"Start every day off with a smile and get it over with." - W. C. Fields

***

Brain surgery - what’s inside the heads of homophobes?

Event description: “It’s so disgusting to see two men getting intimate!”
“Lesbian sex is unfathomable…”
“Homosexuals shouldn’t exist on this planet.”

Which of these statements is/are homophobic in nature?

AnJ Ho will take you inside homophobia, to find out from the perspective of research: What constitutes homophobia? What’s the profile of a typical homophobe like, and what might make a difference?

AnJ undertakes research at a local tertiary institution. Her research interests revolve around social psychology.


I went to this event, held last night, with akikonomu; this was the only Indignation (the local gay pride festival) 2008 event I'd been to (and will probably be the only event I will be to).

We were both drawn to the event by the provocative title. If you cannot see the problem with it, try turning it around: "Brain surgery - what's inside the heads of homosexuals". Surely, such an event would be labelled homophobic sooner than you could say "rim me now". Given that the theme of the festival is "Building Bridges: Indignation 2008", the title was especially puzzling.

However, we were both pleasantly surprised to find that the event did not live up to its title, and was instead an overview of the scientific literature on homophobia. That said, the main problem with the talk was the very word "homophobia", which is a very problematic term. Its definition is not exact, ranging from violence towards homosexuals to extreme dislike of them to one's fear of being homosexual to 'prejudice' against homosexuals.

Presumably, anyone who disapproves of homosexuality in any way could be lumped under the category of "homophobe". Leaving aside the issue of polarisation ("you are either pro-gay or a homophobe"), the liberal use of the emotionally-charged blanket term of "homophobe" risks a slippery slope fallacy and/or faux equivalence, where mere dislike of homosexuals is equated to, or alleged to inevitably lead to, violence towards them.

Indeed, one researcher who was quoted admitted that it was not really a "phobia" per se (the definition of a phobia being "a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous"). Which begs the question of why it is termed one. A more helpful distinction might then be made between "homonegativism... a multidimensional construct that encompasses the entire domain of antigay responses, including attitudes, beliefs, and judgments regarding homosexuality - and homophobia... a unidimensional construct that comprises emotional or affective responses"

3 profiles of a homophobe were then trotted out: the violent one (wanting to beat gays up), the dumb straight guy (thinking lesbians could be converted) and the ultra-nice (read: Christian). That these were laughably simplistic was not stressed, sadly.

A scale to measure homophobia was then presented, the Wright, Adams, and Bernat Homophobia Scale, 25 questions for the respondent to rate his level of agreement with. The number of statements one agrees with, and the degree to which he agrees with them, determines how homophobic he is.

Some questions on the scale include:

9. I make derogatory remarks like "faggot" or "queer" to people I suspect are gay.
13. I tease and make jokes about gay people.
15. I fear homosexual persons will make sexual advances towards me.
16. Organizations which promote gay rights are not necessary.
18. I would feel uncomfortable having a gay roommate.
19. I would hit a homosexual for coming on to me.
23. When I see a gay person I think, "What a waste."
24. When I meet someone I try to find out if he/she is gay.

While those above might seem innocuous, most fall into one or both of these categories: things gay people would also do and things normal people do to non-gays.

Two examples of the former would be:
i) it is not unheard of for gays to comment that it is a pity that some cute guy is straight (or even that they would like to "convert" him) and
ii) gay people always try to find out if people they meet/see are gay (they are probably the most active deployers of gaydar).

Meanwhile, one would not fault a heterosexual woman for being uncomfortable about having a heterosexual man as a roommate; women can fear that straight men will make sexual advances towards them; and anyone thinking an organization promoting White rights is necessary is labelled as a White supremacist.

And then there are some weird bits, like the claim that calling someone "queer" is derogatory. Considering that there is a field called "Queer theory", and that the term began, from the 80s, to be reclaimed "by gay and lesbian activists as a term of self-identification", it would seem to fall into the same category as the N-word ("nigger") exception, i.e. 'Do as I say, not as I do'. Perhaps you might say that homophobes are more likely to use the term "queer" than non-homophobes, but then you might as well put "male", "religious" and "follows social norms" into the scale, as these traits are also correlated with homosexuality (see below).

