Embedded Files
Can we choose our sexual orientation? Here is the question in the center of Idées Claires, our weekly schedule made by France Culture and franceinfo meant to fight against data ailments, from bogus information to preconceived ideas.
In recent months several personalities, including Pascal Brideau, UDI deputy, and polemicist Éric Zemmour have declared that homosexuality is a choice. Éric Zemmour even continued, on the CNews channel, adding: "We assume our choices: either we sleep with the other sex and we have children, or we do not sleep with the other sex and we do not have children." Words that have provoked many debates.
In 12 countries, including Qatar and Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death. It is illegal in 70 countries. Morocco, Malaysia, Syria, Sri Lanka, and even Tanzania penalize homosexual relations.
We dissected the received ideas on homosexuality with Stéphane Clerget, psychiatrist and author of the book "How do you become homo or hetero?".
Is Homosexuality a choice?
Stéphane Clerget: "Homosexuality, that is to say, the desire for a person of his sex is not a choice, nor our food preferences, our musical preferences or our sports preferences. It is not. Something that we can decide, as we cannot decide to fall in love with someone, we do not decide the physical pleasure that we are going to feel in contact with this or that person. It is something that is beyond us. "
Is Homosexuality genetic?
Stéphane Clerget: "Is Homosexuality genetic? No study concludes that there is a gene that defines sexual orientation, whether homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual. And in particular, studies on twins, which have a priori the same genetic capital, show that one of them can become homosexual and the other heterosexual. So there is no genetic truth, and there is no hormonal explanation either. 20th century that male homosexuals lacked male hormones, testosterone. However, measurements were made, and there is no difference in terms of hormone levels. It is much more complicated than that. sexual orientation, with us humans, it is in the head, and when we love someone or physically desire someone, well, it involves billions of neurons and connections between the zone of reasoning, the neocortex, the zone of emotions, the limbic system, the motor behavior to have erotic behavior, and the sensory zones, the smell, the hearing, which will be more or less stimulated by certain aspects of the person that we are going to desire. "
Is Homosexuality a western disease?
Stéphane Clerget: "Homosexuality is not a Western disease, first of all, because it is not a disease, then because it has been present in all societies since the dawn of time. It has always been described. , even in Antiquity, and in all cultures. So, some cultures will authorize or even value Homosexuality, while others will prohibit it or even penalize it. And today, there are certain countries where Homosexuality is punishable by death. So it is obvious that in these countries, homosexual people will refrain from homosexual behavior. And even if they fall in love with a person of their sex, they will give up forming a couple simply to save their skin.
Can Homosexuality be cured?
Stéphane Clerget: "We cannot cure Homosexuality since Homosexuality is not an anomaly, it is something normal, it is human erotic behavior, natural, which is part of human nature, which is not pathological. When you love something, well, you cannot provoke aversion. There have been aversion therapies that were tried in the 20th century and which all failed. -to say that we cannot make something we like or desire disappear.
Are gender identity and gender identity-related?
Stéphane Clerget: "Sexual orientation is sexual behavior more or less associated with feelings because we humans associate the two. Sexual identity is feeling like a boy, feeling like a girl, or being a boy and being a girl anatomically. A priori identity is rather frozen in time, sexual orientation is something that can evolve, but it is not an identity. There are as many different personalities in homosexuals as in heterosexuals have as many different physical aspects in homosexuals than in heterosexuals. There are many more points in common between homosexual and heterosexual than there are differences. But that should not be considered as an identity. Not for centuries because there was no talk of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages, nor in the classical age.
Do Gay Parents Influence, Their Children?
Stéphane Clerget: "Studies have been carried out in Anglo-Saxon countries and have concluded that there are no more homosexual children from homosexual parents and even there were fewer. Why? No doubt, because these children felt a kind of social pressure and were perhaps in the desire for a kind of conformity, to show precisely that it is not because one had homosexual parents that one was homosexual. On the other hand, what is shown is that having homophobic parents increases the statistical chance of being homosexual because children can feel this homophobia and therefore want to question it, also in homosexual experiences.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse