Actually, I don’t think Dr. Shock is a homophobe, but rather an evil homophile.
How the hell did we let him into Canada to practice ?
I am becoming increasingly convinced that virulent homophobia really is evidence of homosexuality. And yeah, how the fuck could you have given that guy a medical license?
Yes, it’s getting to the point where homophobia is practically a synonym for deeply repressed homosexuality. And this guy knew exactly what he was doing. It’s amazing that he got away with it for so long.
You know how there’s all this gay porn with a military setting, or a wrestling team, or whatever?
I predict there’s going to be a lot of gay porn with a “cure the gay” clinic setting, with a BDSM theme.
At least in Canada, he is finally facing charges. I suggest you put him away and ummm “forget where the key is” nod wink say no more.
In my Health Psych we watched a movie about an experiment in which known homophobes were subjected to hard gay porn. After a while, the porn wasn’t all that was hard – the homophobes were getting much more aroused than non-'phobes from a control group. Sez a lot about repressed sexual interests, no?
I’m not so sure that’s necessarily an ok conclusion to draw. Arousal in such studies isn’t necessarily sexual arousal, but could refer to several kinds of biological reaction - you could describe the body’s reaction to fright or horror as arousal.
Too, if I recall right you’ll generally find that people are turned on by opposite-sexuality porn in such studies, even if just a small amount. Even if we’re not intellectually there, physically our bodies seem to automatically respond in such situations.
See what socialized medicine gets you?! That’s why I’m switching my stance away from UHC; I don’t want Obama’s gay-shock panels to force me into unwanted acts.
Yeah, you got a point. In the production, it was supposed to be a pretty conclusive experiment (experiments “prove” causality, right?), and the P’s had all these instruments glued to them, ostensibly to accommodate for all such variables, but I, too, am skeptical about just how much faith to place in some of these “experiments.” Too often blanket statements are made about ambiguous conditions, and this occasionally becomes apparent when one uses critical reasoning to examine those statements and the conditions under which they were made. But, then again, we have this tendency to empower those things we struggle against the most. So, if you’re looking at homophobes, as a psychological condition it still makes sense. Just to say we shouldn’t accept something blindly doesn’t mean to dismiss it out of hand, either, especially when there seems to be valid evidence in its favor. In my opinion, just becase the jury’s still out on it, I still lean heavily in favor of the experiment. The video was very convincing.
They’re going to combine panels – the gay electric shock panel, and then the death panel, because about then you’ll be feeling pretty deathly anyhow.
To address your second point: “Too, if I recall right you’ll generally find that people are turned on by opposite-sexuality porn in such studies, even if just a small amount. Even if we’re not intellectually there, physically our bodies seem to automatically respond in such situations.”
The control group against whom the experimenters were making their comparison were people who were not homophobic (I assume self-reported) and were tolerant of homosexuality, and they showed very little arousal at the same porn in contrast to a high level of arousal in the homophobic group. That makes a statement to me. This is not to be unncesssarily argumentive; I’ve had a lot of psych classes and there’s a lot of stuff I don’t really buy into, but when something makes sense to me by virtue of logic and, in my case, a certain amount of experience (I’ve done deep-feeling counseling work with troubled individuals who had issues in this direction), I have to go with the logic and experience in forming my opinions.
I would imagine that homophobes are not particularly honest at admitting it, and perhaps not even being aware of it. I’d be very interested in learning how one compiles a group of homophobes against a control group. I’d also be interested in how ‘homophobe’ is defined for purposes of a scientific experiment.
According to the video, it was all self-reporting. As for those who had strong feelings against homosexuality, many of them (not all) saw nothing wrong with “gay-bashing.” That was just something you were supposed to do with gay people, because…well…they’re gay! But these were the ones classified as “homophobic.” Those who had little reaction, or were completely okay with h.s. were classified as non-phobic. What mechanism by which they selected their population sample I’m not sure, but they had quite a few on either side. Of course, I’m sure that those who were too abashed to admit it or talk about it were not included in the experiment, which may have been a loss. Another thing (just occurred to me) – it seems that all the P’s were male.