[Ed: The disapproval of the word "queer" is especially amusing given that the organiser of the event, Sayoni, has as its motto "To empower Asian QUEER women" (emphasis mine]

Let us now turn the scale around, like so:

1. I make derogatory remarks like "breeder", "straighty" and "straight" to people I suspect are straight.
2. I tease and make jokes about straight people.
3. I fear heterosexual persons will make sexual advances towards me.
4. I would feel uncomfortable having a straight roommate.
5. I would hit a heterosexual for coming on to me.
6. When I see a straight person I think, "What a waste."
7. When I meet someone I try to find out if he/she is gay.

Given this list of questions, would a gay or lesbian giving answers similar to those that "homophobes" would give the questions' straight mirrors then be considered heterophobic? Assuredly not (indeed, the term "heterophobia" is not a popular one).

[Ed: After the event, I voiced some of my concerns to the presenter, and she said it was a scale {i.e. homophobia not a binary thing, that you are either a homophobe or are not a homophobe}, that that was why there were 25 questions, that research had proven its efficacy and that it was still being tweaked {the latest version came out last year}]

The speaker then went through the three statements listed in the event description: “Homosexuals shouldn’t exist on this planet.”, “Lesbian sex is unfathomable…” and “It’s so disgusting to see two men getting intimate!” (or variants thereof). Very correctly, she pointed out that whether the second was homophobic depended on the definition of "unfathomable" and that regarding the latter, one might think spiders disgusting but that would not mean one wanted to kill them. Considering that gay men consider heterosexual sex and/or girl parts to be disgusting, this was an important point.

A paper about the predictors of homophobia was then introduced. They were age, educational level, religiosity and conformism to social norms. I didn't actually read the paper, but it seemed to me that each factor was being looked at in isolation, rather than all of them being evaluated jointly. But then I am unfamiliar with the statistical methods used in Psychology, so presumably there was a reason for this.

The usual dialectic of the Other was then introduced - if you frame LGBTs as foreign and non-normal (i.e. so-called "heteronormality"), you think you are superior to them. This is rubbish since just because someone is different from you does not mean they are inferior to you. Of course, it is true that to be superior to someone, you have to be different from them, but it does not follow that if you are different from them, you will think yourself superior to them; to stick a straw up your nose, you need a nose, but it does not mean that you need to amputate your nose so you won't stick a straw up it. Indeed, normality need not be a good thing - no one would argue that, in the past, students in MOE's Gifted Educated Program were inferior since they were not "normal" like Express students.

It was then said that homophobia is correlated with conservatism, since in both cases existing social norms are justified. This is a somewhat academic point, but if this is the case, in a gay utopia, pro-gays would be considered conservative; the definition of conservatism used is then dependent upon a very specific context.

The next paper discussed was "Homophobia and physical aggression toward homosexual and heterosexual individuals". After being shown sexually explicit homosexual material (would this experiment have been possible in Singapore?!), homophobic individuals shocked homosexual opponents more often and with a greater intensity than non-homophobic individuals.

Presumably this was meant to demonstrate the latent, violent anti-gay tendencies of homophobes, but I would question whether this matters. After all, this was in a laboratory setting where you were permitted (perhaps even implicitly encouraged) to shock your opponent, and an electric shock is a safe, controlled (if painful) form of aggression.

Perhaps more importantly, people who found homosexuality to be distasteful were deliberately provoked by being shown gay porn (which can be seen as a form of provocation). It is thus not any surprise that they were more aggressive towards homosexuals after that: if you piss people off, they are going to behave the way pissed-off people do. A better measure of violent anti-gay tendencies would thus have been seeing how they shocked gays *without first having seen gay porn*.

Homophobes were then psychoanalysed for reasons why they held such views. One category of reasons used the functional approach, e.g. people are homophobic because they want to deny having their own homoerotic feelings, or it's a way to adjust to social norms. This is all well and good, but what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: there can be (and is) a functional approach towards homosexuality - that people are gay because they are horny, that they want to rebel against society etc, though the evidence supporting this is shakier than for the former.

A disturbing line, "We don't hate homophobes, we just hate homophobia" was then presented. It was eerily similar to "We don't hate homosexuals, we just hate homosexuality" and its root "Love the sinner, hate the sin" (some problems with this approach).

[Ed: This was supposed to be a joke. What can I say, irony is dead in Singapore. Hurr hurr.]

