I think this test has an error in it. The item “20. Homosexual behavior should not be against the law.” gives a less homophobic score if you disagree with it (meaning you think homosexual behavior should be illegal) and a more homophobic score if you agree with it (meaning you think homosexuals should be allowed to behave as such).
I truly think most straight males have some sort of gland that produces a squick reaction when confronted with a certain kind of stimulus: two males having sex, the thought of old people having sex, and even one’s parents having sex. As long as you don’t advocate taking away your parents’ employment rights, or punch grandpa because he got lucky, and so on; you’re fine.
I’m a “high grade non-homophobic”. Wonder if there’s a USDA stamp for that. On one hand, I have a number of gay and bisexual friends (including my boss of five years). On the other, I was also in a college fraternity and a number of my friends from those days are openly homophobic.
I’ve talked a number of them into supporting (or at least not opposing) marriage equality, but I don’t say anything when they use gay slurs and feel a bit guilty about it.
I think we’re allowed to evolve over time and we’re allowed to feel what we feel. As has been previously mentioned you are responsible for your actions, your internal reactions are what they are.
Years ago I was fairly anti-gay but refused to make any mention of or act upon my beliefs because I knew that was not right. Now I can count several gay & lesbian folks as friends, and although I do not have an interest in ‘jumping the fence’ I am completely 180 degrees from what I used to believe.
Short version: if you don’t act like an asshole, you are not an asshole.
Let’s face facts. If someone has a right to be anything - gay, Jewish, Southern, vegan, a liberal, a race fan, a coin collector - it follows that s/he has a right to be stereotypically gay, Jewish, Southern, vegan, etc., etc.
It may irritate us or cause us to think less of that particular individual - I’d even go so far as to say it bespeaks a weak sense of self that’s too beholden to group identity - but stereotyping all such individuals is a step too far.
Well, as I said, it’s not something I like about myself.
Trinopus, I think if you desensitized yourself to seeing guys kissing by looking at it a lot, over and over, you wouldn’t find it inherently gross anymore. It’s probably because it’s rare and weird and taboo that makes you feel like there’s something inherently nasty about it.
Like how a little kid might see a person with an amputation, a prosthetic arm or leg, in a wheelchair, or has psoriasis, or is on chemotherapy, etc, etc, and think they are weird or gross or undesirable somehow. Over time, people get used to seeing situations like that, and eventually they don’t have that “inherent” or “uncontrollable” gross-out factor anymore.
Now, if you’ve grown up and seen lots of gay men kissing all the time, and you still get grossed out by it, then I must be wrong.
“High Grade Non-Homophobic.” Yay! And total agreement on not wanting to be mean. Mean people are rotters and stinkards and no fun to be around at all.
Interesting point; I’m not sure. I think the two kinds of discomfort are significantly distinct. But…maybe not. (But there is definitely need for improvement in the world for the full civil rights of ugly people. I know people who would never talk about “fags” who say things like “some people should not be allowed to wear a swimsuit on the beach.”)
This may be the case… I hope it is! Thank you!
I like this idea, and will follow the implicit advice. No, I don’t mean in the shallow sense of going and watching a bunch of gay porn (although that may be an element of my acculturation) but simply making the effort to hang with gays, to chat with them, to try to bring myself up to the standards of a new century.
My father couldn’t have done it. I damn well can.
Thank you!
Does anyone want to think about or see their parents having sex?!?
Wait don’t answer! :eek:
What you were experiencing is actually how “gay” came to mean “homosexual.” Formerly, “gay” meant lightweight, frivolous, silly, not to be taken seriously (it never really meant “happy”). Butterflies were gay. Confetti was gay. A silly hat was gay. Champagne was gay. Pink and lavender were gay. And since most people had the same reaction to stereotypical gay people being “light in the loafers” - not to be taken seriously - exactly the way you responded to your waiter - “gay” came to mean homosexual.
I found this very insightful. I go “Eww…” when two guys kiss. And, indeed, I do go “Eww…” when two uglies (or one ugly, one not, gender doesn’t matter) do. It’s the exact same feeling.
Maybe my reaction to the stereotype is similar. The reaction isn’t because it’s a gay stereotype, it’s simply because it’s a stereotype. It’s still not an acceptable reaction, but it’s not necessarily a homophobic reaction.
^ That.
I scored 45-“non-homophobic”
Gay dude checking in. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s, I would often have women sort of come on to me at parties or at work or wherever. (Granted, a few were prostitutes, but that is another story.) I always sort of took that as a compliment, but never got the “ick” factor as I simply knew there was no way in hell that was ever, ever going to happen.
I always figured if I were straight and a guy came onto me, I would have the same reaction - knowing it was never, ever going to happen, but sort of “thanks for thinking I am hot enough to hint around about it…”
Thus I am a bit perplexed by guys who seem to get all weirded-out by the fact a guy thought they were attractive. Is there some deep-seeded self doubt and loathing? Has the thought of having sex with a guy (even fleetingly) crossed their mind and now that the opportunity arises, they are freaked out by it and afraid they have some GAY sign hanging over their head?!
Otherwise, it makes no sense to me.
Woman comes on to me - I smile and politely decline. Thanks for the compliment!
Guy comes on to you - smile and politely decline. Obviously, I am a good looking dude!
Otherwise, why do you care?
