Does Gay Conversion Therapy Really Not Work?

In this thought-provoking episode, Simone and Malcolm tackle the contentious and controversial topic of gay conversion therapy. They delve into its history, methods, and the scientific data surrounding its effectiveness (or lack thereof). The discussion spans various types of therapies, from psychotherapeutic to medical and faith-based methods. The hosts confront the ideological biases and misinformation often found in debates about changing sexual orientation, while highlighting the ethical and practical implications of imposing such therapies on individuals. The episode also touches on broader societal issues such as community identity, the cultural significance of sex, and the impact of modern ideological conflicts on age-old practices.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be asking the age old question is. If somebody is gay, can you turn them straight by electrocuting them?

Speaker: Do you think you should turn gay? I don't think it works like that. Okay, well, Hot Topic's next on the list. Could I turn gay working there? You can't just magically turn gay. This isn't Degrassi. Why are you so against turning gay? Because if you think you turned gay, there's some weird Christian guy who thinks he can electrocute you into turning back.

Speaker 3: People think that?

Malcolm Collins: No, so hold on so actually I feel like for anyone who hasn't seen there's this show in the u. s The unbreakable kimmy schmidt everybody's on netflix, right? And it's about a girl who grows up in this cult with a guy who lied to her about everything and when she enters the world, she has to constantly find things and then be like Oh yeah, I need to check if this was a lie or not.

And this happened to me recently around conversion therapy. Okay. Just, you know, I think if you grow up in the broadly like progressive sphere the line [00:01:00] is conversion therapy, gay straight conversion therapy doesn't work. Yeah. And, you know, recently I found myself reflecting on this and I was like, oh yeah, but if it did work, they'd still say it doesn't work.

Like they have an ideological reason to need to believe this uh, due to the way that they were framing like gayness as an identity. And, what really hit me is when I asked an AI questions about this, it got really angry at me. I don't know if you noticed, but there's certain issues where I'm like, hey, can you just steel man this other perspective?

It could not bring itself. Perplexity could not bring itself to steel man the other perspective.

Simone Collins: And this is a really important thing for us to be talking about now specifically because As of our recording now this coming Monday, the Supreme Court is going to take up state bans on conversion therapy for LGBTQ plus children based on a Colorado case.

So, this is actively something that is being discussed. Do you have

Malcolm Collins: a religious right to [00:02:00] electrocute your children? That is, I'm, I'm joking by the way. What we're going to go over is all of the different types of conversion therapy. The thing that really got me in the AI Answer is I don't know if you guys have ever asked an AI a question And it gives you parts of the answers that are just obvious and transparent lies.

Yeah like it gave me a list of things that it said do nothing to change an individual's, you know Sexual expression and one of those things was castration and I was like brother. I'm not like brother in christ I'm, not saying that we should be castrating gay people, but it obviously changes their sexual expression.

Yeah And and Another thing that I just know because I've done a lot of research on like LGBT stuff is it will say, you know, you cannot change an individual's sexual orientation. And yet anyone who's familiar with like trans people just knows that wrong. About 43 percent of trans people report changes in their sexual orientation.

When they go through hormone therapy. Yeah, it was only about 13 percent experiencing a complete change, but 13 percent do [00:03:00] experience a complete change. Exactly what gay conversion is supposed to achieve. Now, again I don't think that many conservatives are like that, that doesn't really solve the problem for most conservatives but it does show that there is a potential mechanism of action to achieve this.

And in addition to that, you have the case of it would say that like certain therapies didn't work. But then I'd ask, well, are these therapies used in other areas? And he was like, oh yeah, they're also used in like phobias and alcohol addiction. And I was like, do they work there? It turns out they don't mostly so a lot of this stuff that it was actually right But it was much more nuanced in how it said they don't in those instances It was interesting debate, but I will note here that you can be like, but what about all the studies that say?

It didn't work One of the things that was a real red flag for me because well there used to be a popularly cited study that said that It didn't That it worked. But the, even, even the academic who wrote it had it retracted because it might cause harm. Oh. And then I was like, [00:04:00] oh. So there were evidence out there and people could have lost their jobs for publishing that, which shows why you're getting such bias in what's being published.

There is one study that's out there right now out of like the 36 studies on this that shows Okay. could plausibly work. This one was a two silent study, retrospective self reports of changes in homosexual orientation, a consumer survey of conversion therapy clients. What I will note as we go over all the data and all this stuff here, if you're like, what's the actual answer to this?

There does not appear to be a persistent and reliable way. IE the urban monoculture was Kind of right on this to induce a new arousal pattern in an individual. If I am not aroused by women nothing that happens at gay conversion camp is going to make me aroused by women. If I am not aroused by men, nothing that happens at a gay conversion camp will make me aroused by men.

Doesn't mean nothing can. You [00:05:00] could, like, try to do a gender reassignment with hormones, but I think if you're a conservative Christian and you have a problem with same sex attraction that is not the pathway that you are interested in taking. You're right. And it doesn't even work all the time. It works like 13 percent of the time and 50 percent of the time.

Basically, given that 50%, you know, have new arousal patterns afterwards. Gender reassignment and like hormone therapy is like re rolling your character. In terms of what arouses you. Yeah. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: actually the, the one we've had, I think, different maybe podcasts about this, where we talk about how if you're dealing with severe depression completely changing your identity by also changing your gender and your hormonal profile could successfully kickstart you out of it.

And it's not the, the fact that you had gender dysmorphia per se that changed it. It's the fact that your entire hormonal profile and identity and clothing changed. Changing

Malcolm Collins: the way that you see yourself and relate to other people is one of the easiest ways to change sort of persistent psychological [00:06:00] issues.

So, like we're, we're trying to be as, as sort of fair minded on this topic as, as we can be, as we go into the data. However, what is also true and where the left is just lying about this is, is while you can induce a new arousal pattern. There are plenty of ways to suppress an individual's libido and arousal patterns.

