Why does homosexuality elicit a violent reaction from some people?

Great Debates
121

The quote you used said: "Essentialists also give credence to the biological and psychological factors surrounding homosexuality. Specifically: ``that sexuality is strongly influenced by natural, non-social factors, such as genes, and that people’s personal characteristics - in addition to their bodies - are shaped by evolutionary forces…’’

This is talking about what MAKES people homosexual, not your REACTION to it. Apples and oranges. None of the sociological schools of thought touts that homophobia is biological in origin.

**

One antecdote does not a truth make. Just because you are able to TOLERATE these people, doesn’t make you non-homophobic. It just makes you polite. Someone may be polite to their black co-workers, but still remain racist inwardly.

**

If you’re thinking that a “pecking order” may be biological in origin, you have a point. All social creatures have Alphas and outcasts, and the desire for a structured social order may be innate.

That being said, we do not have a “gay taunting” instinct, and it’s ridiculous to think that we do.

Unless the jury nullifies, I think the verdict that homphobia is social and not biological in origin has been adequately demonstrated.

Perhaps, I’m wrong, but I’m starting to feel like this is a creationist/evolutionist thread.

I have shown that the sociological community (after years and years of careful scientific study of human behavior) has reached a consensus that predjudice and homophobia are learned behaviors. I have shown that hunderds of members of the animal kingdom happily copulate with gay partners. I have shown that attitudes toward homosexuality have been much different in the past, and are likely to change again in the future.

Yet, on the basis of your personal feelings, and with no concrete evidence to the contrary, still insist that homophobia is natural and instinctive. At this point, I must sayd that I doubt that there is anything that could possibly change your mind.

  • Posted by ** Evil Death: ** *

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Yes, I would. Call me a wimp, call me a pacifist, but I rarely, if ever see a need to resort to violence. (Unless you have been phyiscally attacked yourself.) The woman should have spoken to the person of authority in her situation. (A bartender, a policeman, etc.) Punching someone for persisting to come on to you, but causing you no physical harm or danger, is childish and trashy. There are generally more mature ways of handling a situation.

**

Huh? What do you mean? I can still see them.

122

Most people present, including you, probably never had “gay sex”, and just understand what you just said to be true because it’s “common knowledge”. There are no “standard” acts of gay sex. How could there be? The reason coitus is standard heterosexual sex is because it results in reproduction. It can cover all three heterosexual sex goals: emotional connection, recreation, and reproduction. Since emotional connection and/or recreation are the only goals in gay sex, any pathway to those (and there are more than just two) is equally valid.

123

To suggest that aversion to homosexuality has a genetic origin and could have been selected for because it promotes survival of a species shows a misunderstanding of the workings of evolution.

Evolutiuon acts on the individual. How could ostracizing or acting violently toward homosexuals give any reproductive advantage to an individual?

124

Lissa

**The quote you used…is talking about what MAKES people homosexual, not your REACTION to it. **

Well that wasn’t the point. The only quote from the Social Constructionist page that completely rules out a biological source for aversion is “humans have nothing which is innate, or immutable”…a very broad claim that doesn’t specify anything, but includes everything. The quote from the Essentialist page said “that sexuality is strongly influenced by natural, non-social factors, such as genes”. So even though they weren’t talking about aversion, they did counter the idea that every human behavior and reaction is learned. So unless you can provide proof that one school is right and the other is wrong, the quote from the Social Constructionist page proves nothing except the fact that different schools of sociology have conflicting views.
One antecdote does not a truth make.

No, but one example to the contrary disproves an absolute.
**on the basis of your personal feelings, and with no concrete evidence to the contrary, **(you?) still insist that homophobia is natural and instinctive.

The only thing I said to that effect is “they have the instinct to be disgusted with homosexuality”, and I concede that I should have said “they MAY have the instinct”. Other than that one example, I defy you to find one instance where I insisted that aversion to gay sex is natural and instinctive.

regnad kcin

How could ostracizing or acting violently toward homosexuals give any reproductive advantage to an individual?

Aversion to gay sex (learned or not) is simply a gut reaction and is not the same as acting out toward gays. The reproductive advantage would be that the individual is forced to rule out a non-productive sexual outlet.

125

Not at all. Some sociologists believe that it’s an inborn instict which protects us against incest. To refuse to see your parent/grandparents/siblings as sexual beings, or to be disgusted by the image of them copulating reduces the likelihood that you’ll chose to mate with them.

