And I think that is complete nonsense. If it had any merit, the reverse would also be true and could be used as an argument for conversion therapy. I
The reverse isn’t really true as repressing innate desire requires neurosis, while learning to enjoy something you don’t instinctively enjoy very much doesn’t. You can’t go down the road of neurosis open-eyed and that “setting your mind to it” bit requires insight into your own mind so the two are at odds with each other. If it happens then that’s ordinary repression, not a voluntary choice.
And even if it was true then conversion therapy would still be psychological torture: Nothing about conversion therapy is “setting one’s mind to it”, just like setting out to not dislike cleaning the toilet is not the same as someone flushing your head.
Or, differently put: Don’t shove something down someone’s throat that they don’t already enjoy inhaling. SCNR.
And then of course there’s the whole issue of why. Why change that stuff? Of course people might have individual reasons (which might be as simple as learning a psychological circus trick for the heck of it), but that doesn’t mean that a social norm to have a particular sexuality (short of consent issues) makes any amount of ethical sense.
If I see foot fetish stuff it is an instant turnoff and has been for 30 years. My dislike of foot fetish stuff is certainly not due to lack of exposure.
You valued it negatively all those years and presumably never tried to do the opposite, it’s no wonder you continue to dislike it. And why would you, there’s no reason to.
All I’m saying is that the plasticity is there, not that it’s particularly common that people use it.
I think it’s naive to assume that you could reliably prevent people from exploring their sexuality by keeping them (pre-)occupied with something else.
Nothing is 100% reliable, and the purely sexual can only be a part of the overall solution. Additional things include making affected recognise the impossibility of consent, the amount of damage their behaviour would cause, and if that alone doesn’t convince them that they should gladly distract themselves there’s some ways to get a bit of a handle on dark triad traits though TBH the bigger bully argument works most reliably: Criminalisation. OTOH it would be naive to only crack the whip of criminal law without offering people aid in how to avoid it.