Looks like this could be heading for GD, rather than the Pit. Cool.
I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. Only thing I can think of is that “homoist” sounds a bit odd. What word do you yourself use?
What do you say to my reasoning that to call homophobia/homoism a mental disorder would actually work against the goals of pro-all people? Having a mental disorder gains one sympathy and slight immunity to blame; these are not things that pro-alls would want homophobics/homoists to have.
I’ll issue a further challenge, if I may; you and I have given arguments as to why people might or might not use the term this way. But let’s look at the actual situation; could you find for me a link to some anti-homophobe site that calls it a mental problem, along the lines of kleptomania or schizophrenia?
I myself use the term “homophobe” because it is the common term. I have no wish to label people with these views as having a mental disorder, especially since as a psychology student I haven’t seen any research suggesting that bigotedness is the result of some mental difficulty. Since you have no doubt, though, I am a liar. Is this correct?
I don’t think anybody’s trying to suggest that there isn’t any such thing as a “distinct subculture” for gay people. The question here is how to understand the positions of people who claim simultaneously that (A) they dislike and/or disapprove of gay subculture(s), a.k.a. “homosexual lifestyle”, and (B) they’re not homophobic.
The problems I see with simultaneous claims of that sort are the following:
If you believe that the “homosexual lifestyle” is something shared by most or almost all gay people, and you dislike or disapprove of it, then you’re essentially saying that you dislike or disapprove of gays in general, which IMO counts as homophobia.
If you believe that a gay person’s expressing almost any aspect of gayness at all—“doing anything that’s obviously gay”, as Balthisar put it—justifies other people in “treating them differently”, being “ill at ease”, or expressing “open hostility” towards them, that counts as homophobia.
If you believe that only a small minority of gay people actually practice what you call a “homosexual lifestyle” which you dislike or disapprove of, but you nonetheless associate that “homosexual lifestyle” with gays in general, that counts as homophobia.
AFAICT, nobody is asserting that Balthisar is a homophobe. What I’m arguing is that the attitudes he’s describing (but, as he notes, not endorsing) qualify as homophobic, even if the people who express such attitudes wouldn’t describe themselves as homophobes.
Well, as tomndebb explained back in about post#10, there are specific historical reasons for the development and use of the term. However, if you don’t like it or think it has inappropriate connotations of mental disorder, you can certainly use the term “heterosexist” instead.
I don’t know about you, but homophobia did sound strange when it was applied to this, and please note that this term already had a meaning (see post #10) - fear of man. Why reassign it? (also to Kimstu)
What they gain in sympathy they lose in respect for their thoughts and ideas. The idea which ‘the powers who be’ want to get across is a controversial concept that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, and chose to do so in a way that discredits the opposition by defining their objection as a mental disorder. Which effectively reduces the debate to I’m right, if you disagree with me you are mentally ill and your opinion doesn’t count.
By Anti-homophobic do you mean pro gay?, if so I don’t expect to find any because those are the ones who directly benefit from this classification.
How did you make this leap of logic? I have no doubt there is a God, other people have no doubt that there is no ‘God’, I don’t think they are liars, and I don’t think they consider me one either.
Well, you’re close to what I was saying. My experience up to that point of hanging out with a gay crowd (and frequenting this bar back in my early 20s was my first honest-to-goodness experience of socializing with “out” gays) was as I said: these guys were no different from my straight friends. So the “norm” for this bar was that gays and straights mingled easily, with no judgments or social distinctions in either direction. So when this particular gentleman did what he did, he was stepping outside of the “norm” for that group. Basically, he disregarded the expected behavior, and his disregard was as offensive to the other gay patrons as it was to me.
However, I looked at his behavior as purely an individual mistake on his part. I didn’t allow it to change my opinion of gay men in general. And in the end, I didn’t hold it against him, either. It turned out that he got an earful from the gay bartender after I left (even though I hadn’t complained), and when I came back the next night he was extremely apologetic, and it never happened again.
On the other hand, I more recently had a gay coworker who loved to remind everybody, every chance he got, that he was gay. Even though I couldn’t care less what his sexual orientation was, it got tiresome listening to him. He seemed to take a certain delight in making people uncomfortable. One of his favorite games was to tell new, unaware, male coworkers that he was hosting a pool party at his house, and that everybody was invited. Then once the new guy had accepted the invitation, he would add “Oh, by the way, my partner and I are gay and we don’t allow swimsuits in our pool! Hee hee hee!” Aside from being irritating, all he was accomplishing was reinforcing negative stereotypes.