126

Lissa, you are becoming the queen of point missing. I’m sure Kalashnikov would not care to picture my grandparents having sex either. How would sociologists explain that?

127

-Are children at risk for sexual abuse by homosexuals? Pediatrics 94. Carole Jenny, Thomas Roesler and Kimberly Poyer

My fiance said that in her Psych 101 class, she was told of a study where a researcher took a bunch of children and showed them pictures and videos of people engaged in homosexual acts (such as kissing). The results of this study where that aversion to homosexuality did not appear among the younger children, but developed later as they got older, suggesting that it was cultural rather than inborn.

I have been googling trying to find this study, but can’t find the words to limit my search to just that study.

Anyway, I have noticed this too with my own siblings.

When I was younger, I had a female friend with who I had a very close relationship with. ::coughcough:: Anyway, I never had a problem with our relationship until years later when I learned that such behavior was considered unnatural, etc.

I became homophobic, mostly out of fear for my own sexuality, so there is some truth to the statement that some of the biggest homophobes are closet gays.

My younger siblings had the same attitudes. If I showed them videos that featured gay men being romantic together, they didn’t care. Even a kiss from a male to another male registered no more reaction than a kiss from a male to a female. It wasn’t until they were older and exposed to society that they got the idea of gays being “bad”.

Children are taught what is bad by society and will shun that, sometimes with out understanding what it is that they are shunning. I’ve seen kids who will call each other “fat” in the most negative terms and when I point out to them that their mother (or someone else who they love strongly) is “fat” too, they will deny it.

I’d love to see studies that back up your claim zwaldd, but I doubt you will find any.

128

**

The argument (as it goes to what CAUSES homosexuality, NOT people’s reaction to it) of Nature Verses Nurture will probably never be solved.

Never the less, (as I have said a hundred times, and if I can stand to continue this, probably a hundred more) YOUR REACTIONS TO ANYTHING YOU SEE ARE DUE TO YOUR SOCIALIZATION AND CULTURE!

You’re nitpicking at words, whereas if there was a school of thought that declared reactions to social situations to be instinctive and inborn, the sites would be easy to find, rather than harping on an apparent contradiction that really isn’t. Simply put, (for the nth time) while homosexuality itself is up for debate as to whether it is learned or somehow biological, predjudice is not.

What Causes Heterosexism?

Another site on the causes of homophobia.

Yet another site on potential causes of homophobia.

PBS has this paper on homophobia.

I have not found any sites, outside of religious ones, which even intimate that aversion to homosexuals may be instinctive.

After having done all of this research, I now throw down the gauntlet. Prove your assertion.

Meaning what, exactly? I will reiterate my point: just because you are able to tolerate working with gays does not absolve you of any latent homophobia. It just makes you polite. Perhaps I would feel differently if you said something along the lines of “My best friend is gay,” not just that you’re able to stand working with them and remain civil.

As you said earlier:

So what makes you so uniquely resistant to the “nature of people” that you find homosexual acts disgusting, but have no problems with the gay people themselves? Pardon, but I find that a wee bit hard to believe.

**

“Pot calls kettle black-- Film at 11!” (You have pointedly ignored pertinet points which I have made.)

Why wouldn’t he want to picture your grandparents (or any old people) having sex? Simple: age. We’re socially programmed to find youth attractive, and old people unnatractive. Youthful mates are the most fertile. Elderly mates are unlikely to reproduce.

Your entire argument has been a defense of the same.

129

Whoops! That last statment about the defense of argument was supposed to go under the part where you “defied” us to find another statement in which you claimed homophobia was instinctive.

130

Lissa, I will forgo the usual refuting of ALL your non-proven absolutes and address but a few chosen points.
Prove your assertion.

My assertion is merely the suggestion of possibility. Since a biological explanation to aversion does not violate any laws of physics, and no study has proven impossibility, the only thing left is possibility, which is my assertion.
**Meaning what, exactly? I will reiterate my point: just because you are able to tolerate working with gays does not absolve you of any latent homophobia. **

It does not prove any latent homophobia either. Once again you are standing on an unproven absolute.
So what makes you so uniquely resistant to the “nature of people” that you find homosexual acts disgusting, but have no problems with the gay people themselves?

It’s not that unique. Some people carry the disgust over, some don’t. Just because some don’t doesn’t mean that the tendency to carry over is some psychological abnormality.
We’re socially programmed to find youth attractive, and old people unnatractive.

