Homophobia - Why?

I think the ambiguity of sex roles is what really bothers straight men. I think it raises a lot of questions that require a great deal of thought, and the average way to deal with anything that challenges your most basic assuptions about your place in the world is to attack it.

there are a million texts that can go far deeper into the issue than I would go on ILE. If you really want to know more about gender role and sexuality there is more than enough material to keep you busy for awhile.

That, and as with all truly conservative beliefs, there's the underlying dogma that anything that doesn't fit in with a certain predetermined view of how the world should be is just wrong on principle.

massive misplaced sex-utopia envy: assumption that gay men = cheerfully prosmiscuous = endless brilliant sex (inc.sex w. ppl that wouldn't get the hata off) w/o any of the emotional negotiation-complication consequence-stuff het sex is stuck with >>> contorts into sour grapes on stilts

i agree my reason is totally not front-central of anyone's head or self-justification, far from it

Changing rooms at school could have an awful lot to do with this...

Secondly, homosexuality hasn't just arrived from mars: it has always been there, right in the heart of the family, right in the heart of everyone's sexual culture. You ronan and you pete have had (fleeting?) homo impulses: so have yr dad and yr mom, ronan. In order to be "ignorance" of this, there has to have cultural (and often personal) repression: the wiping over of their/ your feelings with received cultural judgments. In fact there HAS been cultural repression. Homophobia is FAR STRONGER than a kneejerk "fear of the unknown": and "fear of beingt penetrated" = response to repressed knowledge, ie NOT ignorance.

I don't object to your ignorance explanation as a part of a whole (ditto everyone else's: part of a complex whole zzzz)), I just think it's incredibly feeble as the Generating Impulse: it fails to explain why (eg) Hatred of Avocadoes isn't as intense as Homophobia.

Something worth fearing.

animal kingdom entirely full of queer activity cf Biological Exuberance (interestingly it's apparently fairly species specific: evidence of "cultural" "diversity"??)

instinctive hate = meaningless; hence download to "instinctive fear" which seems to mean more, but is I think a dubious cliché once you take it beyond "fear of heights; falling; fire", and these aren't universal. Instinctive has to be universal?

hence my suggestion of deepset envy, which i'm sticking with, as it is more hilarious

Later, painfully, I realised what an obnoxious indefensible prejudice this was , in fact issue of homosexuality was instrumental in becoming an apostate (no easy decision believe me). Perhaps someone can enlighten me why judaic-christian culture has been so rampantly homophobic?

I think he may be an exception to the general tendency. The hackneyed- but-true answer to the question is surely that het anal sex is a power-trip and while homo anal sex can also be a power-trip there is also the constant implicit reminder of role-reversal.

If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they should surely be put to death. Leviticus 20:13

What is the root cause of this prescription? The need to breed? Fear? Why place heterosexual relations as sacred and homosexual relations as an 'abomination'? The Greeks didn't.

The Greeks DID regard it as a kind-of abomination. To let yourself be sodomised was a capital crime in many Greek city-states.

And couldn't the stringent Christian stance on sodomy and other such things be a refutation of the reported hedonistic excesses of the Romans? I'm reaching on this one, I know...

Being a relapsed Catholic, I'd have to say that most homosexual fear is a result of guilt. Plain and simple - have it drilled into one's head that it's "evil" enough times (subliminally and directly), and you start to believe it (on some level), and it affects your perceptions if you're not aware of your actions.

The one TV show that I've seen where such things are/were treated with some common sense and decency was MTV's Undressed. Yes, almost everyone on the show was a model, but they managed (during the 1st season, at least) to portray all sorts of relationships (same sex, interracial) with very little blatant stereotyping. Can't say the same re: soap opera cliches, but you take what you can get.

To part ways with Mr. Sinker, I don't think homophobia is always grounded on what gay people do (or supposedly do) in bed. After all, children generally have no meaningful understanding of sex and its consequences (apart from the sheer mechanics of sex, maybe), yet they use "gay," "fag" and "queer" as insults.

As for some straight adults, though, you do hear an implicit rage that gays and lesbians have a rights straightfolk do not, or don't have a burden that straightfolk do. I'm not sure this could simply be characterized as envy, though.

This rage is often the basis of the ridiculously circular argumentation some conservatives employ when talking about the rights of gays and lesbians. Homosexuals are fundamentally irresponsible because they don't submit to the civilizing influence of marriage and child-rearing; yet homosexuals shouldn't get married and have children because they are fundamentally irresponsible.

(Some conservatives break out of this vicious cycle by stating that women that civilize men, not marriage - yet this leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that men are essentially barbarians who are dangerous when alone together, something that sounds suspiciously close to a conservative caricature of hairy-legs feminism.)

