doi: 10.1037//0021-843x.105.3.440
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I’ve always assumed this (and assumed that other people assumed this), because if you talk to homophobes they’ll eventually say something like “it’s a choice!” because it’s a choice for them. It’s not a choice for me because gay porn doesn’t turn me on – and if it did I wouldn’t care anyway because that’s how I was raised. But it DOES turns them on, AND they were raised in an environment where this is THE WORST THING EVER, so it upsets them and they get all irrational and punchy (lesson learned: DO NOT discuss this theory with a homophobe.)
TLDR; IMHO Homophobes who think orientation is a choice are closeted gays because logic.
It would be nice to see a better study. Interesting if one hasn’t been done in all this time…
Shit, you could go through the political news and find more than 35.
1996 sub 100 participants
Data quality is shit, and should be discarded.
That aside, I feel bad for my extremely closested buddy. We went to a rather homophobic highschool, and a mildly homophobic college, and he always tried too hard for ladies for how dedicated he was to his certain type of looks.
35 people makes it a useless study.
it was 64 people.
I agree
Funny, but the sample size? Would like to see a larger study (probably would show the same results).
I also wonder if they considered bi individuals in the non-homophobic group.
If these are easily answered by reading the paper, I’ll see it now, when I actually read it.
Bi - the invisible sexual orientation.
Glad that Lower Decks has a bi protagonist. Its really sad that bisexual people just seem to be completely invisible within the broader culture.
This seems kind of obvious to me honestly. Like if you weren’t worried that you would ‘turn gay’, why would you give a single shit about what other men do in their bedrooms? It just goes to show how even in our ‘enlightened’ age that there is still a terrible stigma associated with being gay among certain groups. Ignorance and fear is part of it but religion plays a big part as well.
I have a friend who ‘admitted’ to me that he was gay as if he were telling me he was a pedo or a murderer. Of course I told him that I dgaf, but it mattered to him. He’s a devout Catholic and has been tortured by his sexuality since before I knew him (30 years). He has even enrolled himself into a coupe of those ‘Pray the Gay Away’ camps. It’s amazing how willing people are to follow a God who would put them through something like that.
I used to work with a religious guy who started this whole “Homosexuality is a choice” bit. I said “You think you could just choose to be gay?” and to his credit he admitted that he could. He’s more honest than a lot of closeted homophobes, usually that question makes them backtrack their position, but he’s to devout too realize that homosexuality isn’t always a boolean and he didn’t have a choice in his sexuality anymore than my friend had.
my theory is that most homosexuals are bi, specifically because then the idea that they could turn gay is logical
my theory is that most homosexuals are bi
Guessing you meant “homophobes”
yes
A sex worker friend told me that he had some homophobic (male) clients who didn’t seem to be gay, but frequented male sex workers. This confused me, but he explained that it seems to be part of a convoluted humiliation kink thing, rather than attraction.
For example, I know a subby guy whose domme makes him kiss her feet. She does this because he finds feet gross, and thus ordering him thus is a humiliating and submissive act that he ultimately finds hot. This association has become strong enough that even outside of the specific context of scenes with his domme, he finds the prospect of footplay arousing, whilst simultaneously still being grossed out by feet. He finds the paradoxical vibes of this hilarious, and indeed, reports that it’s one of the things he finds fulfilling about kink play.
In the case of homophobic straight men who have gay sex, it’s far more psychosexually complex. However, one plausible angle of it is that some men may actually just want to be pegged, but conservative attitudes may mean that being fucked by a woman with a strap-on is perceived as more taboo and transgressive than being fucked by another man.
Another bizarre example my friend relayed to me was an instance of a man who engaged in gay sex as a form of self-harm that was felt to be deserved due to being insufficiently masculine. In this scenario, the homophobic client was topping. The guy apparently seemed to believe in a sort of “conservation of masculinity” in penetrative sex. For example, let’s say that any act of penetrative sex (anal or vaginal, it matters not) contains a total of 10 arbitrary units of masculinity. In this guy’s ideal of How Sex Should Be, the penetrative partner would contain all 10 units of masculinity, and his partner, with 0 units of masculinity, would be the mostly womanly woman to ever woman. However, this dude was pretty insecure in his masculinity, and he would probably rate himself as having only 6 units of masculinity. This is sufficient for him to feel comfortable being the one who penetrates his partner, but by the principle of conservation of masculinity, this would mean that “balanced” sex would involve a partner with 4 units of masculinity.
