Why does homosexuality elicit a violent reaction from some people?

Great Debates
21

I suppose those three factors, taken together, could explain it.

The first group of people you describe experience a personal disgust – one, though, that might never translate into violence.

The third group presents a religious justification, that gives that personal disgust a veneer of religious truth.

The second group, reacting to the atmosphere created by the other two, repress their desires, feel threatened by anyone exhibiting those desires. This becomes vioence.

Thinking about, I guess we could add a fourth group, too. Once persecution becomes acceptable, people with self-esteem problems can buy cheap ego-boost by putting someone underneath them – either with insults or with violence.

22

What nogginhead said. I think it’s that they fear what they do not understand. They don’t understand it, therefore, they fear it. Or something like that.

Why do people fear others of different races? Same thing, I suppose.

23

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply that homophobes necessarily think gays choose their lifestyle, but that the same tendency that prevents heteros from participating in gay sex - an intense aversion to it - may also carry over into an aversion to gay people themselves.

And to the suggestion that gays play an important part in helping society, that may be true, but perhaps not to the extent that it overrides the biological function that steers sexually active members toward heterosexual sex. Homophobia may just be a by-product of that function.

24

I think a lot of it probably has to do with some of the bad ol’ Western views on sex and gender roles. One of those views is one I can best summarize as “Sex is something men do, and something that is done to women”. Despite persistent efforts through history to support this viewpoint with appeals to natural order, divine law, and social harmony, it’s really pretty sick and I think it has done all kinds of harm to people of all sexes and orientations. But it’s even more difficult for homosexuals to play out these roles than it is for heterosexuals, and that can lead to big problems.

Consider how the homosexual man might appear to a heterosexual man who unfortunately believes all sorts of stupid, sexist things about sex and proper gender roles. To him the homosexual man is a man who, shockingly, may not want to “do sex” but rather wants to have sex “done to” him! By another man! As if he were a lowly woman! Or perhaps he does want to “do sex” himself, but not to a woman as is good and proper, but to other men! Reducing them to the status of lowly women! If you can imagine what the world looks like through such warped lenses it almost becomes understandable how such a man might think that gay men deserved to be beaten or killed, either as punishment for allowing themselves to fall so low or as a preventative measure to keep them from bringing down other men.

Lesbianism has historically been easier to just ignore, since until quite recently social expectations and poor economic opportunities for single women forced practically all women to enter into heterosexual marriages regardless of what their personal preferences might have been. For a long time hardly anyone cared what any women wanted when it came to sex, they were just expected to fulfill their “wifely duties”. Plenty of straight women hated this but suffered through it, as did plenty of lesbians. After all, lesbians are women too, and can have sex “done to” them by manly men whether they like it or not! That’ll teach them proper women’s roles!

If I remember my history properly, this was pretty much the Nazi policy on homosexuality. Gay men had to die because they were just too much of a threat to the social order, but lesbians were okay as long as they were willing to/could be forced into having sex with men and bearing healthy Aryan babies. Even in the modern US, it seems to me that most gaybashing takes the form of plain old violence for male victims and sexual violence for the females, although there are many exceptions (especially in the relatively rare cases where the gaybasher is a woman).

25
  1. Most people find sexual preferences they do not share to be gross and sometimes creepy.
  2. Most people are inclined to dislike anyone who is different from them.
  3. Homosexuals are stereotyped as being effeminate and therefore less likely to defend themselves.
  4. The secrecy attached to homosexuality makes the victims less likely to complain to authorities.
26

View on “deviant” behavior vary throughout time.

The Greco-Romans admired homosexual love and encouraged it among their soldiers, the idea being that a soldier would fight harder and more loyally out of fear of being disgraced as a coward in front of his lover.

The philosphers lauded love for young boys, as being the only “pure” love. A man was expected to marry and father children, but to save his emotions and lust for his young male lover.

Since the Victorian era, traditional marriage and family has been lauded as the ideal. Males took on a more “manly” strong role, which seems inconsitent with being sodomized.

The Nazis developed out of a rather “decadent” period in German history. The Berlin nightclubs of the 1920’s had a definate homo-erotic flavor. Cross-dressing and gay love were casually excepted in this underworld of hard drinking, dancing and love making. Hitler, on the other hand, was a prude. He didn’t like drinking, smoking or dancing, and homosexuals were horrifying to him. When he came to power, the clubs were forcibly shut down.

As time progressed, we became a more homogenized society, valuing comformity, especially towards the 1950’s. The Red Scares further solidified this position of anything different as scary and wrong. Sex roles were sharply defined, and anyone straying from these roles was ostracized, especially men. Homosexuality was equated with communism, decadence, and evil.

Today, fear of the homosexual is encouraged by a lot of preachers I have heard, who insist that gays “recruit,” and are slyly trying to indocrinate our children into their lifestyle. The image of the agressive gay male stalking straight men and somehow bewitching them into “going gay” is powerfully frightening, especially to people who are ignorant of what gay people are really like.

There may be some truth in the idea that fear of homosexuality may stem from being unsure of one’s own sexual orientation. For those who have been raised and indoctrinated that sex is limited only to one’s duly wedded spouse, the “forbidden fruit” is tinged with curiosity and fear, and in some faiths, the knowledge that the curiosity itself is a sin.

Having never experimented with sex outside of the rules of their religion, latent trendencies may lurk within which their faith demands stringent supression. Some Christians are taught that the devil seduces people into sin through very insidious means. The friendly homosexual down the street is an agent of the devil who’s trying to lure you into his “wicked ways.” They may fear and hate him because he represents temptation in their minds.

