Homophobia & Heterosexism
People of homosexual or bisexual orientations have long been stigmatized. With the rise of the gay political movement in the late 1960s; however, homosexuality's condemnation as immoral, criminal, and sick came under increasing scrutiny. When the American Psychiatric Association dropped homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis in 1973, the question of why some heterosexuals harbor strongly negative attitudes toward homosexuals began to receive serious scientific consideration.
Homophobia
Society's rethinking of sexual orientation was crystallized in the term homophobia, which heterosexual psychologist George Weinberg coined in the late 1960s. Weinberg used homophobia to label heterosexuals' dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals as well as homosexuals' self-loathing. The word first appeared in print in 1969 and was subsequently discussed at length in Weinberg's 1972 book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual. The American Heritage Dictionary (1992 edition) defines homophobia as aversion to gay or homosexual people or their lifestyle or culture and behavior or an act based on this aversion." Other definitions identify homophobia as an irrational fear of homosexuality.
Heterosexism
Around the same time, heterosexism began to be used as a term analogous to sexism and racism, describing an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any non- heterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship, or community (Herek, 1990). Using the term heterosexism highlights the parallels between anti-gay sentiment and other forms of prejudice, such as racism, anti-Semitism, and sexism.
Like institutional racism and sexism, heterosexism pervades societal customs and institutions. It operates through a dual process of invisibility and attack. Homosexuality usually remains culturally invisible; when people who engage in homosexual behavior or who are identified as homosexual become visible, they are subject to attack by society.
Examples of heterosexism in the United States include the continuing ban against lesbian and gay military personnel; widespread lack of legal protection from anti-gay discrimination in employment, housing, and services; hostility to lesbian and gay committed relationships, recently dramatized by passage of federal and state laws against same-gender marriage; and the existence of sodomy laws in more than one-third of the states.
Although usage of the two words has not been uniform, homophobia has typically been employed to describe individual anti-gay attitudes and behaviors whereas heterosexism has referred to societal-level ideologies and patterns of institutionalized oppression of non-heterosexual people.
What Fuels Homophobia?
The root meaning of the word homophobia is: fear of homosexuality. Its meaning has evolved over time; it is now usually defined as fear, loathing, and hatred of homosexuals and/or homosexuality. Some reasons are:- inability or unwillingness to change the hatred taught during childhood.
- fear of people who are different.
- promotion of homophobia by our religious organizations.
- a heterosexual's natural feeling of repulsion at the thought of engaging in same-sex activity.
- Realizing that homosexual behavior is unnatural for them, some people generalize this feeling into the belief that homosexuality is wrong for everyone.
- actual homosexual feelings that a person cannot acknowledge or handle.
- low self esteem leading to a need to hate other group(s).
There are several possible explanations. One is that homophobia is an attempt to repress or deny one's own homosexual impulses. Another is that homosexual stimuli cause anxiety in non-homophobic men, and anxiety enhances arousal and erection. Further research is needed to clarify the results and to answer questions such as whether these results would generalize to homophobic women and whether homophobic men have poorer heterosexual adjustment than do non-homophobic men.
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Anna M. Gove Student Health Center, PO Box 26170
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
VOICE 336.334.5340
FAX 336.334.5343