The ability to think in a probabilistic way goes out the window. "That causes anxiety, and then you start to think more unrealistically. "The more you insist that you mustn't have a particular thought, guess what happens? You're going to have hundreds of them," he tells me. Does that mean…'"Īccording to Joseph, it's at such innocuous beginnings that a self-perpetuating and all-consuming obsession with sexual identity can begin. "Someone will tell me that they were walking down the street and saw a guy, and thought: 'Oh, he's really good looking.' But then they think: 'oh my God, I've just noticed a guy and thought he was good looking.
#STRAIGHT TO GAY MEN VIDEOS MANUAL#
While he asserts that 'HOCD', an acronym coined by sufferers sharing their stories online, isn't officially classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), he says that the irrational fear of being or becoming gay falls firmly within the umbrella of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Does that mean…"Īvy Joseph is an accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and lecturer with 25 years experience treating anxiety disorders. "Oh my God, I've just noticed a guy and thought he was good looking. I don't want that happening to anybody else." "I was fobbed off by therapists who just thought that I must be gay. Now 26, he is keen to raise awareness for what he believes to be a misunderstood and potentially life-ruining anxiety disorder. He carried out the same test almost every night for the next three weeks, always with the same result.Īfter searching Internet mental health forums for answers to his private impasse, Darren became convinced that he was suffering from 'HOCD': a not officially recognised form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder defined by the fear of being or becoming homosexual.Ī decade has passed since Darren's self-diagnosis and subsequent therapy, but 'HOCD' still remains a divisive subject within some sections of the psychological healthcare community. Feeling equal measure victory and defeat, Darren switched off the monitor, laid flat on his bed and wrestled with his doubts for a few more hours before finally surrendering to sleep. He watched, expecting something significant to stir upstairs or down.
It felt like everything I thought I knew about myself was falling apart. "I just woke up one day and I was suddenly obsessed with it. It was around 3am, in the summer of 2007, and relentless fears of homosexuality had tormented him since the start of the year. He plugged in his headphones, clicked on an X-rated video and took a deep breath.
"I had a girlfriend, and only ever had sexual feelings for women, but I just couldn't shake the idea that I was somehow lying to myself." However, gay men were far more likely to watch videos involving fisting, felching or water sports.Hunched nude in the glow of his iMac, 17-year-old Darren* typed the words 'gay porn' into Google for the first time. ‘They’re not identical to either group in terms of their porn viewing, which I think is really interesting for understanding bisexuality.’īoth bi and straight men watched solo masturbation more than gay men (60% compared to less than 50%), and bi men were far less interested in porn involving BDSM or other kinks (13.7%) than straight (24.6%) or gay (27.9%). ‘ are more like heterosexual men in some things, and more like gay men in other things, but that’s a reflection of their own unique attractions,’ he wrote in Archives of Sexual Behavior. They also reported watching a significant amount of ‘bisexual porn’, with two men and one woman or two women and one man.ĭowning said this proves bisexual men are not ‘watered down gays or heterosexuals’. He found sexual behavior and sexual identity seems to line up, with straight men having sex with women and (apart from a rare few) gay men having sex with men.ĭowning said this ‘identity discrepant viewing’ as ‘some level of evidence’ of fluidity in sexual attraction, at least in the habits of what porn they watch.īisexual men displayed different porn-viewing habits to gay or straight men, with bis saying they watch guy-on-guy porn just as must as gay men do and watching guy-on-girl porn almost as much as straight men. Other findings included how bisexual men were far less interested in kink or BDSM than their straight or gay counterparts.ĭr Martin J Downing, the lead researcher, was surprised to find how 21% of men, who say they only had sex with women, would watch two men having sex together on screen. One in five straight men watches gay porn and 55% of gay men watches straight porn. A new study has surveyed the porn-viewing habits of 821 gay, straight and bisexual men from across the US, and the results are very revealing.