I don’t intend to kink shame anyone, but frankly I find this bizarre, because it sounds like this guy is genuinely quite disgusted by having sex with another man (and likely not attracted to men either), but feels even more disgusted by the prospect of feeling insufficiently masculine and having sex with a woman. It’s like the gay sex is a punishment for not attaining the impossible ideal of hegemonic masculinity. I asked my friend if it wasn’t more likely that the dude is just gay and has a heckton of internalised homophobia to work through, but he was pretty sure of his assessment. I’m told that the job involves a surprising amount of “I’m not a therapist, but I’m the closest thing you have to one, so let’s talk”.
I think for that last paragraph it’s a thing where sex and processing emotions are equally taboo to a lot of men who are as fucked up as you described. Except sex and even utilizing a sex worker’s services fit within a script they have the mental space to comprehend. You sneak off, have sex, pay, shut up about it. Whereas asking a friend if they can help you process some stuff over a beer or going to therapy are public in the sense that they aren’t hidden. They’re awkward, they involve potential accountability and may demand change. They’re hard and seeing a sex worker in such a way is cathartic and exciting in all the ways that telling a friend you’re worried you aren’t masculine enough isn’t.
But also yeah, sexuality does also seem to just be where misc mental issues wind up dumped. I’m certainly not one to judge about any of that shit. I just suspect some people only go to sex to deal with it instead of also working to become mentally healthy. Like you can still be freaky once you are, in fact you often get better at it.
Boy am I glad I’m asexual for all practical purposes. This sounds frankly exhausting.
Not sure what is up with this screenshot. Looks like someone erased something from the sides? I dunno, but the quality is not great. Here’s a new one:
Most of what I learned about LGBTQ came from homophobes. The ones who would not shut up about it.
For example when I didn’t know that rainbows were associated with the community. I had friend school over one time. He saw a blanket with a rainbow stripe pattern. He basically had a gay panic meltdown. He was so certain we were a family of closeted gays.
So anyways later on he got a degree from a bible college or something. And he joined an evangelical church. One where they travel around to city streets around preaching from megaphones. Kind of like that Westboro Baptist thing.
In our early 20s he sexually assault me. I found out later from another guy we went to school with that he also forced himself on that guy too.
He’s not the only person I’ve known like this but certainly the most crazy one.
If there’s any true to the saying that gays rub their identity in everyone’s face. Then it’s the homophobe ones. It’s got to be a massive projection. It’s like they’re trying to tell the world but it manifests as some kind of self-hate in denial or something.
The rubbing it in your face bit always got me. It sounds like something a jealous person would say. Like why do they get to suck dick and I can’t!
You have just figured out 40% of GOP insanity right there.
“How does he get to be a pretty woman when I cant? Well I’ll show him!” (the misgendering was intentional and hypothetical to make a point, mods pls)
I think the more complete question is: Is sexual repression common among conservatives the root of their infantile lashing out against LGBTQ+?
I really don’t like the idea of citing this study. It’s always this same one from the 90s, and if it were acurate I expect the results would have been reproduced more. It’s also not clear that the results indicate what the paper says. There’s other reasons than sexual arousal that could explain the results. It could be they’re imagining the scenario and are axious or disgusted by it. There’s this paper that indicates homophobia is usually caused by fear or hate.
I don’t like the idea of putting the blame for homophobia on closeted queer people. It’s seems extremely likely to me that most homophobic people are straight, since most people are straight. Also we should respect other people’s own identification instead of trying to force labels on people, even if they’re bigots.
I always felt like that study from the 90s is missing part of the picture. Like, it’s less ‘closeted gay people’ that are the problem, and it’s more the people who are closeted because it was beaten into them at a young age that being gay means they deserve the worst of the worst.
I think you’re spot on with fear being the root cause, and we really have done a good job at making people afraid of their own sexuality.
Yeah I prefer to think of it as that the most violent enforcers of homophobia are often queer. Gay people operate the conversion camps, straight people send their kids to them at the behest of a straight preacher. The straight people in this scenario have other things on their mind, homophobia isn’t their primary concern, but it is one of their concerns.
Eh, yes and no. I wouldn’t say that they’re operating the camps, but kapos are an unfortunate reality.
I’d agree that homophobia isn’t the primary concern for most straight people, but with the caveat that it is the primary concern for the families who are worried enough to enter the conversion camp pipeline. I’d also argue that homophobia was a primary method of control via fear by specifically the preachers in the camp pipeline, though that stick is getting worn out and they’re starting to swap to transphobia for fresh fear. There are many roads to hell though, so you’re right about it not being their only concern.
I was hoping someone else articulated this better than me. When I read OP’s screenshot, I heard “Your dick got hard when we showed you sex. What are you, gay? You’re gay, aren’t you?” Which doesn’t really follow. Thats just bullying, I think. The scientists were bullying the homophobes lmao.