And we did another video, something like my husband's not gay or, or like, I would be okay if you, I don't remember what it was, something like that. Where we basically say that like, I'm okay with same sex attracted individuals deciding that they want to be in cross sex relationships. I don't think that like, that's something that We as a society need to freak out about or police them on.

And I can understand why an individual might want that for me, one of the most powerful things I ever read in regards to that was from an Amish kid on rumspringa, which is, you know, when they leave their family. And go live like in the secular world, for a year Uh when they when they go through like a bit [00:07:00] after puberty basically before they decide to come back in the community And decide to be an amish and he was saying in it he having lived in the secular world now now recognized I am a same sex attracted or gay individual, but I am still going to go back to live in the amish world with The point he was making was even though, like, I understand I can fulfill certain things more easily by continuing to live in the secular world there was just a greater sense of purpose of mental well being of sort of a life that he really wanted in the future.

If he went back to the Amish world and he saw the, the, Having to have sex and have a wife who he wasn't attracted to part of that is being Marginally more challenging, but not worth giving up everything else that came was an Amish life And in the video game that we're doing now talking about like weird woke themes because you know You don't say that the the LLM game it's coming along great really [00:08:00] excited takes place in a post apocalyptic world post fertility collapse world and one of the early sort of conflicts is is I tried to do an inversion of the typical thing here, which is a young kid wants to go live with the Mormons, and he is same sex attracted, and he knows that he will have to live a different type of lifestyle, and his mom doesn't want him to go live with the Mormons, being like, but you're same sex attracted like you should stay, live with us, live this lifestyle and I thought it was a, a, a fun inversion of this particular debate that you see so frequently, and interacting with it.

You know, for me, I like with all the characters I'm creating, creating interesting interactions and debates that cause the player to look at issues from a different angle.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: But okay, so I'm going to go into this. Anything you wanted to say, Simone?

Simone Collins: Just to give a little bit of context to why I think you find it often practical that people who are still same sex [00:09:00] attracted get into heterosexual relationships is that it can be, if you, if you care more about having a family, if you care more about, Being able to maintain a certain community.

It's just a no brainer. And, and I think the fact that we live in an age where people put sex lives above family and community is pretty crazy that like it is, it is your extracurricular, curricular sex life is a more important than that is.

Malcolm Collins: Well,

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: think about what is meant by this. I mean, if you talk about something like the Amish or like a conservative Mormon community or conservative, like Catholic community.

These community identities mean a lot to the people who are part of them. Yeah. And I think that we, in our society, trivialize them as just, you know, seeing them as the oppressive thing that they can be framed as, instead of the rever I mean You know, for example, if I'm a conservative Catholic and I grew up as a conservative Catholic, even though [00:10:00] I'm same sex attracted, you know, I might believe that, like, you know, the Catholic God exists and everything said in like Catholic Catholic theology is real.

And yet we treat it like it's a mistake to make that choice. Or the Amish person is like, well, I mean, you know, I'm choosing between this and. Not necessarily heaven, but the wholesome life I could otherwise live with this community and community support.

Simone Collins: Yeah, a little more context beyond that, too.

Alyssa Grenfell talks about this, actually. Many people who grow up in these more conservative religious communities, where people, for example, know that they're gay, but still marry. Someone of the opposite sex. They sort of grow up thinking that sex is not going to be pleasurable for them at all.

Like Alyssa Grenville talks in a detail about how her OBGYN at BYU when she was about to get married was like, well, you know, sex is painful for many women. And she actually gave her this. Like dilator to use, [00:11:00] like before she had sex for the first time to try to make, like, I think maybe to break her hymen, like to make it less painful.

Like it's just not framed. Like they're not given, they're not expecting at any point in their lives, sex to be amazing, which is of course, it's very different from what the that other conservative influencer, the,

Malcolm Collins: Wow. It was these two Mormon women. No, no, no. They're

Simone Collins: not Mormon. They're not. Those aren't Mormon.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, no, they were part of some conservative

Simone Collins: But yeah, oh my gosh, so, while they grew up certainly expecting sex to be amazing, not all conservative religious groups do. Girl defined.

Malcolm Collins: Girl

Simone Collins: defined. Our

Malcolm Collins: episode, how girl defined ruined an entire generation of women, but I actually think that this is really bad No,

Simone Collins: no, but my point is, many additional communities, including many subsets of the LDS church, apparently, Basically never expect sex to be amazing.

And many just never have a satisfying sex life and never thought that was important. And yet they still end up having tons of kids. So how can it be a surprise to someone of like, Oh, well, I'm not attracted to [00:12:00] this person, but we're going to have sex anyway. Like just, you know, whether it's. Being sexually oriented toward a specific sex or just expecting sex to be pleasurable.

Like if you're not even expecting sex to be pleasurable, then it doesn't really matter. I actually think

Malcolm Collins: it's more culturally healthy. And that's why we did the video on Girl Defined is that Girl Defined maintain the idea of chastity until marriage and then you would get married and then sex would be the most amazing thing because sex is better in marriage.

And I'm like, that's not something you should ever be teaching someone is like you sex. It's better because you wait to have it in marriage. It's like, As somebody who's had a lot of sex, that's like objectively not true. Like, Yeah. Sick burn, Malcolm. No, I'm not saying that's it. What I'm saying is as a guy, for example, if you're sleeping with a lot of people, like the, the pleasure that you get from that sex is going to be I, I would suppose easier to access.

Just keep digging.

Speaker 8: Hey everybody, today we're going to teach you [00:13:00] how to dig yourself a hole.

To begin with, you need yourself a pair of very durable work boots. Steel toed, preferably.

Malcolm Collins: No, just because it's multiple people, just because it's multiple people. Well, anyway,

Simone Collins: I think the important note though, is, is, is that yes. The, the girl defined message that they grew up with was very toxic, but it messed up their head. Cause they get into marriage and then it's not that great.

