Did you already have a paraphilia as a child?

HesDeltanCaptain
Not until most religions promising a paradisical afterlife, and same-sex sex threatened it was it a thing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans and others didn't care who was having sex with whom, they were just doing it.

Um, I don't think that was a good thing. There was a lot of slavery and barbarity. It didn't end well.

I've always said that anybody who believes sexuality is a choice must be bisexual. I couldn't choose to be attracted to a man, any more than I could choose to be a Chinaman.

Until fairly recently, many gay people tried to choose to be straight in order to be socially acceptable. They frequently got married, and had families, but yet ultimately lived in anguish because they were pretending to be something they weren't.

When I see these extremist Christians in places like America, arguing that homosexuality is a choice, I just want to go up to them and tell them that I know the only way they could possibly think such a thing, is because they themselves must have been made by God to swing both ways.

Graveyard76
I've always said that anybody who believes sexuality is a choice must be bisexual. I couldn't choose to be attracted to a man, any more than I could choose to be a Chinaman.

Agree. Its not a choice. I have several gay friends and all of them have said they knew at a young age, and that they were born that way.

The choice is who you have sex with. Who you may be attracted to is a result of hormones. But we can be attracted to people we don't then have sex with. Pump enough estrogen or other female hormones into Graveyard and you'll like guys and male to female transsexuals could attest. Thing on just this morning on Nat Geo's "Taboo" featuring a male to female transsexual who said she never found himself attracted to men until he began to transition, and once on the hormones started noticing how he liked men. Then as a woman, she was indeed having relationships with men. So it's probably just a matterof hormones. I wouldn't say that's genetic though. Genetic arguements or distinctions are usually unchangeable, but we can inject hormones.

Most all cultures ancient and contemporary have had slavery. Canning the Greeks or Romans for their's is hypocritical in the extreme. Europe and the US both had slavery. And as to barbarity, we've become infinitely more barbaric in modern times. The reason you may not associate modern society with barbarism is because the national news channels don't show any of it. They show planes dropping bombs, but rarely the aftermath except in documentaries. Compared to the wars of the ancient world, we're far worse. Back there and then wars took place between soldiers with far fewer innocent loss of life at least in terms of a percentage. Murdering far more civilians today with wars in Iraq and Afganistan than soldiers. Bombs don't differentiate. Swords do.

HesDeltanCaptain
I wouldn't say that's genetic though. Genetic arguements or distinctions are usually unchangeab

Gene therapy will one day probably provide cures for most things.

HesDeltanCaptain wrote:The choice is who you have sex with. Who you may be attracted to is a result of hormones. But we can be attracted to people we don't then have sex with. Pump enough estrogen or other female hormones into Graveyard and you'll like guys and male to female transsexuals could attest. Thing on just this morning on Nat Geo's "Taboo" featuring a male to female transsexual who said she never found himself attracted to men until he began to transition, and once on the hormones started noticing how he liked men. Then as a woman, she was indeed having relationships with men. So it's probably just a matterof hormones. I wouldn't say that's genetic though. Genetic arguements or distinctions are usually unchangeable, but we can inject hormones.

Most all cultures ancient and contemporary have had slavery. Canning the Greeks or Romans for their's is hypocritical in the extreme. Europe and the US both had slavery. And as to barbarity, we've become infinitely more barbaric in modern times. The reason you may not associate modern society with barbarism is because the national news channels don't show any of it. They show planes dropping bombs, but rarely the aftermath except in documentaries. Compared to the wars of the ancient world, we're far worse. Back there and then wars took place between soldiers with far fewer innocent loss of life at least in terms of a percentage. Murdering far more civilians today with wars in Iraq and Afganistan than soldiers. Bombs don't differentiate. Swords do.

What you wrote about the hormones creating sexual attraction is fascinating and it is something I hadn't given much thought to. Essentially it means that any heterosexual man could be made to desire sex with other men if you injected him with enough female hormones.

HesDeltanCaptain seems to be coming under attack but I think he's right in many ways. In ancient Greece and Rome bisexuality was rampant so if sexual orientation is entirely inborn it wouldn't explain why there was a lot of bisexuality back then while there isn't as much today. I think the role of society in telling people to identify as either fully straight or fully gay plays a major factor in concealing the amount of potential bisexuality/homosexuality that exists below the surface. The same thing likely applies to the prevalence of paraphilias, most people are just going to conceal the fact that they are aroused by sexual deviance because public knowledge of this would damage their social reputation.

I certainly wasn't attacking him.

There's no difference now in the ratios of straight/bisexual/homosexual people than there's ever been. We've just been through a period of human history where people have had to keep their heads down about that sort of thing, largely because of the influence of monotheist religions.

Many countries are still in that period, and many of those still have capital punishment for same sex relationships. There's no reason to believe that they have different ratios than any other nations.

In ancient Greece and Rome bisexuality was rampant so if sexual orientation is entirely inborn it wouldn't explain why there was a lot of bisexuality back then while there isn't as much today.

Homosexuality was encouraged by the Greek, Roman and Spartan armies. Soldiers were put in pairs, and ordered to have sex with one another, whether they naturally swung that way or not. The logic was that in battle, they'd go the extra mile to protect lovers.

The only think I can think of that I liked as a child that's related to murder/violence is that, since about first grade on, I was very excited when we'd learn about WW2 in school, because I really liked looking at the Holocaust pictures. I remember once or twice in elementary school I checked out Holocaust books from the library because the pictures of all those dead people just fascinated me.

I have a paraphilia literally as long as I can remember! even before 3 years old i will be staring at anyones feet and feel like i'm in heaven and it didn't changed 20 years later; hope it helps