I guess I should be more succinct, so I’ll try again. I wouldn’t qualify necessarily that all attitudes as such are homophobic, any more than I’d suggest that being confronted with a ghetto personality in a professional workplace is negrophobic. I’ll go back to my statement that people always want to be around similar people – as boring as that may sound to some. The “old boys club” doesn’t form because they consciously want to exclude women, Jews, blacks, and Catholics; they form for the same reason that cliques form in schools. You’re comfortable in your element, and it’s easier to work closely and intimately with someone if you have a common identity, background, and sets of values (“lifestyle”). This used to mean that you were a male, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant. As a culture, we’ve learned that women, blacks, Jews, Indians, and Muslims aren’t distractions in the workplace. In most cases, being gay isn’t a distraction in the workplace either (“distraction” just being a shortcut word meaning that “you’re not the same as I am”). When you’re working, you don’t pay attention to any of these superficial things because everyone is basically indistinguishable from everyone else. Let’s say that all of a sudden you have a highly effeminate man – gay or not – with all of the mannerisms that suggest flaming queer. Or say that you have a new black coworker that hasn’t quite dominated standard English and always “axes” you for things. There’s not going to be the same meshing of cultures, the same response to these outsiders as someone that’s a complete conformist. Most – not all – people as human beings are just going to naturally segregate themselves from these things that are outside their norms. They’re not bad people; they’re just suddenly exposed to something they have no experience with (okay, some may very well be bad people, but they’re the minority). That doesn’t make them racists or homophobes out of necessity. Of course by adhering to the WASP norms (standard English, non-effeminate speech, being a lipstick lesbian), you’re not betraying who you are and you’re not staying in a closet, you’re just adopting yourself to the expectations of the majority. As for gays, I insist that the vast majority of homosexuals adhere to this common lifestyle, not out of any conscious, deliberate effort to do so, but because it’s the common lifestyle!
Of course there are bigots – racists, xenophobes, homophobes – everywhere, but it’s unfair to blanketly label discomfort or unfamiliarity or even being ill-at-ease as one of these afflictions.
I think it’s fair to say that gay people are not a homogenous mass, as straight people aren’t, and therefore it is patronisng to assume that someone subscribes to a particular subculture because of his/her sexuality. There may well be a distinct gay subculture, even many of them, but not every potential victim of homphobia necessarily subscribes to any version of it.
You’re not the only gay in the village, Excalibre.
I would suggest that there is no cabal that gets to reassign words. It’s a matter of usage. If that’s the commonly used word, that’s the commonly used word. I don’t think that the movement of the term from meaning fear of men to a general intolerance of gay people is one that was planned in any way. Out of interest, though, what word is it that you use?
I’m not disagreeing that that makes sense. I’m simply pointing out that calling it a mental problem insulates you from a considerable amount of blame. It’s not a case of “They’re mentally ill, but they say evil things so it’s ok to hate them”. For an analogy, consider people with Tourette’s; if a sufferer stands in the middle of a supermarket and says “Gay people suck”, if we know they have Tourette’s we don’t say “Hey, he’s ill, but that’s a bad nasty thing to say, so let’s all hate him”. We say “That’s a bad nasty thing to say, but he’s ill, so it isn’t his fault”. Now, I for one can’t see anti-homophobes giving slack to homophobes/homoists like that, or wanting to.
I’m a bit uncomfortable with the term pro-gay, since it seems to imply that such people want to advance gay people beyond everyone else. Anti-homophobe was the best I could come up with, really.
I’m afraid I don’t see your reasoning, though. You say anti-homophobes want people to use “homophobia” because they want people to think it’s a mental disorder. Why wouldn’t they have that on their sites and in their material? If I wanted people to think homophobes are all mentally disturbed, the best way to go about that is to say “Homophobes are all mentally disturbed”.
There’s a difference.
You have no doubt there is a God.
I don’t believe in any god.
Therefore, you think I am lying* or wrong*. I could have made some mistake in thinking about the subject. So while i’m not lying, I am possibly mistaken (assuming you are right).
With this, on the other hand;
You think the reason people use “homophobia” is to promote the idea that homophobes are mentally ill.
I use it for different reasons.
Therefore, you think I am lying or i’m wrong. But I can’t be wrong, because i’m me; I have all the evidence I need to make the decision as to what I think, because i’m thinking it. The only explanations are that a) you’re wrong or b) i’m lying.
Ok I got you, but I don;t agree with your first point:
And would state it:
I think the reason people use ‘homophobia’ is because of a political agenda by some people to reprogram people’s thinking by changing the language and redefining mental disorders.
And I think you will see that I have not called you a lier
IMHO it’s a very hard message to push, I personally feel they think it’s better working on a subconscience level for now, and may cause the loss of that term due to a backlash.
I have used anti-homosexuality or ‘against homosexuality’, though as you stated I have bowed to the pressure on occasion and have also used homophobic.
