Gay good, straight bad - Homophobia and Heterophobia

"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?" - Unknown

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A follow-up on the Sayoni forums to Brain surgery - what’s inside the heads of homophobes?


Me: Actually my point was more that innocuous behavior (e.g. 'That girl is so cute. Such a pity she's a lesbian') would show up on the scale as one of the 25 indicators of homophobia when similar behavior by gays or lesbians (e.g. 'That guy is so cute. Such a pity he's straight') would not indicate heterophobia.


A: Behaviour which is "innocuous" from gay people when directed at straight people, is simply not "innocuous" the other way around. That's one of the functions of systemic discrimination. It's much, much less threatening in terms of its effects for a straight person to be called a "breeder" than for a gay person to be referred to by a orientation-based slur, as the slur against the homosexual person calls upon an entire cultural context of marginalisation, including in the most extreme cases an imminent threat of hate-based violence.

"Heterophobia" is just not an issue. As a straight person, I am continually privileged in ways that gay people are not. If a gay person tries to use my straightness as grounds for discriminating against me or mocking me, I can walk away from it easily, with no repercussions whatsoever aside from my relationship with that one person. I will face no fear or insecurity as to whether other social consequences - relating to my friends, family, employment, religious community or other fundamental aspects of my life - will follow. The same cannot be said for a gay person subject to slurs against homosexuality. All those relationships are continually potentially under threat, and the person using a slur against homosexuality is calling upon the psychological force of that threat.


B: But we are measuring homophobia here, are we not? The scale isn't a scale of homophobia/heterophobia, just purely homophobia. If there is a corresponding scale of heterophobia, then okay, we can start talking about that, and it is possible, that such a statement is heterophobic. We can talk about it at that point in time.

I am not saying heterophobia doesn't exist, I know it does. I've been fighting against both heterophobia (and the accompanied biphobia) within the community for some time, as well as homophobia from outside. Pod is right, it doesn't really make that much of an impact to a straight person, but it makes us less credible and harder for us to build bridges.

Next year, we can do a talk on heterophobia, where we can thoroughly discuss this phenomenon. Until then, perhaps better to focus on the subject of the talk, which is homophobia.


Me: The point is not that heterophobia exists alongside homophobia, so we should not discuss homophobia.

I was attempting to do an argumentum ad absurdum, applying the same principles to measuring heterophobia as to homophobia.

Since I think we can agree that a gay going 'That guy is so cute. Such a pity he's straight' is a pretty innocuous, non-heterophobic remark, we can can challenge the claim that remarks like 'That girl is so cute. Such a pity she's a lesbian' indicate homophobia.


C: Well said, [A]... I'm personally not entirely convinced that homophobia is not equivalent to heterophobia or should not treated as equivalent, which may really be two different issues, but it's an interesting line of thought to consider.

Attempting to follow this train of argument, I think the implication is that we should be more sensitive to the needs of queer people than straight people. There is such a thing as straight privilege, and moments of heterophobia that serve to foreground it and make people be aware of their position may not be a bad thing once in a while -- provided one has enough self-awareness to step back and realise that this move is similar to a homophobic act.


Me: I thought we were campaigning for equal treatment here?

This is like the case where when a white guy beats up a black guy it's a hate crime, but when a black guy beats up a white guy it's just violence (or it can even be claimed that the black guy was being provoked by the white guy)


A: [C:], in social situations involving individuals, I would have little time for gay people who were, say, rude to straight people on the basis of sexuality. I also don't think a gay person would be doing himself or herself any favours by using orientation-based slurs against straight people. So in that way, I think both homophobia and so-called "heterophobia" are bad things.

But I think pervasive homophobia and heteronormativity affects not only the severity of homophobia compared to heterophobia, but also what makes a slur. To use gssq's example, a gay person expressing a wish that someone attractive was gay is okay to me. There's little reason (given the heteronormativity of most of our media, education, family, religious communities etc.) to see the statement as implying that straightness is wrong or feeding into any fears/insecurities/insults about straightness being wrong. It's just simply wishing it were socially appropriate to approach the particular straight person romantically. Totally inoffensive.

