It’s not very often I just recommend a piece for reading without much commentary on my part, but comments on recent Ex-Gay Watch posts have indicated that many are unfamiliar with the ex-transgender component of the ex-gay movement.
This recommended reading post is a personal story piece by Marti Abernathey that explains how she used to be ex-transgender, and now understands herself to be ex-ex-transgender – or as Marti says, “In the end I’m not really ex-ex- anything. I’m me.”
The Washington Blade picked it up for their BlogWatch for June 5th, so as one might guess Ms. Abernathey’s piece is well written.
TransAdvocate.com: Confessions of A Ex-Ex-Transgender
Excerpt:
You’ve probably heard of the ex-gay movement. You may have even heard of the ex-ex-gay movement. Odds are slim that you know anyone that is ex-transgender. But have you ever known anyone that is ex-ex-transgender?
You have if you’ve read this blog…
——
Pam Ferguson contributed to this post.
This is a brilliant analogy:
Actually, yes you can. As we know the alivating is a conditional response and can be changed. I am not equating that to sexual response.
There was a piece on transgenderism that just disappeared in a day or so — about an individual — I am asking in this section because at least the topic is the same here. 🙂
Was it removed at the subject’s request — Heyer — a name something like that?
Never seen this happen before.
Nothing like that, it was just released prematurely and was actually only up for less than an hour after midnight EDT 😉
Hokay…thanks.
Thought it was a case of midnight madness on my part or one of those pre moments. :-0
At any rate, what I *did* read with the links was pretty disturbing in some ways. Looking forward to discussion.
Salivation is not, in and of itself, a conditioned response. It’s an automatic reaction, typically to scents or tastes of foods.
As Pavlov showed with his dogs, NON-food stimuli, like bells, can be conditioned to cause salivation in the absence of desirable smells or scents through building an association between, say, the bell and a food scent. Chocolate wouldn’t need to be conditioned, though the site of a favorite candy bar wrapper might elicit salivation, for example, because we associate it with the taste.
Behavioral scientist here, just had to throw in my two cents to correct that. ; )
Thanks for commenting Matthew. I’m curious though, and perhaps you can help, is this conditioned response persistent? I seem to remember that it would fade without constant reinforcement – certainly in humans.
Hello David,
You’re absolutely right, most conditioned responses fade over time when consistent re-conditioning isn’t present – it’s referred to as “extinction.” If the bell was never followed by food, eventually the salivation would no longer be paired to it. There are a small handful of exceptions, however. All mammals seem to share the ability to pair tastes and food sickness after a single trial of learning, and this can often persist for years…. it’s also unique in terms of learning theory, b/c the consequences (i.e. vomiting, diarrhea, etc.) typically don’t occur until an hour or so after the bad food was eaten…. other forms of learning require consequences within seconds for a connection to be learned. A former professor used the example of his wife, who became ill after eating curried shrimp with bad shrimp, and at that time (5 years later) still felt faintly nauseas at the smell of curry – which was an innocent bystander to the illness, but was associated with the illness.
Therapists used to think that homosexuality could be treated this way – masturbate close to orgasm, then quickly look at nude photos of persons of the other sex, etc. This never worked, the best that the research possibly could find was that it made truly bisexually functioning men (i.e. past successful and satisfying romantic/sexual relations with both sexes) fantasize more about the target. Of course, in the old days of sexuality research, that was considered proof enough!