But this was just one experiment and one example of this type of polarity in identifying with sexual orientation. Speaking more generally and at the risk of some digression, this ramifies to almost every aspect of a person’s behavior and perspective – a bottom-line, or prototypic personality perspective incorporates itself into the way one sees life and that perspective is reflected in one’s opinions, feelings and behavior. So when we say “homophobic,” we are also talking about that person’s entire history – the constellation of stressors and forces that conspired to culminate into such a biased way of viewing the world.
I thought the main way they measured arousal in these studies was with a penile cuff that measured any change from flaccid to erect.
Do men get erections during a fight-or-flight reaction?
Perhaps this is going too far off topic, but does ‘homophobia’ include both hatred and fear? I imagine there are people who hate gays but aren’t necessarily fearful of them. And others may fear them but not hate them. Still others (and I’m thinking of some flavors of christians here), that claim to hate gay, er, activity as an affront to god, but profess love for the person making such “choices”.
In my mind these folks are all homophobes, but I can imagine their psychological profiles might be considerably different. OTOH, perhaps I’m completely wrong.
Yeah, the penile cuff was one indicator, as well as brain wave indicators, heart rate, etc. They had a bunch of these little sensor tabs all over them. And it’s doubtful that a man would get, or at least maintain an erection in fight-or-flight, since as much blood as possible is directed into areas of the body specifically engaged in physical performance for the sake of personal survival, i.e., fighting or fleeing.
Hatred from a hate group toward another group is usually considered to be engendered by fear – the other group represents some sort of threat – and that fear manifests itself as hatred. That would still be legitimate grounds for considering that as “phobic.” And you may keep in mind that the population sample in the video was from volunteer self-reporters who considered themselves hostile towards or fearful of gays.
I can explain the video in terms of my memory of the class and the discussions in various psychology classes I’ve had, but I must admit there may be room for further speculation. I’ve seen very little in the psych department that can be nailed down as the final word on anything. We develop paradigms as foundation for further study, but beyond that it’s anybody’s game. That doesn’t mean that some theories don’t stand up to rigorous examination and work well to make predictions and help people, but the field is constantly evolving and progressing. Witness the move from the Behaviorists like Wundt and Spinner to the more humanistic ideologies of Rogers, Harlow, Reich and Janov. Some of this stuff is still pretty cutting-edge. So, at a certain educated point, one is still left to make up one’s own mind and form one’s own opinions. It’s really a sort of whatever-works kinda world – sort of like theoretical quantum physics. Hope that muddies the water a little more for you.
The original meaning of “phobia” isn’t “fear” - it’s “aversion”, such as hydrophobic. Homophobic doesn’t mean “feat of homosexuals”, just “aversion to homosexuals”. Which would apply in basically all anti-gay cases.
The original meaning of “phobia” isn’t “fear” - it’s “aversion”, such as hydrophobic. Homophobic doesn’t mean “feat of homosexuals”, just “aversion to homosexuals”. Which would apply in basically all anti-gay cases.
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I’m a psychology major, and I can’t find any confirmation to this. The term “phobia”, as I understand it, is from Greek origin, specifically meaning “fear of” and is used in context specifically to mean an unusual or irrational fear of something. As I recall, “hydrophobia” means a “fear of water,” so-called because people and animals who get to advanced stages of rabies exhibit behavior that looks like fear of water. Of course, the reality of it is that the victim is insanely thirsty, but can’t drink. “Aversion” may, actually, be a better real description of their behavior, but the original meaning of the term “phobia,” from any source I’ve been introduced to, specifically means “fear.” If I’m wrong, could you please cite your source of information?
No, the original meaning is “fear”. Hydrophobia originally referred to rabies, sufferers of which are actively fearful of water because they are unable to swallow liquids.
Hydrophobic as in “water repellent” is a much more recent meaning.