I don’t want to think about Mike and Molly naked and having sex. I don’t want to think about Newt Gingrich having sex with anybody. Do not need to see nude photos of Roseanne Barr or Joan Rivers spread eagle, with a “come hither” look. But that doesn’t make me heterophobic. Makes me human.
I also don’t want to see any nude photos of any Kardashian, or any nude photos of Katy Perry or any nude photos of Natalie Portman - all lovely ladies, but just don’t care. I wouldn’t throw up if I did see them, but it would be about as exciting as looking at the canned goods in my pantry.
31, I’m just non-homophobic.
I suppose I’ll chime in with a kinda-sorta-confession here, with a bit of quasi-philosophical slant to it.
Seems, feeling “okay” about people “different” from one’s self simply takes some getting used to, at both the intellectual level and the physical level.
I am remembering an incident from my senior-in-high-school days (1968-1969), dealing with persons of the Negro persuasion.
My father (very liberal, walked the precincts for Lyndon Johnson (vs. Goldwater) in 1964) ran a janitor company. Most of his employees, including the foreman, were black. We had him over for dinner occasionally. So I was raised in a liberal way, with the proper progressive attitudes towards blacks.
But it took a bit longer for me to actually pick up and internalize the right feelings and behaviors. Our neighborhood and my school were mostly white and Hispanic, with the occasional “token” black. So I had never ever really interacted with black people before. When I first had occasion to do so, I handled it… poorly, I quickly (but in retrospect) realized.
I was in a Journalism class. Some journalism society organized an event for high-school journalism students: They brought together some relevant persons in the community, and the high-school journalism students from all the schools in the area came and heard some talks and presentations, then we got assigned in small groups to interview one of the speakers, then write a news article about it.
A black journalist had just returned from some journalism convention in San Francisco, and he spoke about that. I got assigned to the group that interviewed him. In those days (late 1960’s), blacks were still just beginning to become prominent in various professional ways – to me, that will still rather a novelty, and I was just a bit in awe of that.
So my interview questions (and this was an exercise in thinking on one’s feet, coming up with good interview questions in real-time) focused on his Negro-ness – more than should have been. How did the other (white) journalists, accept you at that conventions? How did you feel being the lone Negro there? (Yes, the word I knew for such a person was “Negro”. I knew of “black” too but didn’t understand at the time that it was the preferred nomenclature.)
After two or three questions like that, he said something along the line of: “One of the things you need to learn as a journalist, is to always have several lines of questioning in your mind that you can follow, in case the person you’re interviewing doesn’t want to answer something. Now, I don’t really want to talk any more about me being black, so you should find some other line of questions to ask.” And furthermore, he educated me about calling blacks blacks, not Negroes. Then I had to rack my brains to come up, on-the-spot with other questions to ask (which I thought, after the fact, I had done quite poorly).
To be sure, I think I actually did a better job of coming up with questions than the other in my group, who mostly didn’t think of anything to ask. I suppose they wrote their news articles bases mostly on the questions I asked and the answers.
But wait, it gets worse. Intellectually prepared though I was to accept blacks as equals, I had never actually had occasion, personally, to do so. At the beginning (and maybe also the end?) of the interview, I actually [hand onto your seats for this folks] shook his hand. I had never shook a black man’s hand before! And it kinda, a little bit, sorta squicked my out at the time.
Shortly after that interview, and especially after I wrote up my article, it struck me what a jackass I had made of myself, of which I excused myself only because it was a new experience for me. I didn’t know of the concept of “cognitive dissonance”, but there it was. Well, I learned a thing or two about myself from that incident. I learned that I wasn’t just natively, instinctively, as progressive-minded as I had always thought. I learned that dealing with somebody “different” actually takes a little getting used to. I learned to be, or try to be, a little quicker and readier to do that process.
Fast forward 5 years or so. I was intellectually ready to accept the gayness of gays, who were just then becoming more active in becoming public, and demanding more acceptance and equality. But I didn’t actually know any gays personally. (I thought.)
I was again just a slight (and I think “slight” is the right word here) bit squicked out when one my very close male friends… actually… um… drum-roll, please… came out to me. And within just a few weeks, two others did (one of whom was my boss too). It seemed just a little bit, uh, shocking the first time. But I quickly got myself past that.
Today, of course, learning that someone is gay is just nothing remarkable or particularly noteworthy to me.
I suppose it could be of interest to add, why that first friend chose to come out with me. Some time shortly before that, I had made some offhand remark that indicated, on an intellectual level at least, my readiness to be accepting of gays.
He and I and a third (very straight) friend were driving somewhere in San Francisco, when we happened to pass by a theater featuring some gay porn on the marquee. The third friend (who apparently knew or sort-of-knew the other friend was gay but wasn’t comfortable about that) made some snarky remark, which I don’t remember. But I responded by saying that gays should have as much right to gay porn as straights should have to straight porn. That caught the ear of the other friend (the gay one), and he later cited that as his reason for deciding I was “safe” to come out to.
A straight friend in his 40s stopped by the other night and told a story.
He was at work and working late. One of the other guys at the office was also working late and suggested they grab dinner. About halfway through the dinner my friend realized that this was a “date.”
He apologized, said he was very flattered, but he was a straight guy with a girlfriend, and picked up his half of the check.
38 - Your score rates you as "non-homophobic.
I’ve got to admit though. To me, two women together is hot. Two guys is not.