Words: 3712
They are discriminated, violated, and experimented unnecessary medical procedures such as shock and brain surgery Just to prove that being nonsexual is Just a perception of the mind. But nowadays people are slowly accepting homosexuals in the society. In America and some countries in Europe and Asia, homosexuality is already accepted and legalized. But here in the Philippines, it is impossible to legalize homosexuality since it is a Christian country. Homosexuality is the generic term used to denote sexual responsiveness to members of the same sex. People thought that homosexuality is a mental disorder.
A lot of researches about homosexuality are conducted. Homosexuality had been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray homosexuals are disturbed, several decades of researches and clinical experiences have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations to conclude that these orientations represents normal forms of human sexuality. Homosexual. It attempts solutions on the mainstream issue that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. The main purpose of this paper to inform people what homosexuality really is.
Its contents are about discussing the facts about homosexuality, and its theories that proves that homosexuality is not a kind of mental crosier. All in all, this paper is very remarkable because people will know the truth about homosexuality. The contents of this paper came from different books on the library – books about Psychology and Social Issues. Some of the sources came from famous sites in the internet and some organizational websites that is concerned about homosexuality. What is homosexuality? The term ‘homosexuality was coined in the late 19th century by a German psychologist, Karol Maria Bennett.
Homosexuality (from Ancient Greek Г??p;q, meaning “same”, and Latin sexes, meaning “sex”) is romantic attraction, sexual attraction or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As an orientation, homosexuality refers to “an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectionate, or romantic attractions” primarily or exclusively to people of the same sex. It also refers to an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them.
Based on Dry. Vincent Berger, (2005) the terms Gay, Lesbian, and Homosexuality refer to sexual and romantic attraction between individuals of the same sex. A homosexual may or may not identify themselves as gay or lesbian. Homosexuality, as an identifier, is usually contrasted with heterosexuality and bisexuality. The term gay is used predominantly to refer to self-identified homosexuals of either sex. Lesbian is a gender-specific term that is only used for self-identified homosexual females. Dry.
Vincent Berger added that, “Gay” in modern usage usually refers to homosexual men or women. Gay sometimes also refers to the culture of homosexual men and women (as in “gay history”), to things perceived by others to be typical of ay people (as in “gay music”), or to same-sex more generally (as in “gay marriage”). Most people consider gay and homosexual to be synonyms. Note that while Gay applies to men and women equally, the term lesbian is gender-specific and is used exclusively to describe homosexual women. There is no corresponding word for gay men.
According to Sanchez and Gaps, (2009) homosexuality on the other hand is the generic term used to denote sexual responsiveness to members of the same sex. Although more often used to describe erotic attachment among men, it is also technically encompasses female-female or lesbian relationships. While homosexuality is practiced in a variety of ways, it is not the activity itself that earns Based on Solaced, et al. , (1999) Many common terms are used to designate the homosexuals like gays, queer, queen, Becky, baklava, abbot for males and for women, tomboy, pointblank, T-boom, Tambala’s, and lesbian, etc.
Origin and Nature of Homosexuality With the birth of modern psychiatry, homosexuality has come to be viewed more as a sickness than a sin. Ideas about the origin and nature of homosexuality were once based solely on the study of maladjusted psychiatric patients. Theories rived from such researches have suggested that disorders in family relationships, that is, between parent and child (either between mother and son or between father and son) account for homosexual behavior. According to Sanchez and Gaps, (2009) the development of adult heterosexuality is a long complex process.
Because of the numerous factors which influence this development, many people fail to achieve normal sexual adjustment and the result is homosexuality. Psychologists cite the following factors: Glandular disturbance. On the study of male homosexuals, Emerson and Newscast (1972) found a relationship between a homosexual behavior and the amount of sex hormones (androgen and estrogen) in the blood. However, not all homosexuals exhibit similar disturbance, and individuals have made changes from homosexual behavior to normal heterosexual adjustments without altering the glandular imbalance.
Genetic Causes. The search for understanding has advanced considerably with the release of some new studies that make the most compelling case states that homosexual orientation is partly genetic (German & Park, 1993). This viewpoint lacks conclusive evidence. To some psychologists it is erroneous to conclude that homosexuals are born this way. Every child has an inherent tendency toward homosexuality or heterosexuality. Either one is developed in the formation of his personality. Dominant mother and weak father. When such personalities are paired together, an unhealthy situation is intensified.