Another unproven absolute. Attraction is one clump of organic matter reacting to another. What gives a guy a boner has nothing to do with what society tells him he should be attracted to. Believe me, I would love to be omni-sexual (at least within the confines of the law). More sexual options? Why the hell not.
And in regard to your last post, it seems you have missed the point of my entire argument, no surprise there. Again, other than the one comment I corrected, I challenge you to quote verbatim one thing I said where I insisted an aversion to gay sex was instinctive. Not a rewording, not a paraphrase, but a quote.

131
  1. “All homophobes are assholes!”

Wrong - all bigots are assholes, and that includes whoever it was gave us that little gem upthread. He’s just as much an asshole for saying a guy who hates gays because he was raped when he was 15 is, and probably far more so.

I’m sure you didn’t foster the specter of a fifteen year old child being raped by a homosexual to cloud any negative perspective or current feeling you have toward gays…I could not find the post where this admission was presented, so I am assuming this is an often used conception within the group you run with. I have my own, Lord knows.
If a mailman has been repeatedly bitten by a dog, his overblown hatred toward all dogs could be at least considered, but if any individual delights in the torture and humilition of dogs, even if he takes no part in the actions, and no matter what urging fuels his hatred(religious, social, or otherwise) he’s pretty much an asshole in my book…But I guess I could always pity him.

132

Oh, I missed this irony:

zwaldd: Lissa, you are becoming the queen of point missing.

Lissa (in response to my claim that she misses the point):“Pot calls kettle black-- Film at 11!” (You have pointedly ignored pertinet points which I have made.)
Lissa, please tell me you haven’t been just yanking my chain this entire time.

133

I rarely post to GD threads simply to make a bon mot or even a “me too”, but you have got to be kidding, right? Jesus Christ man, she has gone out of her way to provide relevant cites to reputable scholarship while you have done nothing but repeatedly post your personal feelings of icky-ness as if it were scientific evidence.

Trust me, we all know how to read between the lines and can see your bigotry hidden behind the plausible deniablility of your actual words. Give it up, Lissa has soundly and decisively refuted your simplistic ramblings.

134

Ooh, I’m gonna have to disagree with ya there, champ, but thanks for stopping by.

135

Then I will.

My best friend from when I was in college is gay. I have lived with him and his partner about half our adult lives. I’ve always enjoyed partying with their (or rather, our) friends. I belong to the Pink Pistols, and I drove our float in the Boston Pride parade. I sometimes wear the Pink Pistols t-shirt (black with a huge pink triangle) around town, and often borrow my friend’s car which has a rainbow bumper sticker. We have a male nude calendar in the kitchen, rainbow-triangle suncatcher in the front window, and they keep a stack of gay porn mags in the bathroom. I have gone to great lengths to argue with homophobes (mostly only on the net, luckily). There are people on the net (and in real life, for all I know) who think I’m gay, and I don’t care.

And yet I go in the other room when they watch Queer as Folk because I don’t want to see the sex scenes.

Funny, AFAIK most gay folks say being gay is about who you love, as much as what sex acts you like.

I love my friend like he was my brother, yet according to you, practically my whole life is - what? bogus? a lie? - just because I occasionally get this little “ick” feeling if I happen to see one of those porn mags left open?

136

Not according to me. ** zwald ** asked for a definition of homophobia, which I found for him. It said the definition of homophobia is (in part): “the discomfort one feels with any behavior, belief, or attitude of self or others which does not conform to traditional sex role stereotypes.”

I would not say that you are homophobic at all. ** zwald ** “proved” that he was not by saying that he tolerated being around his gay co-workers, not the same in my book as having a close gay friend. My comments were specifically directed at ** zwald ** who poetically compared the revuslion he feels at seeing gay men kiss to the disgust he would feel at someone eating shit. In no way can this compare to a “little ick feeling.” What you’re describing is a “turn off,” which is much different.

On a personal note, I have several gay friends, both male and female. Seeing them kiss their loved ones passionately has never given me anything but the slight embarassment of seeing any public display of affection. “Aw, guys! Get a room!” The few examples of gay porn that I have seen have triggered no reaction that I would not have had to straight porn.

137

I work on Showtime’s “Queer As Folk” and I keep telling my guys that they’re are two types of people… needles and pin cushions. Sexuality doesn’t matter.

BTW – Yeah… I’m straight. Go figure.:dubious:

138

HENRY SPENCER–

If the magic moment hasn’t long passed, I’ll respond to a few of your comments and questions from times long past.

