Sunday, June 8, 2008

iPhones and Sexual Addiction

Since Straight Guise looks at sexual issues I receive many emails from men who suffer from a sexual addiction and cannot refrain from sexually acting out. They use various computer programs to block them from going to porn sites on the Internet with their home laptops and desktops.

However they are finding ways to use the iPhone to sexually act out and go to these site with which they cannot connect on their home computers. So far there are no Internet filters (after clicking Internet filters scroll down to where it says Internet filters on the page it takes you to) for the iPhone.


I did find a site which has parental controls for the iPhone called Sentry. Here is what is on Sentry's site:


We’ve put the iKnow in the iPhone!

Your iPhone can now be a window into your child’s online activities
anyplace, anywhere, anytime. Sentry Parental Controls is adapting its
award winning parental control software to use with an interface designed
specifically for the iPhone browser. Sentry At Home, our intuitive, easy to use
program in conjunction with your iPhone provides a powerful tool that allows you
to instantly receive real-time alerts on your iPhone if inappropriate computer
behavior occurs on your child’s computer. You can even lock or shut down
your child’s computer remotely right from your iPhone.

The way this can work for sexually addicted and compulsive people who cannot refrain from using the iPhone to sexually act out is to place these parental controls onto their iPhone. Then select a sponsor, therapist, partner and/or friend who knows and understands your struggles and who you can be accountable to. Then if you go to the sites or chat rooms which are inappropriate they will know and keep you accountable.



Sunday, June 1, 2008

Does Everyone Think You're Gay?

A nice article appears this month in Details magazine on the concept that For some guys, no amount of evidence to the contrary can kill a certain rumor.

The article was written by by Mike Albo.

Albo starts the story about a friend of his named Gary who is often mistaken for gay when he is 100% straight. He talks about celebrities such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise who have never been able to shake off the rumors even when their lives clearly point to a heterosexual orientation.

This is a good conversation as I have known many clients and men (and women) in my personal life who have this same issue.

The author writes:

Gary's what I like to call a "stray," a straight guy who sends out gay
signals like he's shaking a tambourine even as he proclaims himself—and in fact
is—100 percent heterosexual. The characteristics that define a stray as such
vary widely. Maybe it's a melodious laugh. Or a fastidious shirt-and-tie combo.
Or an effusive signature salutation ("Oh my god! I'm totally psyched to see
you!"). But more often the thing about a heterosexual guy that makes everyone
assume he's a homo is almost impossible to pinpoint. He may talk up his love of
ladies more than Bret Michaels does, he may have a wife and kids, but people
always react the same way: "Really? No, wait—really?"

This phenomenon shouldn't be confused with that of actual gay men who
masquerade as straight. And we're not talking about the metrosexual, that
embodiment of a played-out consumer megatrend that involved slim-cut pants and
moisturizer. Every guy in America knows how to clip his nose hairs and make his
outfit go from day to night. Those skills aren't what make a heterosexual man
read gay. So what does?

Science has tried to figure this out. Researchers have studied
behavioral traits like "hip sway" and "voice quality" and even physical traits
like hair-whorl patterns and finger-length ratios. Richard Lippa, a professor of
psychology at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of Gender,
Nature, and Nurture, says that no one trait can be used to determine someone's
sexuality. But, he says, "I think the one thing we can conclude from the
existing research is that both scientists and laypeople can judge people's
sexual orientation at better-than-chance levels based on behavioral
traits."

That's not what the perpetually mistaken-for-gay man wants to hear. He
wants the word spread that people are often wrong when they play Guess the
Orientation. He wants his having a girlfriend or being married with kids to be a
sufficient indicator that he doesn't like to sleep with men. But you can't stop
the gay rumor once it starts. Strays are often tagged and classified in the
workplace, where, out of curiosity and sheer boredom, colleagues pick each other
apart with forensic specificity, zooming in on the wedding-ring-wearing guy in
sales who likes his limbs tanning-booth bronzed, or the highlighted assistant
who claims to be hot for Scarlett Johansson.

Alex (not his real name), a
website editor in San Francisco, has watched one of his bosses groom himself
into stray territory. "He mixes protein shakes, has lost 150 pounds, wears
Kenneth Cole, and is a member of Equinox," Alex says. "He has lots of female
friends, and he talks about being attracted to them—but the women think of him
as a friend."



Some people, in my judgment, want to believe that these folks are gay and that they are in denial to confirm that their "gaydar" is correct. Others want to catch these individuals in a lie to "out" them and make the confess. Others still have ideas of what it means to be gay or straight and if rumors exist and even if evidence that these folks have has same sex behaviors than it must mean that they are truly gay and closeted.

This blog is about recognizing that it is much more complicated.

What do you think?