04 March 2012
Is there an asexual in the House?
A recent episode of House featured a married couple who identified as asexuals, people who lack a sexual orientation towards women or towards men (or towards anyone/anything else). As the character explained to Dr. Wilson: They were not celibate—they were not choosing to supress their sexual attractions. Rather, they did not experience sexual attractions. Asexuality was their sexual identity. House doesn't buy asexuality as an identity and bet he could find a medical reason that would explain their lack of sexual desire. The asexual community (yep; there is one) greatly anticipated the episode: It would be the first time their identity would be described to such a large audience, addressing the big question: Is asexuality a sexual orientation?
03 March 2012
How realistic was the sex addiction in Shame?
I went to the theatre
already pretty cynical about big-screen depictions of hypersexuality (my
preferred term for the phenomenon). On the one hand, I've seen very many people
in my clinic seeking help in controlling some aspect of their sex life. On the
other hand, I have read very many commentaries about what hypersexuality means, usually
based on hypotheticals or tid-bits from celebrity cases. None of those
discussions, however, ever seem to describe the actual people I see.
So, popcorn in hand, I was
expecting a re-telling of a daytime, self-help cliché: abuse in childhood,
causing addiction in adulthood, hitting rock bottom, resolved by confronting
past abuse. (Probably followed by falling in love for the first time,
after finally completing some period of sexual abstinence.) Instead, I
saw situations very close to what I do see in therapy.
01 March 2012
Dear Dr. James,
Dr. Cantor--
I'm a Licensed Psychologist
and Psychiatric Examiner for my state. My job is to evaluate
recidivistic sex offenders, usually before they are released from prison, and
to give the courts guidance as to whether the individual should be confined to
a psychiatric hospital upon release, or be involved with "Strict and Intensive
Supervision and Treatment (SIST)" in the community.
Lately, attorneys have
tried to put forth legal arguments involving individuals acting out sexually
against small children. They suggest that such was caused by the
individuals having “repressed homosexuality” issues, and as such they may not
be a threat to recidivate since they no longer “repress.”
Are you aware of any
scientific research to back this up, or to refute this claim? A case
of mine is in trial this week and next, and the Assistant Attorney General
handling this civil management the case is looking for some guidance. He
and I would appreciate any insight you could give in this matter.
P. E.
Open letter to the government of Alberta
Hon. Ron
Liepert
Minister of
Health and Wellness
#323
Legislature Building
10800–97
Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K
2B6
5 May 2009
Dear Mr.
Liepert:
I write in
response to media reports that Alberta plans to delist sex
reassignment surgery as a benefit of Alberta’s health care system. I
believe that health care is a basic right of every Canadian, and I believe that
that includes transsexuals. I believe that Canadians have the right to
appropriate health care for relieving the distress associated with major
depression and with surviving trauma, and I believe that Canadians have the
right to appropriate health care for the distress associated with
transsexualism.
No type of
psychotherapy has been effective in relieving what can be lifelong anguish from gender
dysphoria, the psychiatric term for extreme discontent with the sex
one is born as. Research conducted throughout the world, however,
has repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of surgical sex reassignment in
relieving that distress in medically indicated cases.
No one chooses
to have gender dysphoria. The only “choices” confronting transsexual
individuals are whether to endure a lifetime of frustration and misery, to kill
themselves, or to risk—and often lose—their families, friends, and job in hopes
of finding a happier life as their new sex. To remove the final
option from these individuals and their physicians is to remove the universal from
universal health care.
Sincerely
yours,
Dr. James M.
Cantor
Psychologist
Psychologist
Charles Silverstein on the origin of the 10% are gay statistic
Sent: Sunday,
June 14, 2009 12:21 PM
To: James
Cantor
Subject: the
10% statistic
Dear Jim,
I
was looking through your webpage & found where you said that that the 10%
of males are gay was incorrect & too lengthy to discuss. I can tell you
where the figure came from because I was there. It came out of the Gay Activist
Alliance (GAA) in the early 1970s. There was a Press or PR Committee headed by
Bruce Voeller and Ron Gold. Ron was an experienced PR man & Bruce a
researcher at Rockefeller. The media always wanted to know how many men were
homosexual. When Bruce would talk to them about statistics and sampling
problems, their eyes would glaze over. The press does not want to know about
sampling probabilities. So Bruce decided to tell them that 10% of males were
gay, since that was a neat and easily understood figure. It then became the
mantra of gay liberation. I’m sure that Bruce got 10% from somewhere in the
first Kinsey book, but can’t remember specifically where. Nor did anyone at the
time care how accurate it was. We were fighting for our rights and publicity
was extremely valuable to our cause.
