[suizi]

I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight. The exception would be where they're bi, but they would already have had some interest in the same sex, and it wouldn't have come from social conditioning.

[tomp]

Why do you think that? I’d say it’s very much cultural... these days, bisexuality is much more acceptable for women than for men, and more women identify as bisexual... in Ancient Greece, men having sex with men were much more common than these days (AFAIK).

[jsmith45]

But even in ancient Greek culture there was still something akin to homophobia. While err... screwing a guy as a guy was just fine, being screwed by a guy is not. I.E. being the receptive partner as a male was heavily socially stigmatized. It seems this was viewed as being basically being effeminate, and unsurprisingly that was viewed negatively.

It seems to be extremely common over the ages that women acting like men is more accepted than men acting like women. Even during times when women acting like men in some respect was highly taboo, the reverse almost always seems to be viewed as worse. (I.E. back in the days when a woman wearing pants was scandalous, it generally seems like a guy wearing a woman's dress was even more scandalous).

This dislike of men acting like women definitely seems to be one factor in modern homophobia (although it is not the only factor). It also seems to factor a lot into transphobia (which seems to be much more focused on trans women than on trans men). Of course I suspect that transphobia in men is frequently intertwined with homophobia. The idea being the revulsion found in the idea of finding out that the woman you are dating "is really a man" (in the bigot's mind), making them effectively gay.

[danbolt]

I feel like the culture seems to be the big variable there than the preferences, to be honest. Or, people are going to express what they like based on their environment and how they perceive it will respond.

[dwohnitmok]

> I don't think it is possible to turn someone who is straight gay, anymore than it is possible to turn someone who is gay straight.

Indeed if that's true, i.e. that there is an innate immutability between the two, then the whole question is conveniently moot and we can instead turn our attention to figuring how to combat these fears at a rhetorical and cultural level (still a Herculean task but at least a step forward).

The fear, on both sides of that coin, comes from if that's not true.