More straight men should have anal sex. I don't understand what the big deal is. If I had a prostate I would have my mail forwarded there.

I wouldn't say it's a big deal it just doesn't have any appeal. sort of like vaginas for teh gays.

if a guy had a vagina, I'd fuck it.

If a guy had a vagina, I'd fuck it too.

Although, I get that some gay male couples don't have penetrative sex and that's fine too. I just don't believe in reincarnation so it's weird to muddle about with body parts.

ok let’s all be a little nicer to each other

STRAIGHT MEN BE NICER TO YOUR BUTTS.

i think we can move forward assuming nobody posting here is an anti semite or fascist :)

Prostate mail delivery sounds like a nightmare of papercuts

If I'm living somewhere I need to be able to get mail.

Prostate mail delivery sounds like a nightmare of papercuts

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), T

wow, an amazing sentence

Not convinced that sexuality boils down to what you can or can't do with your body. Tbf there are no doubt plenty of straight dudes who fantasize about being anally penetrated but who will never act on it because it would be an affront to their virility. I assume that's who Yerac is referring to.

hell, for many straight dudes kissing guys affronts their virility

carrying a tote bag affronts their virility.

I can't speak for anyone else, for my part I just find guys kind of gross, feel zero compunction to get physically close

eh shakey you do realize you don't need to be with a man to get fucked in the ass?

I think I saw a Broad City episode about that

"you don't know shit 'cause you never been fucked in the ass!"

idk what ppl find sexually appealing seems pretty unconscious/hard-wired these aren't exactly things people can (or should be) talked into

I am really hoping we can collectively peer pressure some straight dude here into having anal sex. It's my favorite type of Taco Tuesday.

I should probably note that I am drinking in an airport lounge for another 2 hours.

lol

yeah, i was using the more archaic, non-anti-semitic meaning of the term "globalist," i kind of assumed that people would understand my meaning given my radical left bonafides, but point taken— won't use it anymore here or elsewhere. good lesson to learn, tbh, and appreciate y'all not jumping down my throat.

that said, my point about Buttigieg stands. fuck him.

tbf this isn't the first time I've heard this "pitch", feel like it is a very popular argument gay men like to make to straight guys

xp

the first guy I knew who went through a very dramatic and sort of classic coming out phase (letting absolutely *everybody* know, getting publicly naked at every opportunity, flirting with everyone etc.) loved to do this. this was in college. later he burned bridges with everybody in our social circle and developed a meth habit, not sure what happened after that.

I wasn't into it until my wife decided I was gonna be into it. Only really do it once in a while on special date nights nowadays. But when it's good, it's pretty much the best.

(not meth)

getting publicly naked at every opportunity

is this part of the classic coming out phase? i've missed some good parties i think.

Santa Cruz was a "clothing optional" campus

Terrizzi et al, 2010. Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. Personality ind diff, 49(6), pp.587-592.

Cunningham et al, 2013. Induced disgust affects implicit and explicit responses toward gay men and lesbians. Euro J Soc Psychol, 43(5), pp.362-369.

de Zavala et al, 2014. Prejudice towards gay men and a need for physical cleansing. J Exp Soc Psychol, 54, pp.1-10.

Nega et al, 2016. The role of disgust in homosexuality judgments. Open Psychol J, 9(1).

Gadarian and van der Vort, 2018. The gag reflex: Disgust rhetoric and gay rights in American politics. Polit Behav, 40(2), pp.521-543.

Kiss etal, 2018. A meta-analytic review of the association between disgust and prejudice toward gay men. J homosexual, pp.1-23.

Morrison et al, 2019. We’re disgusted with queers, not fearful of them: The interrelationships among disgust, gay men’s sexual behavior, and homonegativity. J homosexual, 66(7), pp.1014-1033.

Some people (political conservatives) have more active behavioral immune systems, with all the overactive amygdalas that entails, and when they think of (at least) male homosexuals, they visualize shit on a dick, or the skin lesions of Kaposi sarcoma.

It's why desensitization via personal social contact or benign out characters (eg, Will in Will and Grace) is effective, the more raucous pride parades or "We're here and we're queer, deal with it!" chants perhaps aren't.

Good job reading only the thread title

I have not gotten naked at every opportunity, I must not be gay

look, let's just say this particular dude re-enacted this skit in real life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdbs3lKEeBE

except that at the end he was naked instead of in a leotard

i'm disappointed no one remarked on my Buddy Cole "porridge" reference

I missed that, was that in some other thread

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/14/sexual-preference-coney-barrett-hirono/

OK I gotta admit I don't understand this — "sexual preference" is considered offensive? you don't necessarily choose to prefer something do you?