I'm saying it was really toxic. And I'm saying one thing that I love, Alyssa Grenfell, she is a, an ex Mormon YouTuber and TikToker. She wrote a book about leaving the Mormon church where I really. Disagree with a lot of her episodes like I just watched a really long episode. She did on Mormon funerals Where she's like, oh, isn't it horrible that they restrict this and they restrict that like you're not supposed to have a Mormon funeral That lasts more than like the church service shouldn't be more than an hour and I'm like, yes.

Thank you They're like, you know just for considering the people there. Yeah, like let's just keep you know, keep it going. Don't get too emotional Like, think on the positive things, you'll be reunited in the afterlife, all this, right? And she's like, can you believe they're not letting people grieve?

They're making it too fast. And I'm [00:14:00] like, nope, that's good. They're, they're not letting people Are we, are we making that a technical

Malcolm Collins: puritan thing? Funerals can't last over an hour.

Simone Collins: Just no funerals.

Malcolm Collins: No,

Simone Collins: we should, we should build, we should build death rituals because it's really important to have death. My point though is that Alyssa Grenfell points to the fact that, oh, can you believe that they are teaching young women that sex isn't going to be enjoyable?

And can you believe that they restrict funerals in this way? And can you believe they do this and that without realizing this is a Chesterton's fence issue? Like there is a reason why. Those things actually have benefits for the culture at large, even though they appear to cause, in many cases, a lack of hedonic pleasure in the immediate term.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what you're pointing out here, and I think that this is really valuable, is a lot of people hated how sex negative their religious traditions were. negative, like had a negative view of sex and sexuality and sexual indulgence. And they thought that by ripping out that sex negativity and replacing it with sex positivity, but staying [00:15:00] Christian, saying whatever, they were creating a, like a better form of like Protestantism.

And you saw a lot of churches do this and thinking they were being so hip. But in reality, there's a reason for the sex negativity that actually leads to more. Hedonic, you could almost argue, pleasure for the average person within that community because they're making better choices. And for example, choosing their partner based on arousal choosing their partner based on great aside here.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I just want to, like, I just think that the best religions do set expectations low. And frankly, if you find a partner with whom you have a lot of good sexual chemistry, it's gonna happen. Just consider Queen Victoria, right? Like, the most, like, straight laced, like, everything Albert, and yet, I mean, they have nine kids.

And they, she was into him. She was very into him. Although the first meeting, it was all about the parent. Anyway, keep going. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'd also point out for people one, keep in mind that sexuality on average works very different in men and women. So the idea of saying to a woman telling a guy you can.

You know, [00:16:00] change what arouses you or you know, what you're going to be interested in is, is quite a different thing. Like, and I think we see this a lot of the people who run a lot of these like sexual reassignment clinics are women may not understand how much more set in stone. Male arousal patterns are than female arousal patterns which I think are much more flexible around stuff like, well, we know from the data that they're more flexible around stuff like this.

And I'm saying this just to start, like, if you're watching this and you're a straight man, like what could somebody do to get you turn, like to sleep with a guy? Like seriously, like for me, it would be. It would be really, really hard to get me to become aroused by a guy. Like, I just don't think it could easily happen.

It, like, not if you electrocuted me, not if you electrocuted me every time I didn't get turned on by a guy. Not if you had me look at pictures of naked men every day for You [00:17:00] know, and these are

Simone Collins: 100 percent all things that have been done in gay conversion therapy. Yeah, and like look at these sexy woman pictures.

Are you not convinced now? It's just done by people who are so freaking straight. They're like, oh, I can't control myself Yeah, yeah, i'll not say no to this one. Oh my god

Malcolm Collins: I'd actually think that that would get me more grossed out by women. 100%. Yeah, because then

Simone Collins: you're going to be like, why? It's like being exposed to a smell and you're like, listen, I'm just not into that smell.

And they're like, no, smell it again, inhale deeper. And then you suddenly you're like, I think I'm going to throw up. Like this

Malcolm Collins: is. I'm being conditioned to hate. Like I have a visceral negative reaction to this smell.

Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah. They just make you gayer. You're just getting gayer. Another

Malcolm Collins: thing that's important for people to remember is if you go to our book, The Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, we lay out a really long argument that disgust is the same emotion as arousal.

It's just operating with a negative modifier. Not gonna go into long argument here for this, but what it means is that when somebody has inverted sexual patterns like, [00:18:00] say, a gay man, for example they are much They're more likely to have a disgust response to naked female bodies. So it's important to keep in mind that they might actually have an active aversion to sleeping with a woman.

Which is different than just not being aroused, and that can make things significantly harder. But that can be mollified through many of the things that mollify arousal the, which we'll get into in a bit. Okay, so let's start here. What, what goes on at these, right? You know? Is it But I'm a Cheerleader for people?

I used to love that show. It was my favorite movie growing up. It's such a good movie. It's about a girl who gets sent to one of these. Very funny if you haven't seen it. I actually suggest it. It's like an indie film. Anyway, psychotherapeutic methods. So talk therapy is common here. This is the most common form.

It includes cognitive behavioral and interpersonal therapies. Some practitioners use hypnosis to alter thought patterns related to same sex attraction as well. Just like picturing

Simone Collins: someone [00:19:00] sleeping on a couch and the therapist being like, you are not gay. I hypnotized your son to be into chicks.

Boobs are cool.

Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. No. So, So I was like, okay, so what does this mean exactly, right? So, identify and changing thought patterns. Therapists may try to help individuals recognize and alter their thought patterns around same sex attraction, often by reframing these attractions as unhealthy or undesirable. This seems like a giant mistake to do.

For people who aren't aware, if you try to get somebody to not think about something, or frame a certain Thought is sinful. You get these patterns where people just like will like compulsively think that thing. And they'll think it much more and they'll feel like negative thoughts when they're thinking about it.