The son cannot look up to his father to become a man. He may then lose respect for his father and his own sex. This is heightened when the dominant mother having strong masculine component in her personality stifles and belittles the masculinity of the husband and son. Overindulgent mother. Her overindulgence leads the boy to develop a strong attachment to his mother which he is unable to break as he grows older. He feels that no girl can measure to his mother and he does not develop normal heterosexual friends. Cruel or detached parents.
The cruelty of the father or the mother arouses the child’s ill feelings and results to the inability to establish adequate heterosexual persons of his own sex. This is further strengthened if the child is strictly forbidden to mix with the opposite sex. In a discussion of “Homosexuality: The Ethical Challenge,” author Irving Bibber tastes that the conclusion of a major study was that male homosexuality would not evolve, given a loving, constructively related father. If either the father or the mother has a passive, detached hostile relationship, this may also result to homosexual behavior.
This is because the individual who in his childhood was deprived of affection from the parent of the same sex would in later life crave for the affection (the touch, the embrace, the care) of one belonging to his/her sex. Overt Homosexual. A situation at times may present a dilemma to individuals whose homosexuality is at first latent. Under circumstances in which the individual has no access to the opposite sex, accidental or pseudo homosexuality frequently occurs. Overt homosexuality is developed. This is found in the military, prisons, and exclusive schools.
Its occurrence demonstrates the ability to substitute a sexual object for another and the role of frustration in the precipitating such as substitution. The three theories of the causes of homosexuality According to Solaced, et al. , (1999) There are at least three theories of the causes of homosexuality: Biological Theory. Homosexuality is inborn: therefore it is determined upon rite as opposed to the sociological theory which believes that homosexuality is a socially conditioned. Another biological claim is that imbalance between the male and female hormones results in homosexuality.
It is claimed that every individual has both male and female hormones. Homosexual men have been found to have a lower level of male hormones compared to heterosexual type. Lesbians or female homosexuals have a low level of female hormones. According to Dry. Trait I Jazz, M. D. , A number of investigators have suggested that hormonal alterations during prenatal life may influence sexual preference in unmans and use data from rat and Guiana pig experiments to support their claim. The experiments conducted describe the interaction of sex hormones on the developing brain, particularly the region known as the hypothalamus.
For instance, when female rats are administered male hormones pre-notably, they exhibit male sexual behavior during adulthood. Similarly, when male rats are pre-notably administered a steroid drug to counteract the self-produced male hormone, the animals exhibit female sexual behavior. That homosexuality may originate due to similar pre-natal hormonal derangement’s. However, the rodent model of human homosexual behavior has serious flaws, and extrapolation of rodent behavior observations to psychological processes in humans is difficult.
The rodent behaviors described are mating postures which are under rigid endocrine control and reflex-like, and may be induced, for example by a touch from a researcher’s hand. Such posturing can be inhibited by blocking certain hormone receptors, and the frequency of such mating postures which a rat may assume over a period of time is related to the level or number of certain hormone receptors. Motivated sexual behaviors in humans are not under such rigid endocrine control, rendering the rat model questionable. Such a hormonal theory also cannot explain the shifts in sexual preference humans may have over time.
Furthermore, in human syndromes involving pre-natal male hormone deficiency in males or excess male hormones in females during pre-natal life (either as a result of drugs given to the mother or a genetic condition), there is no evidence of predisposition to homosexuality. These facts show that in humans, learning and socio-cultural influences plays the role and not biologic pre-determinism. In female rodents the hormone estrogen acts on the hypothalamus and exerts negative and positive feedback on the release of a hormone known as Latinizing hormone (LA).
A low level of estrogen inhibits LA release (negative feedback) and high levels trigger LA release (positive feedback). In male rodents estrogen only exert a negative feedback on LA release. Administration of estrogen to normal female rats and castrated male rats at birth will result in an LA surge. However, an LA surge will not occur with estrogen administration in adult females given male hormones at time of their birth or males castrated as adults. Thus it is believed male hormones have an effect on the developing rat brain and abolishes the ability of estrogen to exert positive feedback on LA release.
Two groups of researchers in the asses and asses claimed to find stronger feedback affect in homosexual men than heterosexual men, postulated to be from deficiency of prenatal hormones. The difficulty again, however is extrapolation of hormonal controls in rats to humans, and primates in general. There is laboratory evidence that the rat model of estrogen-hypothalamus interactions do not apply to humans and primates and in introduction to previous studies, no correlation was found between the magnitude of the feedback effect of estrogen and human sexual preference in subsequent studies.
