Astral Codex Ten

homosexuality

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homosexuality

Article

homosexuality is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 25, 2023 and September 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “The most famous example of this, of course, is homosexuality”; “Pedophilia N is N worse N than N homosexuality N”; “you and your comrades had just won a great victory in getting the medical establishment to de-list homosexuality as a mental disorder”. It most often appears alongside Bryan Caplan, 1970s radicals, ADHD.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: January 25, 2023
  • Last seen: September 07, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

You Don't Want A Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy Of Mental Disorders
January 25, 2023 · Original source
Some critics have argued that healthy behaviours are sometimes labelled as ‘disordered’ simply because they don’t fit our culture-bound vision of normal behaviour. The most famous example of this, of course, is homosexuality. As late as DSM-III, homosexuality was classed as a ‘sexual deviation’, and could be treated by psychiatrists as a form of psychological dysfunction. It was removed from later editions in response to mounting pressure, but the problem arguably still remains in other areas [. . .]
Inline links: critics, DSM-III
But if you call something a mental disorder, people will accuse you of trying to stigmatize them, which is bad. The DSM writers are trans-friendly and want to make sure trans people can get the care they need (for example, in most states, people need a psych evaluation before they can get gender affirmation surgery), so they want to force insurance companies to cover transgender, so they have to include it. But they also don’t want to stigmatize trans people, so they also include a lot of paragraphs about how even though they just listed it as a mental disorder, it definitely isn’t a mental disorder. (a common claim is that the DSM says transgender itself is not a mental disorder, but the distress it produces is. This doesn’t seem especially destigmatizing to me - you’re the wrong gender, but you’re crazy for being unhappy about it? Also, I can’t find support for this distinction in a literal reading of the DSM criteria themselves) When the DSM is political, it’s not (just) because the authors are ideologues and want to go around stigmatizing people they don’t like. It’s because “is X a mental disorder or not?” is scientifically meaningless but politically very important. I’ll give an even worse example: from N a N biological N point N of N view N, homosexuality N and N pedophilia N are probably N pretty N similar. Both are “sexual targeting errors”: from an evolutionary point of view, our genes get passed down through couplings with sexually mature opposite-sex partners, and our instincts probably evolved to promote this. But instincts are hard - ducks sometimes decide humans are their mother and imprint on them - so sexual targeting errors are pretty common. I’m just speculating here - nobody has a strong evidence-based theory of either condition - but I think my speculations fit the small amount of evidence there is (for example, both are only weakly linked to genetics, suggesting they involve unconscious learning in some way). If this is accurate, the N relevant N difference N between N homosexuality N and N pedophilia N is N moral N, not N biological. Both are sexual targeting errors, but one re-targets sexuality onto other people who can consent and won’t be harmed, so it’s fine. The other targets people who can’t consent and will be harmed, so it’s bad. So N, should N your N purely N biological N, apolitical N, taxonomy N of N mental N disorders N classify N homosexuality N as N a mental N illness, N or N should N it N refuse N to N classify N pedophilia N as N a N mental N illness? We have to classify pedophilia as a mental illness, because we want insurance to pay for treatment. If someone shows up at a psychiatrist saying “Help, I feel an urge to molest children, is there anything you can do to get rid of that urge or prevent me from acting on it?”, I definitely want insurance to pay for this person’s treatment. Therefore, pedophilia “is” “a” “mental” “illness”, and no sophisticated categorization algorithm will ever convince me otherwise. That N means N that N a N purely N biological N apolitical N taxonomy N of N mental N disorders N which N classifies N all N things N with N similar N biological N causes N in N the N same N way N would N also N probably N classify N homosexuality N as N a N mental N disorder. But the whole point of wanting a purely biological apolitical taxonomy of mental illness was to make sure we would never again repeat the DSM’s error of calling homosexuality a mental disorder! The people asking for apolitical taxonomies want an incoherent thing. They want something which doesn’t think about politics at all, and which simultaneously is more politically correct than any other taxonomy. Or if “political correctness” sounds too dismissive, we can rephrase it as: “they want something that doesn’t think about ethics and practicality at all, but which is simultaneously more ethically correct and pragmatically correct than other taxonomies”. That is, we want our definition of “mental disorder” to be ethical (eg not stigmatize people who don’t deserve stigma). And we want it to be practical (eg identify a group of people who need and deserve care). But things that are biologically similar can be ethically and practically different: Hitting kittens is worse than hitting punching bags, even though the biology of the muscle movements is exactly the same.
