December 09, 2010

They put a bell on it?

How do you test whether you are gay or claim that you are gay? You could do the gay-o-meter test. And how to separate the wheat from the chaff? The questions apparently vex the Czech immigration service who, when confronted with would-be asylum seekers who claim they are being persecuted for being gay in their home countries, apply a "phallometric" test to separate the queers from the fake ones, as it were:
The Fundamental Rights Agency said the Czech Republic was the only EU country still using a "sexual arousal" test.
Gay asylum seekers are hooked up to a machine that monitors blood-flow to the penis and are then shown straight porn.
Those applicants who become aroused are denied asylum.
The agency said in a report that "it is dubious whether [the test] reaches sufficiently clear conclusions".
It said the practice could violate the European Convention on Human Rights "since this procedure touches upon a most intimate part of an individual's private life". [...]
The tests were always conducted under the supervision of experts, said the officials, and always with the asylum seeker's full written consent.
The case first came to light after a German court refused to deport an Iranian asylum seeker to the Czech Republic, saying as a homosexual he would be subjected to the test.
You don't need to have a sexology degree to see immediately that this kind of test is completely invalid: I have met more men, who are into sex with men, at straight porn cinemas than at gay venues. Getting aroused by straight porn is very poor indicator of your sexual orientation. Remember, there are naked men on screen, so duh! What does deflate me is lesbian porn (despite claiming to be a libertine I can't say I like everything I see!) and have found that a far better indicator of whether you are straight or just play straight.
And, please tell me, Czech immigration officers, how do you evaluate lesbian asylum seekers?

Paul Canning's original report here.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

A lot of my gay amigos only watch straight porn. But then, maybe that says more about me....

Of course, the Czech authorities are probably not terribly keen to substantiate the claims of the asylum seekers and are using the sex lie detector test to eliminate as many as possible. But that is the nature of the 'phallometric' test - and the non-kninky lie detector as well. It's much more of blunt instrument of authority than a scientific tool. Ahem.

paulocanning said...

Original author here! Here's the context for this story http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2010/12/czech-pornographic-phallometric-testing.html

Hans Versluys said...

Cheers, Mr Canning, I have linked it too.