite distressing.” Since then, Jason has enjoyed dating several women, though he still finds men to be attractive, and told me that he does not “identify with a sexual orientation.”
Others’ experiences of change echoed certain classical Freudian tropes about the genesis of homosexual desire. Some cited how healing from experiences of childhood sexual abuse and of dysfunctional relationships with their parents played a role in the development of opposite-sex attraction. A few explicitly stated that their experience of change was partly due to reading about Freud’s ideas by way of the writings of cultural critic Camille Paglia. Eric told me that it was after watching Jordan B. Peterson’s interview with Paglia—in which they spoke about Freud’s observation that many gay men grew up with overbearing mothers and emotionally removed fathers—that he decided to distance himself from his mom and start exploring the prospect of experiencing heterosexual desire.
He emphasized that unlike those who seek out conversion therapy, his experience of change had nothing to do with the pursuit of purity, but rather was driven by the allure of “profanity and raunchiness,” which he believes are repressed by our “very censored world.” In addition to adjusting his family dynamic, he found that experimenting with drugs and straight porn made him start to find women attractive. Despite his shifts in desire, he emphasized that he “wasn’t trying to become straight,” but rather “was trying to resolve his conflicted sexuality.”
The people I spoke to had a variety of views on the moral nature of homosexuality. Though Nathaniel is fed up with “queer ideology,” he indicated that he’s not morally opposed to homosexuality itself, but rather to its being normalized. Sven thinks “gays can play an important role in society and should be allowed to live freely and in peace (in private), but they should not be celebrated.” And while Jason believes gay sex is “intrinsically disordered and sinful,” he also thinks it’s “tragically cool and fascinating.”
While the legal battle over conversion therapy rages on, much of what’s happening on the ground is more nuanced and harder to categorize. Perhaps it is time for us to begin making space in the public discourse for those whose experiences don’t fit into conventional “pro-gay” or “ex-gay” boxes.