But if you say "I wish X was straight" or "It's a pity X is gay", I think it's more dodgy. The gayness of X has almost certainly been described by someone in the past as something wrong, something which should change. This view has almost certainly been pressed upon X at some point in the past, under the threat of disruption to X's life and relationships, and in all likelihood by authority figures such as parents and teachers and school officials and religious leaders. This is something a straight person would almost certainly never have faced, so there is no such experience for the statement "I think X should be gay" to tap into.

Moreover, because of the common view that women and female sexuality exist to service men, a man saying "it's a shame" that a particular woman is lesbian, also taps into a particular kind of homophobia that affects gay women in particular: the view that a woman is somehow not achieving her proper purpose in life by being a romantic or sexual accessory to a man.

So I agree, more sensitivity to queer people is required than to straight people. As you said, it's a question of foregrounding. The needs of straight people (in terms of respect for straightness as a sexual orientation), especially straight men, are unconsciously and subconsciously catered to by almost everyone, everyday, because of dominant assumptions (a) that everyone is straight and (b) that their straightness is "normal" and "correct". We don't need as much effort to see what hurts straight people with respect to our sexuality. Most default social attitudes about what hurts people are set with reference to straight people; without more effort, gay people get overlooked.


Me: The problem behind this kind of reasoning is that it ignores the specifics of each situation and imposes blanket stereotypes that level all subtlety and context. Ironic, given that blanket stereotypes would usually be abhorred.

When you presuppose oppression, it is no surprise that you're going to find it. Regardless of social or inter-personal context.

This sort of thinking can only perpetuate a mentality of constant repression and victimization, with the reading into innocuous individual acts the weight of social norms. It was this sort of thinking which led to the Hamilton Square Baptist Church riot (the only example of homosexuals physically attacking 'enemies', sans provocation, that I can find).

Using similar logic, if a homosexual sexually abuses a heterosexual, the punishment should be more severe than if a heterosexual does the same, because it is a more egregious hurt to their personal well-being/sexuality. And if a black man attacks a white man in a racially motivated crime, he should be punished less than if a white man attacks a black man in a racially motivated crime.

In short, the message is: "treat us equally where it would benefit us, and treat us unequally where it would benefit us" and "do as we say, not as we do"


Addendum:

A: gssq, gay people cannot escape the social context they are in. When you have been faced with slurs (which will often be implied but regularly confirmed by explicit evidence of aversion) in virtually every arena of your life, it is very burdensome to keep torturously construing everything into as innocent an interpretation as possible, even when you face familiar warning signs, only to often be later disappointed. It can also be dangerous (for the reasons of threats to relationships or bodily safety, as I mentioned) to give the benefit of the doubt outside of spaces where people have actively proven that they are not homophobic.

That sense of uncertainty and restriction you get when you are trying to take into account the context of societal homophobia, and the sense that your individual intentions and feelings are being swept aside by someone else's preconceptions? Gay people are pushed into that position all the time, and they can't just walk away from it. Who would "presuppose" oppression if given a choice? If gay people could just close their eyes and do away with all their negative experiences, don't you think they would? It's not fair to ask them to micromanage their reactions and absorb risk in situations that resonate with common forms of homophobia, when the conditions that created the problem (1) are not of their making and (2) systematically disadvantage them. It makes more sense for straight people to use our brains for a moment before mouthing off with anything potentially homophobic. And when we get it wrong, as human beings will, and a gay person objects, we should shut up and learn.

Our needs for respect for our straightness are catered to continually because society is set up in a way that makes it effortless for people to do so. Making an effort to be sensitive to the needs of gay people is not (as you claim) unfairly advantaging them; it's just trying to rectify a situation that deprives them of what you get to take for granted, as easy as you breathe, only because of your privilege.


Me: I should've been born a black, female, lesbian, post-op transsexual.