I’ll
be at APA in Toronto & hope that we’ll get a chance to meet. I
enjoy both your good humor on the list-serve and your research – not
necessarily in that order.
Charles
Silverstein
212-799-8574
www.doctorsilverstein.com
A Bill of Transsexual Rights
Statements like these are long overdue. People
choose whether to transition, but one does not choose to be dysphoric about the
sex they were born into. In this Bill of Rights, I refer specifically to people
who are transsexual, rather than use the broader terms, such as transgender or
gender variant. Although everyone has the right to respect in my view, I
assembled these rights to pertain mostly to the process of transition (either
male-to-female or female-to-male), which is a feature of transsexuality
specifically. I hope other individuals and groups modify this Bill
or suggest alternative ones, suitable for employers and legislators to adopt
and enact.
It’s easy to forget how little we know about paraphilias
On a listserv I belong to,
mostly of psychologists, someone described a man who was sexually aroused by
touching the plaster cast of persons with a broken limb. The psychologist
wondered whether the patient’s behavior should be called toucherism (sexual
interest in touching an unsuspecting stranger), whereas other psychologists in
the discussion argued for acrotomophilia (sexual preference for
amputees).
Similar debates are often had for the
boundaries of other paraphilias. I find most such debates to be
uninformative, however. With only few exceptions, such as
pedophilia, the state of the scientific literatures on the paraphilias is not
sufficiently advanced for making any clear demarcations around them.Although it is rarely made explicit, opinions about whether a case fits in one or another category follow from what the clinician sees as the most important feature (or, more typically, the most dramatic feature) that makes the paraphilic interest distinct from typical sexual interests: To the toucherism-thinker in the above debate, it was the touching of the an unsuspecting stranger that was the defining feature of the patient’s sexual interest; to the acrotomophilia-thinkers, it was the lack of a healthy limb that was the defining feature. In truth, however, we do not know which behavioral feature of a paraphilia is its defining one, if any at all.
Depathologize! A follow-up
If I had to pick the top theme that sexologists and
sexuality interest groups were discussing in the lead up to the proposed DSM
changes, that would be it: Depathologize, depathologize,
depathologize. From blogs to letters to editors of research
journals, there have been demands that the DSM declare as officially normal various
sexual phenomena, ranging from purely consensual situations (like
transsexualism and BDSM) to those that motivate sexual offenses (such as
pedophilia and hebephilia). With the release of the DSM5 proposals from their
various workgroups, I thought it was worth revisiting. I was
actually quite surprised by which of the DSM committees did and did not remove
the label mental illness and from whom:
Dear Dr. James,
I am a professional
Canadian woman aged 33 with a high awareness of issues relating to addiction
and pedophilia, due to an alcoholic mother and father who was convicted of
inappropriately touching his girlfriend’s young boy.
My problem is that I have a
long list of ‘suggested traits’ of a pedophile written down on my notepad that
appear to be present in my current boyfriend. My boyfriend hasn’t shown any
overt signs of being a pedophile or having been abused himself, but he is only
30 and I guess I fear that something will emerge later, as it did with my dad
later in his life.
Could you possibly tell me
whether you feel that someone can technically tick all or most of the
biological or social ticklist boxes of traits and not be a pedophile? The
things that make me nervous about my boyfriend are learning issues/poor grades
in school, poor memory, short in stature, left-handed, and a strong view that
men should be able to interact with children and not be called pedophiles. He
is constantly injuring himself and funnily enough he sometimes reminds me of a
brain injured person—I worked with acute brain injury patients for four years.
Thank you so much in
advance for taking the time to read my email.
Kind regards,
T. C.
Dear Dr. James,
Is there a professional
term for one who derives sexual pleasure from watching himself masturbate in
the mirror? I assume I’m not the only one who sees cases like this
(albeit only 2 over the last 5 years—both with totally different personality
disorders and sex crimes). Does anyone have a reference for literature on the
phenomenon?
Thanks, David
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