Gender Disruption/Gender Wholeness

by David Matheson
(This book is not yet complete and is expected in 2013)

The first step to getting out of a maze is to remember how you got in.

Similarly, finding your way beyond the struggle of same-sex attraction (SSA) is made much easier when the factors that led you into it—and continue to hold you there—are thoroughly understood. Without that understanding, attempting to make changes can leave you feeling bewildered and lost.

Since beginning my own journey more than 20 years ago, I have been attempting to fully explain not just the pathway that led me into SSA, but also the pathways of the many men with whom I've worked. I started with the prevailing theory of the day. That theory suggested that men with SSA had become defensively detached from their father and then from other males. Their feelings of attraction were a sexualized attempt to repair these broken bonds. Once the bonds were repaired, the theory held that SSA would diminish and opposite-sex attraction (OSA) would emerge.

That theory seemed to fit me quite well—at first. But eventually I began to interact with men for whom the theory didn't quite fit. And over time I realized the theory didn't fully explain my own experiences either. That's when I began my search for the perfect theoretical construct to completely explain homosexuality. But every time I thought I had a universal paradigm, someone would come along whose life story would crash that paradigm. Back at the drawing board, I would revise my thinking and broaden my views.

I gradually came to see that defensive detachment was only part of the story. Equally significant is the sense that many SSA men have of not fitting in with their own gender—of not feeling like they match their own views of what a man should be. They also have distorted opinions and attitudes about the opposite gender. I began to see that SSA is created and sustained by disruptions in a broad spectrum of gender issues.

What has emerged from all the years at the drawing board is a model for understanding the range of circumstances that can conspire to create SSA. More a tool than a theory, the gender disruption and wholeness models provide a framework that will allow you to discover your own unique pathway into same-sex attraction and what might be necessary to move beyond it.