Like teachings around sinful thoughts are likely like really deleterious. If this is something that you want to handle, it's much better to be like, okay, I understand this as part of who you are. Maybe even it makes sense to continue to masturbate to this stuff. But I wouldn't, like, [00:20:00] what? Like, can you to, to try to avoid and see these thoughts as sinful?

This doesn't mean that you can't change people to change how they're thinking about their environment. So by this, what I mean is you could, for example, work with somebody to See an arousing thing is, is not necessarily a mandate for action, as it is seen within some parts of progressive culture, you know, just because this arouses you doesn't mean you need to do X or you don't need to think about this as controlling your identity.

That could be really helpful in these sorts of therapy, but not, I think, probably everything they're doing. Role playing and behavior modification. Some therapists use role playing to teach stereotypical masculine or feminine behavior. Well, they

Simone Collins: do this, but I'm a cheerleader. The movie you're referencing about a lesbian girl who was sent to one of these conversion camps.

And I think they all, like, the girls have to wear pink and the boys all have to wear blue. And they have to, like,

Malcolm Collins: do, like, Mopping and like vacuuming. Yeah. You do like play fighting and there's a great scene where in the play fighting ring. There's like a cutout of one soldier on his knees and the other has a gun to his head.

But it's like [00:21:00] stereotype like boy blue.

Speaker 5: Backwards. And

Speaker 7: you slip it in, and out. Who wants to go down with me? Your thoughts, we'll

Malcolm Collins: This almost certainly does nothing. If anything, I'm quite. It's funny. So. It's funny, but it almost certainly I, I'd say gets individuals more into their gender into their existing like gay or lesbian identity because you abstract these gender roles into something that feels unnatural for the individual.

And you say, this is what a natural gender role is, but because they're not enjoying it and it's not, you know, natural in that context, I mean, you've made it an artificial thing in this context. They then think, oh, this isn't for me, like, this, I am not straight or I would be [00:22:00] liking the play fighting or the vacuuming or the other stereotypical women roles.

Exploring childhood experiences. Practitioners might explore an individual's childhood experiences, suggesting that same sex attraction is a result of past trauma or family dynamics. One, it's not. Like there's just, this is an area where like, I'm not worried about the data. Like it is not psychotherapy

Simone Collins: nonsense.

What did your mother do to you?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because the stuff, well, and I, I think generally almost any form of psychotherapy or, or, or, or psychological talk to help somebody. This used to be a field that I worked in people. I'm not like out of nowhere. I actually had memorized the entire DSM at one point.

I'm that much of a nerd about this stuff. If for people who know the DSM is like this thick, it's like an insane thing to have memorized it, but I want it to be cool that that was what I thought the cool kids did. That's how much of a nerd I was. But anyway the, the, if somebody's doing like a, what happened to you in your childhood that caused something that person is [00:23:00] not a therapist, that is a cult.

That is not a real thing. The reason why people do that is to help break your connection with your support network, which is your parent and birth culture. And then that can be used to build dependency on an individual. This is why, if you go to something like a Scientologist meeting, if you, I've gone to them before, they'll be like, okay, what, what, like, that's the first thing they'll ask you.

So why therapists used to do this before they realized how bad it was and why it's re emerged within some of the hokier parts of therapy. And some people like freak out on us on it because they've read books by individuals, like say Erica Commissar who's like, oh, all this stuff, relation, children to their parents.

And if you actually look at, like, she's a great person, right? She's a fine person. But her beliefs around like the psychological schools that she finds compelling are like straight up Freudian. It's like she's like, I'm influenced by Freudian psychology. This is not this is [00:24:00] a, I'm not going to say it's like evil or wrong or anything like that, but it is a theological position, I guess I'd say.

It's not bound by like a realistic mechanism.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but you would argue, even if we're calling it a cult or a culture, that it doesn't produce Great outcomes. So

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't, it's not, it's not based on what I would call like a, there's, there's different ways that you can rate relate to the mind and something like this.

And I would put hers in, like, look, if somebody's doing like Kabbalistic therapy or something like that, I'd be like. Okay, but that's like a religious therapy like you understand most people be like, yeah, I understand that this belief that all of this stuff that happens when you're super young is super important to your adult life It's just not that important.

Unless it's like really big like you can like traumatize a kid for sure like yeah Can you traumatize them into being gay? Probably not, unless you've done some like really serious stuff. Well, you could, you could give them [00:25:00]

Simone Collins: hormones. Fear

Malcolm Collins: of sleeping with the opposite gender. You could give them

Simone Collins: hormones and mess them up that way.

Oh, you could do

Malcolm Collins: that, yeah.

Simone Collins: And parents too, so.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, parents too, but the, the which, which would change gender if primary attraction, you're right about that. Could, which could. Could. But and again here I'm not, thing that nothing that happens to you in your childhood matters. It can matter, but it needs to be pretty extreme to matter.

It's not like general, like how much was my mom home has a huge difference. Your mom is like broadly non abusive and you have somebody caring with you for you. The, the difference is not that big. As we can see, when kids grow up in single father households, they don't do that much differently than parents who grow up in two parents households.

Which is usually because if they're with a father, that's the more responsible person. And so from that, we know a lot of the research on people who grow up in single parent households or, or other sorts of disruptive households. The, the, what There are confounding

Simone Collins: issues there. Basically, in a, in the United States, if a father is getting the kids, he is so exceptionally better than [00:26:00] the mother, than it Did throw things off.

So what it shows

Malcolm Collins: is if you get a good pair, it's like the same way that the studies that show that like when, when gay people raise kids, the kids turn out better often than when straight people raise them. And that's mostly an effect of just how hard it is to get kids as a gay couple. That doesn't necessarily indicate but, but, by this, what I mean is you have to go through like tons and tons of screening to get kids with a gay couple, at least when a lot of the studies were done. I don't know if it's still the case, but I think it is. I mean, my understanding is adoption is astronomically difficult right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I imagine it's still the case.