27

Here is a quote from statement on hate crime by the APA:

It seems to me that young, violent, substance abusers are probably the demographic least likely to be influenced by preachers.

28

I going with Captain Amazing observation. It is only the gay men who are beaten or killed, and this is done by other men. Gay women are not spoken of highly but that maybe because of the feminist movement that they are usually also a part of. The gay female is more desirable because in a threesome fantasy you don’t have to worry about being poked only stroked and thus they are not as abhorrent.

29

zwaldd wrote:

Cite?

Or at the very least an explanation for Classical Greek and Roman culture?

30

What I find curious about this is I get the impression that the average heterosexual male considers male homosexual acts to be gross and disgusting, while female homosexual acts are erotic. Just look at how much pornography directed at straight men features two women having sex with each other vs. how much (if any?) features two men. Even in pop culture, men supposedly fantasize about having a three-some with one man and two women.

I want to make clear that I am talking about ordinary, conventional men here, and I don’t know all that many in real life (they tend to run away screaming ;)).

I think some of what’s going on is these men think homosexual men think about men the way they think about women, judging them by their appearance only and willing to make a pass at anything that meets their standards. Women are also smaller and weaker as a rule, and are supposed to be passive. I think men might be afraid of being coerced. There are also men out there who have a vastly overrated view of their own attractiveness. I would guess that if they’re in a room with someone who’s gay, they’d automatically assume that person’s interested in them.

My best friend and I noticed years ago that, again, as a rule, women are far more likely to be comfortable with homosexuality than men are, and these are just a couple of ideas we’ve kicked around during various bull sessions over the years.

CJ

31

Explanation for what…the fact that they’re not around anymore?

32

Right, she’s desireable as long as she’s in a properly submissive sexual role relative to men, like a good little woman. Oddly enough, very few real lesbians are particularly keen on having sex with men (even as part of a threesome with another woman), but that’s okay with your violent gaybashing types since they figure they don’t actually need the lesbian’s consent. They’ll put her in her place whether she likes it or not. I wish I were exaggerating, but I don’t think I know an openly homosexual woman who hasn’t been at least threatened with rape because of her sexual orientation.

33

zwaldd …
Humans] have the instinct to be disgusted with homosexuality.

I find this theorem a tad bit unsettling…I’ve never encountered a group of 5 year olds expressing a collective bias toward anything other than steamed broccoli…The people who commit these crimes are made not born, and that is in no way an excuse for their primal group cowardace…At best maybe an underdeveloped scrotum or an extra chromosome, but more than likley a rung or two down on the ecosocial ladder with an asshole for a parent could create such little darlings.

34

They were misogynist who didn’t feel women were all that worthy. That’s pretty much the shortened version of why love between men was idealized over the love between man and woman. They certainly encouraged men to marry and have children and they didn’t seem to discourage men from seeing prostitutes.

Marc

35

Interestingly enough, one reason why women were considered “unworthy” was because they were thought to be sex-crazed, whereas men’s superior intellect and willpower allowed them to control their animal urges and have deep and meaningful relationships with one another.

36

Ehm, compare to other, more modern, cultures which are misogynistic and yet forbid/condem homosexuality. I don’t think that one implies the other by any means.

37
  • Posted by ** zwaldd ** *

If anything, humans should have an instinctive yen * for * homosexuality. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, (along with other apes) have been observed to have bi-sexual contact in the wild. Male chimps have been seen fellating other males, and having penatrive sex with other males. Female chimps rub one another’s gentials, and by all apearance, orgasm. And by no means are they the only creatures that do this. Dolphins, dogs, deer, some insects, and fish have all been seen to engage in homosexual congress. Homosexuality seems to be very natural, indeed.

It wasn’t homosexuality that brought them down. If anything, it was the “morailty” of the barbarian hordes which invaded that eventually destroyed these civilizations, and brought us the Dark Ages.

38

Agreed. This doesn’t counter the argument that an aversion to gay sex would be a successful trait in a species that depends on heterosexual sex to reproduce.

I wasn’t saying it was. But to argue against the success of a behavior by citing its absence in a long-defunct society doesn’t make any sense.

39

I’m sorry to harp on this, but it frightens me, because I can easily picture people using it as an argument to justify gay-bashing… not in a logical way, but in a twisted way, much as the nazis twisted Darwin to justify anti-semetism, or some white supremists today to justify racism.

Having said that, with the human population growing at such a tremendous rate now, I wonder how much evolutionary sense it makes… it seems to me that population control now makes far more sense than growth. In other words, an increase in the percentage of homosexuals might be more beneficial to the survival of the species, for if our numbers grow too much, we risk running out of resources to feed ourselves.

(N.B. I am not advocating an increase in homosexuality. I am disputing the post I quoted about gay-hating in humans making “evolutionary sense”.)

40

**

Aversion to homosexuality is cultural. There are still some current peoples who don’t have any aversion to it at all. I don’t think it can be explained in terms of evolutionary behavior. After all, homosexuals are as capable of breeding as a heterosexual, and animal and human homosexuals have bred throughout time. It’s not a trait so limiting that natural selection would weed it out.

It does if you take into account that opinions on said behavior have varied widely in history. Who’s to say that a thousand years from now homosexuality will be as “normal” as heterosexuality? It’s all a matter of cultural perception, which, as history shows us, is remarkably fluid. What is deviant today may seem innocent tomorrow. The OP was about cultural perceptions, and I think that how homosexuality was viewed in the past is a very valid way of comparison to our current feelings, and how we may feel in the future.