Inline links: scientifically meaningless
Pedophilia N is N worse N than N homosexuality N, not N because N the N biology N necessarily N involves N different N processes N or N brain N regions, N but N because N it’s N important N for N your N sexual N partners N to N be N able N to N consent.
Contra The Social Model Of Disability
July 14, 2023 · Original source
The Social Model Of Disability came out of the same 60s/70s cultural current that gave us Thomas Szasz’s claim that mental disorders are fake. Szasz was thinking of examples like the stigmatization of homosexuality; he (understandably) preferred to think of homosexuality being a perfectly fine alternate-way-of-being that society just had to learn to accommodate. But he took it too far - and then Bryan Caplan took it even farther - and claimed that all mental disorders were just alternate-ways-of-being that society had to change to accommodate. There’s no such thing as drug addiction; people just voluntarily choose to use drugs. Society stigmatizes that choice by casting it as a disease where the person can’t control their drug use. But this is no more true than thinking of playing baseball as a disease where people can’t control their baseball use. Instead, society should admit that using drugs is fine.
Inline links: the same 60s/70s cultural current, Thomas Szasz’s, and then Bryan Caplan took it even farther
Nowadays this perspective has been abandoned by everyone except a few holdouts, Bryan Caplan, and the Scientologists; maybe it’s hard to take it seriously. But put yourself in the shoes of a 1970s radical. Your stereotype of psychiatric treatment, which wasn’t entirely false, would have been cops taking gays / LSD users / eccentrics, locking then up in horrible state-run hospitals for months, and treating them with strong drugs or electroshock therapy or lobotomies. You’d never met a schizophrenic, but you believed Gregory Bateson and Thomas Szasz’s report that they were just cool eccentric people who didn’t abide by society’s artificial rules. You and your comrades had just won a great victory in getting the medical establishment to de-list homosexuality as a mental disorder, and - sure enough - the problem had been society’s persecution of gays, not the “disorder” itself. Drunk with victory, you might see the arc of history pointing to the complete liberation of all categories of supposedly “mentally ill”. So why not the supposedly “physically ill” too? Why not liberate everybody?
Contra Kirkegaard On Evolutionary Definitions Of Mental Illness
September 07, 2023 · Original source
I mostly don’t think mental illnesses are just preferences! I’ve been really clear on this! But Emil is right that I don’t deny that there can be a few cases where it’s hard to distinguish a mental illness from a preference - the clearest example is pedophilia vs. homosexuality. Both are “preferences” for sex with unusual categories of people. But I would - making a value judgment - call pedophilia a mental illness: it’s bad for patients, bad for their potential victims, and bad for society. Also making a value judgment, I would call homosexuality an unusual but valid preference: it’s not my thing, but seems basically okay for everyone involved.
Inline links: really clear
Emil proposes an alternate definition: a mental disorder is a mental trait which lowers reproductive fitness. This makes some sense: the brain, like other body parts, was optimized by evolution with reproductive fitness as the goal, so any behavior or preference which interferes with that goal is in some sense a “malfunction”. This definition would cover depression, where people might be too depressed to hunt or gather or woo mates. It would cover pedophilia, where people have sex with children (and not adults) and so can’t reproduce. But it would also cover homosexuality, which also lowers people’s chances of having children.
We’re arguing about the definition of “mental disorder”, but in some sense this is a pointless fight. I’ve pointed out a useful category (mental conditions which are bad for people and society). Emil has pointed out a useful category (mental conditions which are bad for reproductive fitness). Why not just admit that these are two useful categories? Why not come up with separate names for them - disorder-(Scott) vs. disorder-(Emil), or maybe social-disorder vs. evofitness-disorder - and use the separate names, so everyone’s on the same page? If someone asked whether homosexuality was a mental disorder, we could confidently answer “It’s not a disorder-(Scott), but it is a disorder-(Emil)”.