Previous studies showing evidence of differences in hormonal feedback affects in homosexuals and heterosexuals reflect experimental artifacts and possible differences in testicular function due to drugs, alcohol, or ageing which were not controlled for. A third biological belief is that homosexuality is not very different from left- handedness and certain allergies that parents cannot control. Organs. This is a hermaphrodite. When his feminine traits become more excessive and he develops an overpowering desire to be woman, he may submit to an operation. This case is more often found in the male.
Psychiatric Theory. Psychiatry assumes that homosexuality is a form of mental disorder. The male fears the female and vice versa. The individual feels seeks to the company of someone belonging to his own sex. The difference between the homosexuals and the non-homosexuals (the straights) is in their sexual preferences. This leads to the idea that since preference for the same sex is not “normal” homosexuality is a disease or mental disorder. Another psychiatric belief is that a young male may become homosexual if the mother is domineering, overprotective and seductive while the father is weak, detached or hostile.
A girl may become lesbian if she identifies too much with her father and admires him as her hero and no other man can measure up to him. Sociological Theory. It is assumed that human beings are born with diffused neutral sexual feelings that can be directed to any person or any direction. Sexuality can be conditioned after birth. Children are not necessarily conscious of sexual preferences. They can play and like each other without being conscious that one is a RL and the other a boy until their parents direct their play and attention to things which society approves as behavior consistent with sex.
Thus a boy engages in sports as basketball, baseball and more strenuous exercises; girls should play with dolls and be trained in housekeeping chores which the mother does. While the boys wear pants, the girls should wear skirts. Eventually as they grow up, certain behaviors are looked upon either as masculine or feminine. At the age of puberty, young people are conditioned to make perfect the opposite sex for future romantic relations. Too loses physical association with the same sex becomes an object of suspicion.
Among girls, this is referred to as “beating” where the “friendship” between two girls or adult women becomes too inclusive to the exclusion of either one having any relations with the opposite sex. In the young male, this is expressed in a strong preference for male company and being emotionally or sexually aroused by another male. Sociologically, homosexuality is essentially a social expression or preference, not pathologically produced but socially conditioned. Most homosexuals are not different from the “straight type. Sometimes they get married and beget children.
Later in life, these emotional and sexual feelings in favor of another male becomes overpowering. If the homosexuals succumbs to this feeling and maintains sex relations both with his wife and at the same time with a male partner he is what we call “salamis. ” Declassification of homosexuality Carlson stated that there is no evidence that homosexuality is a disorder. The that our society at large treats them differently. Therefore, even if we observe more neuroses in homosexuals, we cannot conclude that their maladjustments is directly elated to their sexual preference.
In a society that was absolutely indifferent to a person’s sexual orientation, homosexuals might be as well-adjusted as heterosexuals. The fact that a large number of homosexuals are well-adjusted and happy with themselves (Bell and Weinberg, 1978) suggests that homosexuality is not always associated with emotional difficulties. The American Psychiatric Association (PAPA) removed homosexuality from its official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (ADSM) in 1973.
This decision occurred in the context of momentous cultural changes brought on by the social protest movements of the sass’s to the sass’s: Beginning with the African- American civil rights movement, then evolving on to the women’s and gay rights movements. Just as influential in the Papa’s decision were the research studies on homosexuality of the sass’s and sass’s. Alfred Kinsey and colleagues’ study on male and female sexuality marked the beginning of a cultural shift away from the view of homosexuality as pathology and toward viewing it as a normal variant of human sexuality.
Kinsey had criticized scientists’ tendency to represent homosexuals and heterosexuals as “inherently different types of individuals. Therefore, he introduced a O to 6 scale to classify sexual behavior or fantasy from “exclusively heterosexual” to “exclusively homosexual” (the “Kinsey Scale”). The “Kinsey Reports” found that 37% of males and 13% of females had at least some overt homosexual experience to the point of orgasm; furthermore, 10% of males were more or less exclusively homosexual and 8% of males were exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55.
This is where the frequently quoted “10%” figure comes from. 2-6% of women reported more or less exclusively homosexual experience or response. A more modest 4% of males and 1-3% of females had been exclusively homosexual after the onset of adolescence until the time of the interview. “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories… The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. ” (Kinsey, et al. 948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), p. 639) O- Exclusively heterosexual with no homosexual 1- Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual – Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual 3- Equally heterosexual and homosexual 4- Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual 5- Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual 6- Exclusively homosexual Clean Ford and Frank Beach’s Patterns of Sexual Behavior (1951), relying on data from the Human Relations Area Files, found homosexuality to be common across cultures and to exist in almost all nonhuman species.