I thought “preference” always implied a degree of conscious choice.

"orientation" makes more sense to me but calling "preference" outright offensive seems like a bit of an overreach to me

I prefer someone using the term "sexual preference" to "sexual perversion," I'll admit.

I guess there are two layers to this. The first is that the homophobic right routinely describes same-sex attraction as a 'choice', the implication being that it's the wrong one. So one way to fight back is to push a deterministic narrative according to which it's wired into you and beyond your control. The second layer (which is what you're getting at) is: why should it matter in the first place? The correct answer is 'it shouldn't', but perhaps this argument is likelier to backfire in a polemical context? In other words, I get the sense that Hirono's angle of attack is merely a rhetorical strategy, which may have indeed paid off since Barrett felt the need to apologize.

(Do correct me if I'm wrong.)

I recall there being a line in the musical song cycle Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens where one character gets angry about being asked for his sexual preference because it was not something he chose. It was written in the 80s but I'm guessing that sentiment hasn't completely become mainstream yet. I get the objection, though I don't think many are aware of this concern (I had forgotten about it until now).

"Sexual preference" is one of those in-group / out-group terms, where the meaning of the term, and what it implies, completely changes based on *who* is using it, and in what context.

(See also: Queer, AFAB/AMAB, etc.)

That yeah, it's a dog-whistle among the Right, code for 'teh gays choose to be gay because they are SINFUL'.

And the push-back against that, in terms of out-group conversation, of homosexual people saying "it's an inherent identity, not a choice or a lifestyle" is both necessary push-back against only one part of the problem?

(It's like when the Right says "Obama is a Muslim!" the full response is not "Actually Obama is a Christian", it's "Why should it matter if he is or isn't, there is nothing wrong with being Muslim?")

Because when the pushback is this ~Born This Way~ narrative, effective as that is against the Right, and as much as it makes sense for people with a binary homosexual orientation, it turns around and excludes bisexuals, queer orientations, hetero/homoflexibles, all the non-binary, fluid, situational, person-centred sexualities - which are also just as valid as binary homosexuality! This is exclusion directed towards a big part of our own community. But that is very much an in-group conversation. Because the Right hate ALL of us - they aren't stopping to check who is homo, bi, flexi, queer or whatever. They think we're all sinful and deserve to die.

Both of those conversations can be valid and true and necessary. But one should really not usurp the other, which is what often ends up happening? Like, it's not the *term* that needs to be cancelled. It's the context within which the term is used in a hateful way which needs to be addressed.

Terre Thaemlitz's thoughts on "beat this way" have always interested me

Personally, I found myself distanced from direct action groups because the terms of identification they cultivated out of strategic necessity so often folded back into essentialisms that excluded me on a personal level. So I was always advocating for the recognition and acceptance of something other than myself (like the way "born this way" ideologies take over discussions of LGBT rights... I consider myself more "beat this way," my queer identity being primarily informed by material ostracism and harassment than by some mythological self-actualization and pride). That, combined with the mid-'90s move away from direct action toward CBO's (Community Based Organizations) -- largely because the tactics of direct action had been so thoroughly coopted by mainstream media - was pretty much the end of my serious direct action involvements. Over the years, enunciating this process has become the core political act of my projects and activities. I do not do this to discourage people from forms of direct action, but as a simultaneous form of critical analysis that hopefully contributes in other ways to our various attempts to react to dominations.

but i think they're acknowledging there that there are numerous paradigms for thinking about sexuality and that it's very hard to escape the co-opting of rhetorical strategies by people who don't wish you well

The Discourse seems destined to get mired in whether it's a Bad Term or Good Term and just make everyone very tired

So much of the Bad Term / Good Term discourse makes so much more sense when you read it more of Boundary Work of in-groups / out-groups.

Like in so many other things, people need to stop asking "what is my opinion on this thing?" and start asking "what is my *relation* to this thing?"

Like in so many other things, people need to stop asking "what is my opinion on this thing?" and start asking "what is my *relation* to this thing?"

a million times OTM

Always loved that Thaemlitz bit, thanks for reminding me of it.

Some of this discussion reminds me of Denise Riley's book 'The Words of Selves,' which calls the entire idea of subjective identity into place.

Not into place, into question. I just spent four hours grading papers and doing well office hours, apologies

Thesis: “Sexual preference” is an outmoded and offensive way of talking about LGBT people.

Antithesis: Lots of video of Joe Biden saying “sexual preference.”

Synthesis: Biden is popular in part because he’s accurately seen as not on the cutting edge of progressive thought.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 14, 2020