We were then told that, in order to get homophobes to understand homosexuals and reduce their homophobia, LGBTs' contact with them had to be positive, or it would reinforce their negative attitudes. Indeed, this is something which gays and gay activists should keep well in mind, for fear of shooting their own cause in the foot.

I forgot exactly when it was presented, but 2007 study on Singaporeans' attitudes towards homosexuality was also referenced: Singaporeans’ Attitudes toward Lesbians and Gay Men and their Tolerance of Media Portrayals of Homosexuality (Benjamin H. Detenber, Mark Cenite, Moses K. Y. Ku, Carol P. L. Ong, Hazel Y. Tong and Magdalene L. H. Yeow , 2007). It showed that a representative sample of Singaporeans disapproved of it.

During the Q&A, one person pointed out that the paper about homophobes shocking homosexuals more often and more powerfully than heterosexuals also showed that non-homophobes shocked heterosexuals more often and more powerfully than homophobes. He proposed that since these people had identified as non-homophobes, they were inclined to compensate by shocking heterosexuals more. I found this was very interesting, as to be consistent, the implication would be that you were either homophobic or heterophobic.

Another person commented that if your behavior indirectly hurt gays, you were homophobic. This seemed to me to be going on a witch hunt, tarring people with the dreaded brush even though they did not deserve it, reading implicit meanings that didn't actually exist, and seeing daggers where there are none (and, once again, murdering language for ideological ends).

Then, one audience member commented that the presenter had hardly touched on the correlation of religiosity and homophobia, and pointedly asked if "the two gentlemen in the corner [Ed: i.e. akikonomu and I] are from a religious organisation". True, normal people don't scribble notes or type at their laptops at non-tech events, but still, this was an example of really bizarre gay paranoia and was definitely something that would reinforce negative attitudes towards homosexuals (akikonomu commented that "your celebrity does not precede you"). I commented that in future we should show up with video cameras so people would think we were from ISD (the Internal Security Department). To their credit, the organisers came up to us after the event and apologised; no one knew who we were, and although pleinelune knew us, she was busy so no one had asked her.

The presenter commented that a friend of hers had been thrown out of her retail job because she was gay. Although this seemed disturbing, coincidentally, just before this she had also mentioned that some time ago, a girl had been refused entry to a club under the Ladies' Night special (i.e. she was free entry) because she had been wearing a shirt and pants. This pointed to the possibility that her friend had been thrown out of her retail job not because she was gay, but because she was a butch (e.g. because she looked like a guy, didn't put on makeup and/or didn't have long hair): viz., that she did not project an appropriate image for a retail job. So they might have been barking up the wrong tree.

It was then asked if homophobia could be conceived of as a disease: "Some carriers have it without knowing it. Some carriers know they have it, and try to cure themselves. Some of those who try, are treating only the symptoms. Some of those who don't, are quarantining themselves. And some carriers, like Thio, are actively spreading the germs. I think it would help if you knew which of these categories your friend belongs to." (or words to that effect). It was curious that homophobia was being pathologised as homosexuality itself was once pathologised; it does not take much imagination to substitute "homosexuality" for "homophobia" in the quote above.

On clarification, it turned out that the question was if homophobia could be classified as a psychological disorder. Happily, a definition of such was available; a psychological disorder causes a person to be unable to function, hold down a job, have a normal social circle etc. Someone with a psychological disorder can also endanger others' health, e.g. someone who cannot stop himself from beating others up. Coincidentally, I think this would be a good way to define homophobia, since it is closer to the meaning of "phobia" than the current catch-all definition.

Sam (IIRC) said a distinction should be made between heterosexism/heteronormality and homophobia, but Alex Au said that you couldn't draw a line, just like you couldn't draw a line between racism and chavinism (the relevance of this analogy wasn't clear to me), since there was the same sort of dichotomisation. A response to the supposed iniquity of so-called heterosexism/heteronormality can be found above.

One person mentioned the famous paper that found that homophobes might be latent homosexuals (since they got aroused when watching gay porn). However, he did not mention the caveat that blood flow into the penis is also associated with aggression and not just arousal.

After the event was over, at a photo op, instead of everyone being told to say "cheese", the photographer said "Everybody say 'sex'". And people wonder why people think LGBTs are oversexed!


The review from my partner from a religious organisation.