I have never heard anybody use the word “homophobe” with any intended implication of mental illness. The word is popularly used to indicate a general dislike or aversion to homosexuals and/or homosexuality. It can also be used to denote (often religiously based) attitudes or opinions which demean non-heterosexual orientations as immoral or dysfunctional. Parsing the Greek roots is a waste of time, since it’s really a vernacular neoligism with a pseudo-classical sound to it based more on modern English constructions than Greek. It’s not like it’s a clinical diagnosis or anything.
OK, but is an Arachnophobia considered a “mental illness”? As long as your unreasoning fear does not disrupt your everyday life*, AFAIK, it isn’t consider so.
*Agoraphobia certainly can ruin your life, for example. But I have mild arachnophobia and I ain’t crazy.
no, The DSM (the psychology diagnostic handbook) has in almost every single disorder the criteria that the problem “affects social or occupational ability, disrupts everyday functioning, or is a danger to health”
what this does is to make sure people who are simply afraid of spiders aren’t classified with a mental illness in the same as people who jump up out of their chair and run out of the room at the sight of a still picture of a spider or a toy spider (yes this actually happens to some people, the ones who are legitimately classified as “phobic”)
In this sense, homophobia, as far as diagnosis is concerned, is far from what it actually is. Bigotry against homosexuals is what it is. However, because the term is so generalized to popular use now, I don’t see any point in arguing that now it refers to generally hatred of homosexuals.
oops clarification on that last (need that edit button )
*yes, arachnophobia is in the DSM, but NO given you qualification (doesn’t disrupt life) it is not diagnosable. That said, you are technically using “arachnophobia” wrong by applying it to a situation that doesn’t disrupt everyday activities.
Similarly, people who are scared or hate homosexual influences are not “homophobic” although I suppose they could be diagnosed as such if they were so intensely scared of running in to gays that they never left their house
Phobias don’t rise to the level of what’s called a “phobic disorder” unless they cause a significant disruption in one’s ability to live a normal life. Someone who thinks spiders are icky and doesn’t like them does not have a disorder. Someone who has panic attacks and wants to flee the room at the sight of a spider may have a phobic disorder.
Having said that, I’m pretty sure that homophobia is not really classified as a clinical phobia (I looked and couldn’t find it listed anywhere). As far as I can tell, it’s a completely informal, non-clinical designation for certain kinds of attitudes about gay people, not really a “phobia” the way mental health professionals would use the term.
The fact that you feel patronized by my comments must have more to do with your own insecurities than what i actually said, because i never suggested that there is no such thing as a “gay subculture.” Get over yourself.
And “kthxbye”? You’re kidding right? Your 11-year-old brother just took over the keyboard, didn’t he?
So yes, you did implicitly deny that there’s anything to gay culture beyond engaging in romantic relationships with people of the same sex. It’s obvious to me that holding hands isn’t want Balthisar was talking about. Your characterization of his statements as “calling for all gay people to effectively remain in the closet, to subsume or conceal every aspect of their sexual preference in order to make folks like [Balthisar] comfortable” only works under the assumption that this is the sum total of gay culture - whereas if indeed there are other cultural aspects to being gay like effeminate mannerisms or drag shows or whatever else, there’s no need to resort to the ridiculous interpretation that Balthisar is uncomfortable seeing men shop for linens together.
You were playing a gotcha game to try to prove that he’s uncomfortable around gay people - that is, tacitly homophobic - when his statements don’t support that. You know what? This kind of nonsense is why I stopped posting here. I should get back to that.
Bzzt. Incorrect. I’ll take reading comprehension for 1000, Alex.
The fact that you chose to infer it does not mean that i implied it.
i was merely offering some possible examples of obviously gay couple behavior that a normal person might encounter in their everyday life, and seeking to learn whether any of these made him uncomfortable.
I don’t claim to know exactly what you think of when you think of “gay culture” or “gay lifestyle,” but i’ve heard plenty of homophobes complain about precisely the types of benign activities that i listed.
Not obvious to me. Even after his rather tortuous attempts to clarify what he means, i’m still not sure exactly what his point is, or what qualifies in his mind as a “gay lifestyle.”
And i tend to be suspicious of folks who invoke the word “normal” in its narrow, statistical distributive sense during everyday conversation, in order to claim that gays, blacks, or whoever, are not normal.Too often, i’ve found such locutions to be an attempt to rationalize bigotry YMMV.
Not at all.
I was merely starting from the more “everyday” of activities. As i said above, i’ve heard plenty of people criticize those very activities as being to “open” or “flamboyant,” or “flaunting their homosexuality.” And i assume that if someone objects to two men holding hands in public, that person isn’t likely to be too fond of drag shows.
Maybe; maybe not.
But you’re not the final arbiter of these things, despite your best efforts to intimidate people to the contrary. I find some of his positions and arguments problematic, and the fact that you give him your stamp of approval doesn’t automatically change my mind.
I think you’re both trying too hard to prove the other wrong.