Okay, so then aversion therapy. This involves associating same sex attractions. It was unpleasant stimuli such as shocks, nausea, or physical discomfort to create negative associations. It's like remembering, but I'm a cheerleader when they shock her every time. Yeah. Does this work now? Of course, you know, the AI at first was like, well, obviously this, you can't fix sexuality, but then I'm Is aversion therapy used in any other place in psychology these days?

Like, because like, obviously it won't say that it works for sexuality, but does it work for anything else? And it's like, well, it's used in addiction treatment. It's like, okay, so what? It is? Oh, [00:27:00]

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: is. Aversion therapy can lead to short term reduction in substance use, but long term efficacy is debated.

Basically it doesn't have long term efficacy. Oh, okay. So it doesn't work. A phobias. Again it's been shown to have some short term utility, but does not appear to have long term utility. Same with anxiety behaviors. So it's used in self harm behaviors. Aversion therapy has been used to reduce self harming behaviors, such as cutting, by associating these players with unpleasant stimuli.

But I don't get, isn't like cutting the unpleasant stimuli. You're just giving someone like an additional unpleasant stimuli. Like you just made

Simone Collins: cutting plus congratulations. Upgrade plus new mode activated. Cutting a premium premium version. Yeah. Are we going to talk about what does work not for changing orientation, but for at least reducing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, so they, they then mentioned medical methods. So hormone and steroidal therapies have been attempted. These are, it said, these are sometimes used under the belief that [00:28:00] hormonal imbalances contribute to sexual orientation or gender identity. I love it. It says this as if this is not true, like your hormones absolutely determine your, you know, sexual identity.

That's why this is like

Simone Collins: extremely well attested, just based on the way that women's arousal patterns. Interests in different types of male dynamics change throughout their cycle, like even within one person.

Malcolm Collins: The problem is, is there don't appear to be, like, good studies on this. So, like, if I was somebody who, like, personally, absolutely wanted to attempt to change my arousal patterns, I would probably do some hormonal experimentation.

But it's just not well studied. Like we know from trans individuals, plausibly it can change how erosive patterns activate, but I'd imagine you really need to do something that extreme to get a change in patterns. And that like, if I'm a gay man and I just take more testosterone or something, I'm just going to be even more turned on by men.

That would be my thought as the main. outcome of that. With [00:29:00] women, there might be more stuff that you can do in regards to this, but basically the answer here is not enough data to know.

Chemical castration. In some extreme cases, this involves using drugs to suppress sexual desire. And I thought it was so funny when I was thinking through, I was like, Oh, it's so wild.

That when I was young the fear is that, you know, conservatives would come and, and take away like the, the young, like tomboy y lesbian girl and chemically castrate them. And now those same drugs are being given to that same population by far lefties under the guise of puberty blockers and, and trans stuff.

So, that is wild. It does change sex I mean, I don't think anyone should be doing this to But like, it does, you know, work in that it does lower arousal patterns, I suppose. And then that got me thinking. I was like, okay, well, suppose I just want to, like, lower my arousal patterns in general, so I'm not as tempted, right?

I was like, what, what can do that, right? Because obviously things can do that. Like, every [00:30:00] antidepressant says, like, I don't lower your arousal patterns. SSRIs do,

So anti androgens can medications like Kipro, Actinor, and Endicor can reduce testosterone levels and lower sex drive. They're sometimes used in cases of hypersexuality and treatment of sex offenders, so they probably work on a regular person.

Or you can just be unhealthy dietary adjustments. So for example soy products you could become a level four boy. High intake may lower testosterone levels. Greasy foods will affect sperm production and libido. Refined carbohydrates and excess alcohol consumption all may help now I don't know because alcohol consumption would lower Your ability to suppress the libido.

So it might lower libido, but also lower your ability to contain whatever was there Exercise that'll also help lower your libido.

Simone Collins: Really? That's interesting. And I heard that before. Oh

Malcolm Collins: no, but if you exercise too much apparently it can lower libido. Like when you did when you were younger and you ended up losing it.

Yeah, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And

Simone Collins: Oh, cause your body thinks you're like migrating and starving.

Malcolm Collins: Before I go to the last one, I would [00:31:00] argue like if I wanted to do this, right? Naltrexone is an absolute wonder drug.

Simone Collins: I was just thinking that. But it would just make sex not fun. It wouldn't make you interested in what it would make it

Malcolm Collins: marginally less fun.

So I take enough naltrexone so that I'm only a little addicted to alcohol. I didn't want to give up my alcohol addiction entirely. This is not the way you're supposed to use it. But it actually has like a bunch of other like positive side effects. If you take naltrexone

Simone Collins: yeah, like this is not super well documented, but it may have made him.

Significantly more immune to COVID. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because I never got COVID and I always wondered why and I was reading a study and it was like, Oh, low dose naltrexone appears to create immunity to COVID in some people. I was like, that's crazy. But it has like a bunch of other benefits because you know, now I, you know, I actually stopped checking Facebook.

Like entirely?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think it's

Malcolm Collins: also because

Simone Collins: Facebook

Malcolm Collins: got boring. It makes you less addicted to social media, it affects those pathways it can be useful for gambling, it can be useful for [00:32:00] anything that's using the opioid pathway to sort of force behavior. Yeah, food, sex,

Simone Collins: exercise, gambling, anything but smoking, pretty

Malcolm Collins: much, right?

But yeah, but what's important is that you take it and then you do the thing. So you'd have to like take it and masturbate to gay porn and then not be interested in masturbating to gay porn as much within a few weeks of doing that. Yeah. You can take it at low doses. If you're like, I still want to enjoy this.

