I think I learned a different definition of the term “homophobia”. I always thought of homophobia as someone being afraid they might be homosexual, themselves. The term implies a passionate rejection of homosexuality as a way to reaffirm that they are not queer. Sort of like fourth grade boys pushing little girls and loudly declaring their hatred of said girls in order to hide the fact they actually have a crush on them.
homo = man. As such, I was asking that question in regards to male homosexuals. See, I thought **Argent Towers **was saying that since people assume anal interaction within a homosexual relationship, they are repelled by it. Your reply, Der Trihs, seemed to be contradicting that. I was replying to you in the hopes you would provide clarification.
Now that we have suitably misunderstood each other*, let us move to clearer grounds.
Not trying to be snarky at all!
~S.P.I.~
*I have communication difficulties, so a lot of it is my fault.
Homophobia predates germ theory.
I’m not sure that the association between homosexuality and anal sex is a pre-modern construct. We may consider the two linked today, but I don’t know that the early Christians, or pre-Christian Romans, or pre-Roman Jews felt the same way.
Not in this context. homo=“the same” in Greek. “Homosexuals” have sex with the same sex.
I think a part of this was the rigid gender roles of the pre-modern world. Before the last few centuries “women’s work” and “men’s work” was delineated, largely of necessity. There was no way that a woman could keep a house, cook (over a fire), mend the clothes (spinning the fiber, making the cloth, making the clothes, repairing them, washing them, etc.), have babies and take care of kids, all together (with her other duties) being waaaaaay more than a full time job as we’d understand the term, AND work in the fields all day (not to say she didn’t work in them at all) and get meat and all other traditionally male roles. Likewise, a man had enough to do providing protection (against animals, against humans, against the elements) and providing meat and working the fields (which was women’s work in some cultures but there was some trade-off) and even begin to do housework. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.
Since men’s work requires a different type of physical strength and different tools and since a man can impregnate a dozen women and never be incapacitated like a woman is by pregnancy, etc., it leads to misogyny of varying sorts. Women are every bit as essential as men, but they come to be regarded as the lesser partner, and their sexuality was something that was extremely misunderstood and somewhat feared. I don’t think it’s at all coincidental or unimportant that lesbianism was rarely that huge a concern (in some cultures- for that matter in Victorian England’s laws- it was treated almost as if it didn’t exist) but male:male sex was far more offensive to far more cultures. Also probably not offensive is that in the prejudice against male:male sex the penetrative partner (‘the top’) wasn’t looked down upon as much as the passive partner (‘the bottom’), which I think has much to do with the fact the passive partner is therefore feminized more than the penetrative (who’s committing a sin or a taboo or whatever but still at least performing a male role). Even in Greek and Roman cultures (which were not quite as tolerant of male:male sexual relations as they’re sometimes portrayed) the ‘bottom’ was a person of derision; there was no penetration between those of equal class.
In reality there’s no correlation whatever twixt how ‘masculine’ or ‘effeminate’ a homosexual man is and whether they’re top/bottom/or versatile- it’s more about personal preference- but even today many straight people assume that the bottom is the ‘woman’ in the relationship.
I’ve wondered if any has to do with a mistaken notion of what sperm is.
It’s amazing that in spite of having writing for 5,000+ years and being around as a species for however many millennia before then, it’s been well under two centuries that we’ve understood the mechanics of conception. For the vast majority of that time such views prevailed as “the man puts a little bitty sperm-human into the woman during sex” or “sperm is people juice that will become a person if you let it set a while in utero”, etc… (When the Bible refers to a man’s ‘seed’, it’s not being altogether euphemistic; a man’s sperm was basically like a seed that the woman harvested.)
Anyway, if you believe that sperm is basically a person that just needs harvesting, then wasting it through non procreative sex becomes little short of murder.
Ultimately I think it’s the empathy/Brussel Sprouts thing though. I can’t remember where the Brussel Sprouts Analogy comes from, but it goes something like “I hate Brussel Sprouts, which I’m glad of, because if I liked them I’d eat them, and if I ate them I’d be sick, because I hate Brussel Sprouts”. The same empathy that gives us the Rule of Reciprocity and tells us “Don’t poke that guy in the eye with a stick because you wouldn’t like that” tells us “Ooh, don’t have sex with that [person of your own gender] in part because you know that you wouldn’t want it”.
I agree with this. Human society - particularly male society - is inherently hierarchal, and submissive gays tend to end up at the bottom, so to speak; agressive gays lower the social status of those they have sex with, and must therefore be avoided.
Ah, yes. :smack: I only took latin…feel free to laugh.
According to an old Alan Moore story in (I think) the Mad Love anthology, Biblical taboos against homosexuality are rooted in one Jewish sect snubbing another around the time the Old Testament was being transcribed. Somehow, this particular taboo took deeper root than ones against, say, shaving or combining fibers in clothing.
I think Sampiro and begbert2 have part of it. In societies where there are distinct and strictly defined sex roles (which is most of them), a man who “acts like a woman” or vice versa is seen as very threatening. Even today anti-homosexuals loudly protest that “men should be men and women should be women” and any attempt to confuse the two is a threat to society.
And people who go against social norms are seen as threatening and scary, because you don’t know what to expect from them or how to dea with them.
I find it interesting that the things that evoke people’s “eww, yuck, gross!” reaction have to do with food or sex. If I, a heterosexual man, imagine having sex with another man (or with a disgustingly ugly woman, or with an animal), I feel squicked-out similar to what I might feel if I imagine eating insects or raw meat or something like that. Lots of socities (like the Israelites) have had both food-oriented and sex-oriented taboos.
If you believe the ancient Hebrews knew anything about bacteria, I have a bridge in Brooklyhn to sell you. 
I really doubt that Paul invented the idea that there was something wrong with homosexuality. The interpretation I have seen of Romans 1 is that Paul is ranting about how the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and “men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another” is one of the examples he uses as evidence—which wouldn’t work if Paul’s audience didn’t already think of it as an example of perversion.
Do you have any cite for this?? (Not counting the pederasty one, which I don’t think we want to hold up as typical homosexuality.)
To expand on this, I think that a lot of people see the gender roles as monolithic institutions, so that they define what is manly based on the behavior of other men, and may even claim those attributes in themselves based on their gender alone. Keeping this in mind, an effeminate man ‘pollutes’ the gender role - if one man turns out to be gay, then any man might be gay, even themselves. Their manly status due to being male has been threatened. So they take it personally.
This may have been less of an issue for those societies who were able to restrict the negative connotations of gayness to persons in a different social class - there wouldn’t have been that sort of ‘shame by association’.
“I think as soon as Eve took a bite of the apple, “the Gay” was born.”
- Prof. Snakely H. Phallus M.D.
You realize that some … special people believe that Eve had sex wth the Serpent and bore Cain by him, no? It’s called the Serpent Seed doctrine and is sometimes used a a justification for several varieties of racism.
Well, they knew early on about the effects of trichinosis and shellfish toxin, as well as which foods tended to cause them. And they came by this knowledge without the benefit of microscopes!
No, I didn’t know that, sounds obscurantist to me, I don’t travel in the circles you seem to be influenced by.
All it meant to me, was the woman was imbibing of the fruit, and perhaps pollinating. She is fruit. Traditionally the stamins role to pollinate. Simply malke jealousy and demasculation…
What the hell are you talking about?
I didn’t say I believed it. As I am a functional atheist, I obviously don’t believe in the Adam & Eve myth anyway; nor have I any negative feelings about homosexuals. The Serpent Seed doctrine is a teaching of, among others, the Christian Identity movement, who would hardly accept me in their number as I am a trifle too Nubian.