As pointed out above Balthisar was almost certainly looking for “norm”, not “normal” per se. I see nothing that would lead me to conclude that anybody in this thread is bigoted. Talking about potentially bigoted views perhaps, but not reflecting personal bigotry.
right but he didn’t complain about those things directly, you yourself are inferring at this point, for all you know he’s thinking of a drag show. he’s done nothing (as pointed out by Excalibre) to imply that he’s thinking of gay mannerisms as “having a picture of their partner on their desk”. Just like the race card, the homophobia card gets whipped out way to fast and way to often with a stiff dose of haughty superiority.
Objectively, a lot of people are quite put off by the idea of, to take the example, a drag show. A bunch of effeminate men prancing around in women’s clothing (yes, they can often be described as prancing, I’ve seen drag shows and know people who dress in drag on a semi-regular basis) can be disturbing to people. But so can a bunch of black teenagers dressed in a “ghetto fashion”. Seems to me like in both cases, race or sexual orientation, the group in question is just as quick or quicker to disparage “white/straight culture” as we are to look uncomfortably at them.
I don’t personally, but that’s the state of being of many people.
At least we can agree that an identifiable gay subculture exists, and some people take a disliking or fear of homosexuality. Those people who do that often lump all homosexual actions in to a “subculture”, as opposed to identifying standard romantic behavior (albeit with a member of the same sex) and identifying characteristics of that subculture (in some cases, effeminate behavior, partying styles, outlook on world issues)
Ahh! So of course you leapt to suggest he was a homophobe. It all makes perfect sense now!
We’re not normal in its “narrow, statistical distributive sense”. That’s unquestionably true. The fact that it makes you uncomfortable doesn’t change anything.
Meanwhile, I don’t like the implication that gay folks are just like everyone else. The suggestion that we deserve equal treatment because we’re just the same as everyone else is an ugly one that legitimizes unfair treatment of queers who are too “flamboyant” about it. Obviously that doesn’t matter to you.
But you didn’t hear Balthisar say that, and still started suggesting that maybe he was a homophobe. Great.
How have I tried to intimidate anyone? Am I intimidating you by disapproving of your efforts to put Balthisar on the defensive and prove to your satisfaction that he’s not a homophobe? You seem to be a bit delicate.
I’m gay, and I’m a lot more offended by the notion that my equal treatment is deserved because I act like everyone else except for holding boys’ hands in public rather than girls’ than I am by anything Balthisar has said. Your continued implication that gay people really aren’t any different except that we might buy our bath linens in single-sex pairs advances that notion. It’s obvious that the treatment of minorities who act like the majority is better than that of minorities who speak black English or “sound gay” or in other ways act a little bit different than the majority. This is something that it’s really important to fight against. It’s not a small issue, and you and your compatriots sat here and castigated Balthisar just for raising it in the first place.
You’d think that would be worth considering. But then, if you’re just looking for your ally bonafides by accusing people who haven’t said anything homophobic of being homophobes, what do you care? With allies like that, who needs enemies?
That fact doesn’t make me uncomfortable. what makes me uncomfortable is that people throw around the word “normal” in situations like this as if they were using its commonly-understood meaning, and then, when asked about it, claim with wide-eyed innocence that they were only using the narrow, statistical distributive meaning. It’s disingenuous.
Do you really believe that is my position? Really? After all the interactions we’ve had on this board? I guess i could say i’m disappointed, but that would be the wrong term for the amazement i feel at your obtuseness.
Again, the fact that you infer this does not mean it was what i was implying. Gays don’t deserve equal treatment because they’re exactly like everyone else; they deserve equal treatment because, flamboyant or otherwise, they are human beings. Which makes them, in my book, just like everyone else in the only criterion that matters when it comes to determining human and civil rights.
In fact, an argument i was going to make, but didn’t, was precisely that the most flamboyant or stereotypical (or whatever term you want to use) gays also deserve equal treatment, and that gay men and women shouldn’t have to conform to straight or mainstream behavioral norms in order to be accepted and to be treated fairly. I didn’t make that argument because i assumed that you understood my feelings on this issue from the dozens of similar threads i’ve participated in on these boards. The funny thing is that you accuse me of a disingenuous reading Balthisar’s posts, and yet your reading of my own posts in considerably more disingenuous. At least i was responding to things he said, not just what he didn’t say.
Again, if you really think that’s my position, despite my affirmations to the contrary, i’ll just have to leave you to think that.
Yeah, that’s all i’m after. This is really nothing more than credential-hunting exercise. You got a toaster oven for me?
You’re a real disappointment. I don’t expect people who i’ve interacted with in hundreds of threads on this board to agree with everything i say or do—far from it—but i like to think that they’ll use intellectual honesty and a certain pre-existing respect in their dealings with me. I think i’m done with you. Best of luck.
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