I just don't want to enjoy it so much that it's distracting or causes unhealthy behavior. Yeah. Which is, I wanted a little unhealthy behavior with alcohol. I was like, I don't actually want to be a teetotaler, but like. I also don't want to die. And I found a happy medium. I test myself all the time now and I'm not having any issues.

I even got my liver scanned and it's totally down to a normal size here. It looks like a normal liver. And so, I, which it wasn't for a while. I actually had major problems at one point, which is when I, when I decided I needed to look at this seriously and do something about this. But I mean, how is that decision particularly different?

Like I. [00:33:00] Was prone to addiction to alcohol or prone to like really wanting alcohol because of my genetics, right? A person might be prone to same sex attraction because of something that they can't control. I didn't control that I had a preference for alcohol. And yet I am able to say, and therefore, despite that, despite me not choosing this desire, I am choosing to suppress this desire or work to engage with this desire in a fashion that doesn't interfere with other things I want from life like having a

Simone Collins: family

Malcolm Collins: and everything like that.

That's not considered weird but if I do that for, like, eating too much with, like, the Haze movement, then it's considered weird. I've always thought, Haze is an even better example of this, like, I control my alcohol, or I work to do that, and they're, they don't work to control their food, they're like, eating too much.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, but, but what,

Simone Collins: Ozempic. It, Ozempic is, is the naltrexone of food. People are totally into that. [00:34:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah so, you could use naltrexone to, to work on this, what you

Simone Collins: pointed out in the pragmatist guide to sexuality was you could also just overdose on it. You can

Malcolm Collins: also overdose, that should work.

So you do appear to be able to reduce sexual desire of specific varieties by overindulging in them. Yeah, like the

Simone Collins: best gay conversion camps would be like quarterly gay orgies.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I sometimes wonder if those didn't happen historically. Yeah, you just got

Simone Collins: it out of your system. And I mean, I listen, I mean, if I were so actually responsible player in the space and I actually wanted to help these poor Christian young men and maybe women just like get over it and like go back to the real world and feel normal.

This would be the right thing to do. It wouldn't, the families wouldn't want to know about it, but if you want to like really reduce. Their desire,

Malcolm Collins: this would be the right thing to do. Well, I mean, that might actually be something that's happening. So, [00:35:00] you know, I can't talk about my own experience. Again, not slept with a guy at something like the Bohemian Grove.

But it has been reported that I've gone in, in various things. I can say, like, at least I've gone. I can't say any more about the extent of my connection to that. But I can talk about somebody who did go on the record about their experiences there which was Richard Nixon, and he called it the gayest f*****g place on earth.

He actually used a

Simone Collins: worse, a worse word than that, but you can imagine. Oh yes, he didn't

Malcolm Collins: use the f word. And so it's an all male retreat for like elite conservative men. And could it have been if a Richard Nixon's understanding of it was accurate, could it have been a place where a lot of gay people went and slept together?

Obviously that wouldn't be everyone there. You have a lot of other reasons to go to a retreat without women. But when I look at throughout history, the all male secret societies. That, that elite conservatives went to and knowing quotes like Richard Nixon talking about one of the [00:36:00] things that people who already had this arousal pattern at these specific events may have overindulged in that, that they may have served some utility for that.

And that's absolutely fascinating. It's a fun theory.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Does that make them more satanic? Who knows?

Simone Collins: Doesn't it make them more progressive and normal? I, yeah, who knows? What I can tell is somebody

Malcolm Collins: who's like gone to all the actual Secret Society stuff like the stuff that people have on their records is like so much tamer than anyone thinks it is.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but also like their insinuations of what could be worse are so off. They're so off.

Malcolm Collins: They're so off about like where the, the bad decisions are made behind closed doors and where the, the, Yeah, and what

Simone Collins: the really crazy outlandish stuff is. It's not what you think it is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and a lot of these organizations have been taken over by wokes.

Like Skull and Bones was totally taken over by wokes. We should probably do an episode on that one day. You know. I guess a lot of people wouldn't have a lot of connections in there, but yeah, skull and [00:37:00] bones and it's, it's even in like the media now, like the media has, I'm not releasing private information here.

I don't want to get in trouble. That's why I'm just like being like, but yeah, skull and bones totally taken over by the wokes. And I can say that I think the, the, the, their, The culture war has touched all of these types of locations, and typically the older a place is the easier and more bureaucratic it is, the easier it was for woke individuals to sort of get their teeth into it, and then basically prevent it from serving anything close to its historic function.

Which is why we run our own secret societies basically now, when we go to cities and stuff like that, and we invite people who are, like, influential in that city. And I'll note here that these are not like fan meetings. Sometimes fans have reached out and been like, I've heard you're meeting with people.

It's like, yes, because all of these people have jobs. It's not like for anyone who watches our podcast. But anyway thoughts before I go into the final stuff here, the faith based methods.

Simone Collins: No, proceed. Oh, you mean we're going to talk about faith based methods now?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I was just going to say the faith based methods are prayer and spiritual counseling.

These [00:38:00] methods often rely on religious beliefs that view same sex attraction as sinful or abnormal. They may include anti gay slurs and prayers. You know, I don't think that this is going to be very effective. If anything, I think it's just going to focus the person's attention on these issues. And then exorcisms, in some cases exorcisms.

Oh,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: Which that actually could work weirdly. I'm going to say, because an exorcism could be similar to like,

Simone Collins: Going trans, like really just being like, I've been, I'm new, I'm a different person. It's gone. They

Malcolm Collins: could see themselves as a new person enough that it might change their arousal patterns.

I don't, like, I wouldn't say it. It

Simone Collins: could help them contextualize the residual arousal patterns that they feel. As remnants of demonic possession and therefore not act on it and in general not lean into them because I think there's also like, well, we don't have a lot of control over our sex drives and.

I do think that you can lean into something and you can lean out of something. [00:39:00] You can make it a bigger thing, or you can choose to play it down, and that might encourage playing it down.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and so, broadly speaking I think that the best thing to do, like, if you actually, if this was a big problem for you and conflicted, with your faith and the way you wanted to live your life.