Their work supported the notion that homosexuality was both natural and widespread. Psychologist Evelyn Hooker’s ground breaking study compared the projective est. results from 30 non-patient homosexual men with those of 30 non-patient heterosexual men. The study found that experienced psychologists, unaware of whose test results they were interpreting, could not distinguish between the two groups. This study was a serious challenge to the view that homosexuality was always associated with psychopathology.
Homosexuality had been officially classified as a mental disorder in the Papa’s first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (ADSM-I) in 1952. There it was designated as a “sociopath personality disturbance. ” Viewing homosexuality as mental illness was not controversial at the time as it coincided with prevailing societal attitudes. ADSM-II, published in 1968, listed homosexuality as a sexual deviation, but sexual deviations were no longer categorized as a sociopath personality disturbance. The publication of ADSM-II coincided with the emergence of the gay rights movement.
The Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York City marked a watershed event in the movement. Having successfully challenged the police and government attempts to shut down public places where gay people gathered, gay activists would soon challenge psychiatric authority as well. Before the Stonewall riots, homophone groups had accepted the medical view of homosexuality as a mental disorder. Their view had been that accepting homosexuality as disease meant treating it as a disability, rather than a moral or religious sin, and would lead to more objective and humane attitudes.
A new generation of gay rights activists viewed medical and psychiatric portrayals of homosexuality to be Just as problematic as the religious views. Gay men and women were still being denied many basic rights and the designation of homosexuality as a mental disorder had only exacerbated anti-homosexual societal restudies, leaving gay men and women vulnerable in terms of their physical safety, economic security, and overall well-being. Gay activists began to confront the PAPA about its position on homosexuality.
There were a series of dramatic encounters between activists and psychiatrists at the annual meetings of the PAPA between 1970 and 1972. While the opposition to the activists was vehement by some in the PAPA, there were increasing numbers of psychiatrists (e. G. , Judd Marmot) who supported the activists’ view. These were members who were familiar with the research findings showing that homosexuality psychological adjustment, and that it is present across a range of cultures. Dry.
Robert Spinster and other members of the PAPA Task Force on Nomenclature and Statistics agreed to meet with a group of gay activists who presented the scientific evidence to its members and convinced the Task Force to study the issue further. The subsequent research review led the Nomenclature Committee of the PAPA to propose that homosexuality be eliminated from the ADSM. This proposal was approved by the Papa’s Council on Research and Development, its Reference Committee and by the Assembly of District Branches before being accepted by the Papa’s Board of Trustees in December 1973.
Other major mental health professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers, soon endorsed the PAPA action. The decision to declassify homosexuality was accompanied by the passage of an PAPA Position Statement, which supported the protection of the civil rights of homosexual persons. Some PAPA members, primarily psychoanalysts who continued to espouse patronizing views of homosexuality, challenged the leadership of the PAPA by calling or a referendum of the entire PAPA membership.
The decision to remove homosexuality was upheld by a 58% majority of voting PAPA members. When the diagnosis of homosexuality was deleted in 1973, the PAPA did not initially embrace a normal variant model of homosexuality (Drencher 1998, Brayer 1987, Kaiser 1996). In recognition of the opposition, it made a compromise. The ADSM-II diagnosis of Sexual Orientation Disturbance (SOD) replaced Homosexuality. Accordingly, individuals comfortable with their homosexuality were no longer considered mentally ill.
Only those who were “in conflict with” their sexual orientation had a mental disorder (SOD). This compromise engendered continued controversy. Those opposing it pointed out there were no reported cases of unhappy heterosexual individuals seeking treatment to become homosexual. This problem was addressed in the sass’s ADSM-III where SOD was replaced by ego-tectonic homosexuality (DEED). Many of those opposed to the diagnosis of DEED had viewed it as a diagnostic relic that had indirectly, if not directly, perpetuated the mental illness model of homosexuality.
Removing it was a crucial step in a paradigm shift that would help psychiatry focus on more relevant models and concepts in understanding gay men and lesbians. The change nevertheless remains controversial, and a small group of psychologists and analysts (the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality [NORTH]) continues to argue that homosexuality is a dysfunction and can be corrected. The change also encouraged the American Psychological Association and other mental health groups to topologies homosexuality as well as make further progressive statements on gays and lesbians. The American Psychiatric Association