Gayphobia

This article is about the dislike of or prejudice against homosexual men. For the dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people, see Homophobia. For the dislike of or prejudice against homosexual women, see lesbophobia.

Discrimination against gay men, sometimes called gayphobia, is prejudice, hatred, or bias toward gay men, male homosexuality, or men who are perceived to be gay. This discrimination is closely related to femmephobia, which is the dislike of, or hostility toward, individuals who present as feminine, including gay and effeminate men. Discrimination against gay men can result from prejudicial reactions to one's feminine mannerisms, styles of clothing, and even vocal register. Within the LGBT-community, internalized issues around meeting social expectations of masculinity have been found among gay, bisexual, and transgender men.

Discrimination against gay men is distinct but included under the umbrella term homophobia, which encompasses a wide range of negative attitudes and feelings concerning the LGBT community, including gay men, as well as lesbians (lesbophobia), bisexual people (biphobia), and transgender people (transphobia).

Queer theory

Wilfred de Bruijn in 2013.

In French academia, queer theorists have examined the unique ways in which patriarchy attempts to enforce both masculinity and heterosexuality on bodies presenting or identified as male. The French queer and race theorist Louis-Georges Tin examined discrimination against gay men, and the historical development of the various forms of LGBT-related phobias under the umbrella of homophobia. He writes:

There has been an inverse movement of lexical differentiation operating at the heart of the concept of homophobia. Because of the specificity of attitudes towards lesbianism, the term lesbophobia has been introduced into theoretic discourses, a term which brings to light particular mechanisms that the generic concept of homophobia tends to overshadow. With one stroke, this distinction justifies the term gayphobia, since much homophobic discourse, in reality, pertains only to male homosexuality. Similarly, the concept of biphobia has also been proposed in order to highlight the singular situation of bisexuals, often stigmatized by both heterosexual and homosexual communities. Moreover, we need to take into consideration the very different issues linked to transsexual, transvestite, and transgender persons, which brings to mind the notion of transphobia.

In her 2017 text, The Women's Liberation Movement: Impacts and Outcomes, the German gender historian Kristina Schulz noted that within the Western media landscape during the 1970s' Gay Rights Movement, prejudice against gay men attracted more media attention than lesbophobia, largely due to the rhetoric of reactionary conservatives such as Anita Bryant, who suggested that gay men were sexual predators.

Discrimination in society

Graffiti in Belgrade.

According to the French government, discrimination against gay men "is a form of homophobia that specifically affects men. Although it is primarily aimed at gay and bisexual men, it can also affect heterosexual men who are perceived as homosexual. Gay men may be targets of physical aggression or devalued by stereotypes linked to feminisation and hypersexualisation."

The journalist Pierre Bouvier described anti-gay male sentiment as parallel to lesbophobia. Noting how these two different forms of homophobia operate in Western cultures, he wrote, "There is very clearly a difference in mechanisms between gayphobia and lesbophobia, and this translates into different types of aggression. Where the collective imagination over-sexualizes gay men and exerts strong verbal and physical violence against boys and men who are not considered sufficiently masculine or heterosexual; for women, on the other hand, the assertion of their lesbian identity will be further disqualified, minimized, reduced to a fad, or even sexualized as a prelude to heterosexuality."

Academic studies

In peer-reviewed studies which break down and distinguish homophobia separately between discrimination against gay men and lesbophobia, researchers have found statistically significant differences between heterosexual men and women in regards to their attitudes toward gay men. While no statistically significant differences were found in men and women in regard to lesbians, heterosexual men do demonstrate statistically significant elevated levels of animosity toward gay men. Heterosexual men also demonstrate higher levels of discrimination toward gay men than heterosexual women do toward lesbians.

Semantics

"Gayphobia" is a term of dubious meaning. It is a coinage modeled on terms such as "claustrophobia" and "hydrophobia" but unlike those terms "homophobia" has no basis in clinical psychology. In response to the so-called "normalization" of homosexuality, pro-homosexual activists attempted to stigmatize political opponents using a smear tactic to imply religious believers and others suffered from a "mental illness". The word caught on in academia, news media, and among Hollywood celebrities and is still used to imply discrimination against a person with a disability is perfectly legitimate and acceptable.

Gregory M. Herek, a psychology professor at the University of California at Davis, and a recognized authority on prejudice against lesbians and homosexual men, credits psychologist George Weinberg with inventing the word homophobia in the late 1960s. However, the word "has a number of problems with it," said Herek, particularly because there is no basis for the "phobia" suffix in a clinical sense.

The word "homophobia", which is widely used as an insult, is an ideological tool of left-wing political correctness and effectively enforces censorship by smearing all dissenters from LGBT ideology with accusations of "mental illness" - "phobia". It goes hand in hand with the ploy of replacing moral terminology with accusations of "hatred". The current usage of terms like "homophobic" and "homophobe" imply that all opposition to the LGBT agenda is crazy. Actually, there are many rational reasons that logically-thinking people remain hetero-normative, and unconvinced by LGBT ideology.

The term is closely linked with the slang expression "gay-bashing" and the two words are often used interchangeably as synonyms, strongly implying that anybody who will not capitulate to the LGBT ideology and accept all their arguments, is guilty of violent physical attacks on persons practicing homosexuality. By this casual association, hetero-normativity is denigrated and criminalized, while all logical debate is censored and silenced.

See also

• Effeminacy
• Gaybashing

• Heterosexism
• Societal attitudes toward homosexuality
• Sodomy laws
• Violence against LGBT people

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External links

• Media related to Gayphobia at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of gayphobia at Wiktionary
• Quotations related to Gayphobia at Wikiquote

References

This article "Gayphobia" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Gayphobia. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

📰 Article(s) of the same category(ies)

• Anti white racism
• Hatred
• History of gay men
• Deprivation index
• Title of authority
• Loved boy
• Pederast

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