Something like naltrexone I think would be the safest way to address this. I think a, well, especially if

Simone Collins: you're trying to reduce what you see to be problematic behavior that you don't want to have anymore, but it's not going to make you want to do something that you,

Malcolm Collins: it's only if you want to get rid of the behavior, right?

You want to reduce these impulses, indulge in them while on naltrexone. Yes. But I think the

Simone Collins: bigger thing is. You can't make yourself want something that you don't want, but wish you wanted.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and i'd point out here now i'm going to say something crazy i'd point out here if you want to live a hedonistic life, there are few things you can be born that are better than a gay man.

Like, I was actually bemoaning this with Simone. I was like, [00:40:00] I if I was a gay guy, I, it would be like being able to one, have an easy time, like with like an orgy where like everyone at the orgy is a woman, first of all, because you're like, you're aroused by everyone at the orgy. The thing that grosses me out the most about like the concept of an orgy is like half the people that are going to be guys, like, I don't want to see naked guys.

I receive a strong disgust response, but if I was a guy I'd be like an orgy full of women. And dating way easier, you know, because you're, you're reaching out to people who aren't a******s who have, I'm not saying all women are a******s, but I'm saying that being the gatekeepers within sexual marketplaces causes women to relate to men in a way that can be derisive.

Like if they don't, I mean, women really. come off as quite cruel to men within sexual marketplaces because they get spoiled. Seeing like even normal overtures as creepy or whatever wouldn't have to deal with that as much if I wasn't being creepy as a gay man. Because you know, they would have a [00:41:00] better understanding of me.

Another one you like would be dealing with people who are on average, more attractive to the general population. I don't know if you like Have many gay male normal friends, but like a gay men, put a lot more effort into how they look Yeah, on average they take way better care of themselves.

Yes. Yeah and And I was also just thinking like even something like a like a singles cruise Like I was on a gay man on a singles cruise Like that's something where you can actually like sleep around with women. You can't do that because like women actually want something out of this. Like there isn't like this large pool of women who just wants to sleep around all the time, but all of these men who I was attracted to would also have the male sexual profile of preferring variety.

And. Now, all of this is, is, is maybe on the net bad for gay people because it's more temptation. But I'm just saying, if you're hidden as a maxing you're actually in a preferable position to be born gay. In this age,

Simone Collins: yeah. In

Malcolm Collins: this age, well, with this prep and everything like that, which is like an [00:42:00] AIDS drug and stuff.

It, but I'll never experience that. A party, like a multi-day, day like fire I island party. There is like no straight thing. That's the equivalent to that? No, except like maybe a furry party, but that's mostly gay anyway. No, you like,

Simone Collins: no, there's, there's just always gonna be drawbacks there. Yeah. Unless you're like some historical sultan with a menagerie of women.

I guess there's, there's just no Did gay

Malcolm Collins: people, what did you say? Gay. Gay people get to have the sex lives of like historic sultans

Simone Collins: basically. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Basically.

Simone Collins: But it's a little more fun because I think, let's say that you're a sultan with your menagerie of women, like you don't get to feel like you've conquered, you don't get to feel like you've won someone over.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because they, they're just

Simone Collins: there because you have money and resources. So I think it's even better now.

Malcolm Collins: Then you murdered their husbands.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'm not, I'm not saying that, well, that might make it a little hotter, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah. For some, it depends on what you're into.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it depends on what [00:43:00] you're into.

Yeah. But the, the, the point I'm making here is that, think it's cool to revisit these topics that we, for so long, we're not allowed to talk about or investigate or think critically about with a more open minded approach that is less reactive in the way that the progressives in the urban monoculture react to the environment.

Simone Collins: Well,

so then I think our takeaway from this is if the Supreme Court overturns state bans on gay conversion therapy. A bunch of like businesses are going to maybe start providing, providing it again, but it's not going to do anything. So you're just getting, it's, it's like being like, Oh yes, we now allow homeopathic therapy again.

And it's like, well, okay. I mean, some people are going to get make money and some people are going to have their money taken from them.

Malcolm Collins: It entrenches the issue because if you look at the types of practices that they're doing, for me, it would cause me to focus more on what's arousing me and help me not.

See myself [00:44:00] as, you know, what could make you think you're not straight more than simulating like a housewife's life with a stranger? I know, I know. A person being like, does this feel normal to you? Yeah, I think like

Simone Collins: if, let's say that we were in like some culture where it's just like super not okay to be gay, we'd just be like, well, like your life is not about pleasure or sex.

And whether you were gay or straight, we wouldn't want it to be. We don't want you to be in a straight relationship and straight and obsessed with sex because that is really not productive. It's almost a blessing that you're gay. So, don't worry about it. That's fine. You know, focus on the things that actually matter and you're okay.

That kind of thing, like, I guess, is what we would advise someone to say if they actually were really not okay with their kid being gay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I would, I would focus more on the kid. I think that like, my question here is, should a kid be forced? to have an opinion like that. No, it can't, shouldn't be forced to have an opinion like that.

But if they were brought up in a culture that they like and want to [00:45:00] stay in they should be allowed to pursue therapies and stuff that make it easier to stay in a culture that they want.

Simone Collins: So I don't know, like if our sons, if any of our sons say, listen, we're gay. My first thing is just like, make sure you make a lot of money because.

Having kids is going to cost you a ton more. If our daughters turn out to be lesbians, I'd be like, Congratulations, you can double up on kids immediately. This is amazing, you've hit the jackpot.

Malcolm Collins: But I would be about as orchi our kids going to something like this, as I would be our kids you know, being gender transitioned.