“…Scott, thanks for pushing some buttons and pushing this debate out of the safety zone. I’m sure many people (including those who are totally fine with homosexuality), are currently thinking awful things about you, despite themselves. And at the same time, there are many gay people reading what you’ve written disgusted by the fact you’ve linked homosexuality and pedophilia…”

To anyone out there who thought that, I want to make clear that I was using pedophilia not as a behavior “linked” to homosexuality, but rather as a behavior that inspires intense, arguably out-of-proportion visceral reactions, reactions which might be viewed as analogous to homophobic rage.

“Why do you say that ‘pedophilia’ is used ‘often erroneously’?..”

I was making the minor, pedantic point that, strictly speaking, pedophilia refers to a sexual desire for pre-pubertal children. It is often used, erroneously, to refer to desire for older youths, which is technically to be termed “ephebephilia.”

“…The ‘nice but homophobic’ folks I mentioned in my post almost never have a reason to bring up gay people when they do. It’s not like they are walking down the street and see two men holding hands and make a comment, or something like that. It’s always just an out of the blue spewing of hatred. They’re also well beyond the age when they should be showing off their strengths, or needing to overcome their sexual anxieties (having been married for many many years)…”

Excellent point. My comments were only to note some additional possible causes for homophobic responses. Clearly a great many other things are going on.

LISSA, AVA: You might be gratified to know that, on extended second thought, I’ve moved somewhat toward the social/cultural learning explanation that you advocate and away from the “homophobia is just as inate as homosexuality” I championed in another thread a few months back. (But see below…)

ZVALLD: Whereas I don’t think you’ve “proven” that inate causative factors play a significant role in homophobia, I do think it has more “surface validity” than some have been willing to credit it with. It seems more and more behavioral traits and personal preferences are becoming “genetically implicated” on the basis of studies comparing identical and fraternal twins. Typically, such studies will show that genetic inheritance correlates to some significant percentage of the etiology–eg, 5%,30%–but almost never anything like 100%. (I seem to recall that homosexuality among males comes in at about 60% genetic.)

It at least makes sense that some sort of aversive response (perhaps fairly mild in the median case) would be part of our biological makeup, and would be inheritted TO SOME DEGREE. This makes it a FACTOR in homophobia, but in no way “the” cause. (Nor have you made such a claim.)

It is also to be anticipated that an inheritted trait that is weakly expressed in the great majority of persons might be over-expressed in a percentage of the population. As an analogy, ADHD (associated to a significant degree with impulsivity and a muted awareness of social cueing) seems to be found to a higher than expected percent in certain kinds of violent “impulse” criminals. But it cannot be said to “cause” their crimes.

I think it’s very hard for people to “merely disprefer.” For whatever reason, to prefer one thing is, frequently, to experience an aversion to “the other.” It’s something one must work at overcoming, and until very recently society has given people no help in overcoming their aversive response to the SEXUAL “other.”

139

Hi everyone. Fascinating discussion. I have two points to raise/query.

  1. If homophobia is conditioned, why does it skip some people? My parents were very repressive about sex in general, and never expressed any opinion about homosexual behavior, but I was certainly inundated with homophobia by peers and popular culture. So, why didn’t it catch?

  2. I have a gay friend who claims to feel ill when he contemplates heterosexual sex. If such feelings are socialized, where did he get it?

Thanks for the interesting read.

Julie

140

**

It’s not unusual for children to reject parental teachings. Purely through antecdotal evidence, I’ve always had the opinion that there’s a direct correlation with how strict parents are and the likelihood of “rebellion.” Having attended a religious school, I saw extremely strict parenting backfire horribly. A preacher’s daughter that I knew went out of her way to break every rule of which her parents could think. She drank, smoked, used drugs and slept with anyone who asked, whereas some children with less strict parents turned out “okay.”

On the other hand, education and elucidation can cause people to reject teachings which they were brought up with. For example, a child raised as a Christian may decide on further reflection as an adult to become an athiest. Children raised by honest, hardworking parents may decide to become a criminal.

With certain people, parental teachings seem to “stick” better. Sometimes, these people are more timid, and have more obedient, accepting personalities. People who are insecure and self-concious tend to cling to their primary socializing group’s dogma more than a self-assured, critically thinking person. It much depends on the individual personality of the child in question.

This is an off-the-cuff guess, but I’d say it might have to do with how he was treated by heterosexuals in the past. Most likely, he’s probably experienced predjudice and a certain level of verbal, if not physical abuse because of his sexual orientation. His internalized anger and pain may have manifested itself as disgust for the sexual behaviors of his abusers, much as he was mistreated for his.