The Myth of "Homophobia"

Why bullying has a social function

If you don’t approve homosexuality, you’re homophobic. You’re afraid. You’re insecure about your masculinity. Maybe you’re even a closet homosexual.

That’s what millions of teenage boys are taught. And it’s wrong. Disgust, not fear, is the male response to homosexuality. So what’s the difference between disgust and fear? And why aren’t men disgusted by lesbians?

Fear is a response to immediate danger, whereas disgust is about avoiding contamination. Different parts of the brain are involved. Men don’t feel a personal threat to their masculinity from gays. They are disgusted by a general threat to sex-related morality. The threat is to group cohesion. And the morality involved relates to authority and sanctity as well.

Men are concerned with policing males within the social group. And this is wider than just sex. Boys use “homophobic" terms without reference to homosexuality and long before sexual maturity. Peaking in early secondary-school years, terms like ‘bender’ and ‘gaylord’ are really about enforcing masculine norms, elevating and preserving status, and enhancing friendship.

It’s about clamping down on potential defection from the group. Failure to show group allegiance is punished. Immature, weak or cowardly? Gay. Too emotional, pacifistic or effeminate? Gay. Don’t play team sports? Gay.

Young boys don’t fully understand what they’re doing here, but this language, as Plummer puts it,

“patrols an intra-gender divide between successful collective masculinity and male otherness … it sanctions and polices stereotypical standards of masculinity and it proscribes immaturity and peer group betrayal too. Homophobia seems to arise from a more general preoccupation that boys should not deviate from the quest to become physically mature, peer-oriented, powerful, sexually potent men.”(Plummer, 2001, p. 6)

Lynd Ward illustration to Beowulf

So it’s about social deviance — and not only men but also women see gays this way. Lesbians, by contrast, are viewed more positively by both. Whereas women don’t exist in a dominance hierarchy, the male hierarchy is vital to the functioning of the group. It isn’t allowed to be disrupted. The black sheep effect means an in-group member posing a threat to group identity is treated far more negatively than is someone from an out-group. For in-group identification, trustworthiness is more important than competence or sociability.

Viking attitudes to homosexuality show this. They believed a man who submitted to another man sexually would do the same in other areas: homosexuality was equated with cowardice and passivity. Performing intercourse with a beloved friend was regarded as the worst sort of betrayal or lack of loyalty.

Homosexuality, then, disgusts men because it deviates from the masculine social roles based in biology that dignify their lives. And for a community not to take pride in these is suicide. If parents, teachers and social policies fail to police this, adolescent peer groups inevitably will. The body is instinctively conservative, and disgust is ineradicable.

Please share this because most people have never heard any of it before. And the facts must be faced because reality always wins in the end.

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References

Morrison, T. G., Kiss, M., Bishop, C. J., & Morrison, M. A. (2019). “We’re disgusted with queers, not fearful of them:” The interrelationships among disgust, gay men’s sexual behavior, and homonegativity. Journal of Homosexuality, 66(7), 1014-1033.

Wang, R., Yang, Q., Huang, P., Sai, L. & Gong, Y. (2019). The association between disgust sensitivity and negative attitudes toward homosexuality: the mediating role of moral foundations. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1229

Cunningham, E., Forestell, C.A. & Dickter, C.L. (2013). Induced disgust affects implicit andexplicit responses toward gay men and lesbians. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43(5), 362-369

Inbar Y., Pizarro D.A., Knobe J. & Bloom P. (2009). Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disapproval of gays. Emotion, 9, 435-439

Dasgupta, N., DeSteno, D., Williams, L.A. & Hunsinger, M. (2009). Fanning the flames of prejudice: The influence of specific incidental emotions on implicit prejudice. Emotion, 9, 585-591

Tapias, M.P., Glaser, J., Keltner, D., Vasquez, K. & Wickens, T. (2006). Emotion and prejudice: specific emotions toward outgroups. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10, 27-39

Xu, M., Li, Z., Ding, C., Zhang, J., Fan, L., Diao, L., & Yang, D. (2015). The divergent effects of fear and disgust on inhibitory control: an ERP study. PloS one, 10(6), e0128932

Crawford J.T., Inbar Y. & Maloney V. (2014). Disgust sensitivity selectively predicts attitudes toward groups that threaten (or uphold) traditional sexual morality. Personality and Individual Differences, 70, 218-223

Wang, R., Yang, Q., Huang, P., Sai, L. & Gong, Y. (2019). The association between disgust sensitivity and negative attitudes toward homosexuality: the mediating role of moral foundations. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1229

Reigeluth, C.S. & Addis, M.E. (2016). Adolescent boys’ experiences with policing of masculinity: Forms, functions, and consequences. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 17(1), 74-83

Plummer, David (2001). 'Policing Manhood' in Wood, Professor Carl (ed), ‘Sexual Positions’, Hill of Content, Melbourne, 2001, pp. 60-75

Van Leeuwen, F., Miton, H., Firat, R.B. & Boyer, P. (2016). Perception of gay men as defectors and commitment to group defense predict aggressive homophobia. Evolutionary Psychology.

Marques, J.M. & Yzerbyt, V. Y. (1988). The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members in inter- and intragroup situations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 287-292

Marques, J.M., Yzerbyt, V.Y., & Leyens, J-Ph. (1988). The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members as a function of group identification. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 1-16

Leach, C.W., Ellemers, N., & Barreto, M. (2007). Group virtue: The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(2), 234-249

Gunnora Hallakarva: The Vikings and Homosexuality