I'm going,

Simone Collins: they're going through gay conversion. Yeah, I do not think Yeah, no, no, it just makes things worse. You're absolutely right. It makes things worse.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that in reality, the vast majority, when I talk about like drugs and stuff like that, that lowered libido, the majority of the time I actually think these drugs should be implemented is not necessarily same sex attraction for young people, but just arousal patterns that the young person [00:46:00] finds problematic or deleterious with their daily life.

Yeah. Which some people have, they develop fetishes or they develop You know, it was one I saw somebody talking about on a show recently was they developed like an addiction to like sissy hypnoporn and like, I wouldn't like if I was aroused by that, I would probably take a chemical to suppress that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If you don't like it and it doesn't make you feel good about yourself, then let's let's. Let's take some naltrexone.

Malcolm Collins: I'd be like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: bet that there are a lot of gay men who are in, who have like a beard, who are in a relationship and they are the only ones in the world who actually know their arousal pathways, who really wish that they just felt them less.

And in this case, naltrexone would be. Amazing. Just make life

Malcolm Collins: less. So I think it's about being accepting of all lifestyles, both gay people who want to live as gay people, but also gay people who want to live within cultures that, that say that you should marry a woman and have kids.

Simone Collins: Because again, [00:47:00] whoever said that sex was more important than religion, culture, and family?

Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, literally. But that's

Simone Collins: insane! That's insane. I mean, even for someone who has a lot of sex, then the hours of the year that they spend having sex, not that many hours. Not that many. In the end.

Malcolm Collins: That's a weird thing to define identity around.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but just like, if we're talking pleasure hours though, like versus other things that could yield more pleasure hours, if that's all you're optimizing for, it just is such a dumb thing to make your life decisions

Malcolm Collins: around.

Doesn't make, there's no logic to it. I love you autistic woman autistic, mostly asexual woman who's just like, sex doesn't make logical sense.

Simone Collins: Give me the argument in favor of its utility. Right, Indy.

Malcolm Collins: Love you to death, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you so much, Malcolm. And you are very, very, very, very sexy. I'm, I'm gay [00:48:00] for you, so.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'm, I, I'm gay for women. Thank goodness. That's, that's wonderful. No, I think, I think you're attractive as well.

Simone Collins: Huh, yeah. You're just dealing with post marriage sex life, which Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it would reward me more if I was sleeping with lots of other women. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. We have that video.

I'm allowed to, but like, it seems like a waste of time. Remember

Simone Collins: the last time we were on a college campus or in a bunch of people wearing swimsuits, it was like kind of hard. Like there were enough fit guys around, but

Malcolm Collins: oh yeah, men are not as attractive as they used to be. When the

Simone Collins: economy is kind of rough right now.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I was like,

Simone Collins: so yeah, good luck. I'm glad you went on your rumspringa sexually when you did, because I think before you, yeah, well, no, no, no. Like before women started letting go, I guess before the

Malcolm Collins: randomly accusing people of things. [00:49:00] And before all of these women have, but also like on the whole, I think

Simone Collins: college women were more attractive 15 years ago.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you are

Simone Collins: now.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry. I'm sorry guys. You've got the mooses, the mooses, the meeses. Mooses are majestic creatures. And many people would say that about these scooter roaming college campuses these days. They're

Simone Collins: just They're not even Scooter Beasts, they're like soft and unremarkable. Yeah, shapeless, like, yeah, like lumpy space princess.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, that is, that is, that is women on college campus these days, this lumpy space princess.

Speaker 11: I knew you liked me. No, I don't. I'm just stopping by because Just admit it, lover boy. You can't resist me. Well, if you want these lumps, you gotta put a ring on it. Where's my ring? I knew you liked me then.

That's why you're running. Get in touch with your feelings, [00:50:00] babe.

Simone Collins: Sweatpants, the rounded edges, yeah, there's just no more sharp edges left.

Malcolm Collins: You just want my lumps, I'll post that

Simone Collins: Alright, alright,

alright, alright.

I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: That was fun, I just love speaking with you so much.

I love

Malcolm Collins: speaking with you too.

Simone Collins: All right. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, this Limestone article is such a puff piece.

Simone Collins: What? The Guardian article? It's not about Limestone.

Malcolm Collins: It is largely about Limestone.

Simone Collins: Well, they hate us. So he, and they, share a common person they dislike. They're clearly trying to censor

Malcolm Collins: him as like the pronatalist you should listen to.

They don't say anything mean about him or take anything that he said out of context.

Simone Collins: Nope.

Malcolm Collins: Which shows that like they are To anyone who has, like, media literacy, they are trying to promote him while framing him as a reasonable alternative to us. But the problem is that everything he says in the piece is super Like nothing burger, [00:51:00] like watery and, and, you know, it's, it's not going to do well.

Like nobody's going to families

Simone Collins: need to be treated better. It, it is vague, but it is the guardian Malcolm. Don't worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, nobody sees it anymore. They don't even have a Twitter account anymore. Or an ex account.

Simone Collins: Oh, yes. Did

Malcolm Collins: they get the, you know, all their pieces were getting nerfed. Unless they just summarize them.

And so, you know, who sees their stuff anymore?

Simone Collins: Subscribers, people in. The UK, theoretically,

Malcolm Collins: theoretically.

Speaker 12: It's a shopping cart. A shopping cart?

That's a pretty full purse. What's going on with the airport? I just had to bring these back to the airport so, uh, but I got these from the [00:52:00] Predators. Yeah, it's a small car,

Oh my gosh, Titan. You have such a full purse. Nom, nom,

Speaker 14: nom, nom. Oh, the, the police are protecting the police, the, the police are making sure predators do not get in the airport.

Speaker 12: I think the predators of an airport are called terrorists.

Speaker 14: Terrorists.

Speaker 12: Yes.

Speaker 14: Stop interrupting my airport. You're out.

Speaker 12: Terrorizing. Stop terrorizing my airport.

Speaker 14: Yeah. Terrorizing. He's terrorizing the airport.

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