And, like, they’re probably sometimes correct. I conject homophobia is a mask worn by homos to blend in around homophobes, and then the paper you linked hits me with
These findings confirm the importance of considering the variability in impulsive processes to understand why some (but not all) men high in homophobia have homosexual interest.
and wow, this really does confirm my bias! Thank you for sharing
If you disagree with the science, perhaps you should do your own study?
Nah, nope, nuh-uh, that’s not how science works. A person’s concerns about the methodology or conclusions of a particular study are not invalid just because they haven’t run their own experiments.
It’s pretty easy for even a layperson to question this particular study, for a few reasons:
- The sample sizes are very small
- Some men can get erections/aroused if the wind blows the wrong way, or even for no reason at all - putting porn in front of someone and expecting them not to become aroused is a dubious assumption at best
- Using some external test to determine someone’s sexuality, instead of using the person’s self-identification, goes against the last 30 years of progress we’ve made in gender and sexuality studies
- The conclusion of the study may indicate some level of homophobic or anti-homosexual bias
Don’t gatekeep good critical thinking. Good critical thinking is the only thing you ever need to question any scientific study.
I think that you make some good points. But I take issue with your third point. People lie about things to researchers (or simply don’t know have some sort of self-knowledge) all the time. This is the whole concept of “revealed preference” in economics. Someone can say that they care about sweatshop labor, but do they actually make any effort to avoid buying products produced in sweatshops?
Not questioning the experiment subjects’ stated sexual identity just neuters the whole point of the study: is homophobia driven by repressed homosexual desire. If it is repressed, we should expect subjects to say they are straight even if they aren’t. Could the methodology be flawed? Sure! But there is nothing wrong with trying to actually measure the homosexual attraction of someone who says they are not so attracted.
Agree with your overall point, but a “revealed preference” isn’t necessarily a lie or lake of self-knowledge. A recovering alcoholic might have a revealed preference for alcohol but that doesn’t mean they’re lying when they say they don’t want it or that they’re unaware of the temptation they have for it (insane as this may sound, people have actually made this argument before). The whole economic concept rests on massive philosophical and psychological cans of worms about what defines a person’s identity and wants, which economists are happy to oversimplify and ignore. The average person can’t really be expected to track entire supply chains for every purchase they ever make, which is why we have regulations. Instead of having every individual track every part of the production of every purchase, we (as a society) assign someone the job of investigating the production process to see if there’s anything that we would find objectionable.
If a lot of people say that they have a problem with sweatshops, but then purchase goods made in sweatshops, you could argue that their behavior “reveals” their true preference, but it would be equally valid to say that what what they actually consciously express is their true preference and their failure to live up to it is driven by ignorance, succumbing to temptation, or regulatory failure.
That’s fair, but I get the feeling that the researchers came up with their conclusion before performing their study, and then interpreted their findings to fit that pre-supposed conclusion. The only thing this study can fairly claim is that some homophobic men may harbor homosexual desires. They’ve failed to demonstrate any causal linkage between those two attributes, but they’re heavily suggesting one exists. Maybe their abstract grossly oversimplifies things, but it seems to extrapolate their findings far beyond any reasonable conclusion in my opinion, and that makes me question their methods and motives more than I normally would. The publication date also raises flags, as the common pervasive sentiment about homosexuality was very different in 1996 than it is today. All of those things combined indicate to me that this study should be carefully considered with plenty of grains of salt at hand.
But to get back on topic a little bit - my original intent was to refute the notion that if someone has a problem with the methodology of a scientific study, then they must perform their own study and present evidence to support a contrary claim. The examples I listed are things it would be reasonable to expect a layman with solid critical thinking skills to point out as potential flaws in this particular study, potential areas to look further into, to confirm whether or not the study is scientifically sound.
I definitely agree with you on all counts there. A single underpowered study does not sound science make, even disregarding the authors’ potential biases.
I can think of multiple reasons a straight man could get aroused by seeing a dick.
First, erections don’t occur only because of arousal, they can happen from adrenaline as well. I guess if you’re a homophobe and are about to watch gay porn as part of research, you might get a bit of adrenaline.
Another reason I can think of is that most straight men see a dick when they watch porn, meaning their brain may make the association of “dick on screen = some hot nude lady is gonna show up”.
Point 2 is covered by having a control group and point 3 seems to be missing the point: well yeah, don’t take the conclusion too far, but that doesn’t mean measuring arousal is bad science.
Bigger issues are low sample size (as you mentioned) and the fact that it’s a correlational study that hasn’t done any work to causally link them.
Someone should repeat the study. That’s all I’m saying. If the criticism is that the study was too small or done too long ago, or whatever. The anti-science crowd are the ones who reason away the results of science with no basis of fact. If you disagree with the facts, it is your responsibility to disprove them.
No, what you said was “if you disagree with the science, perhaps you should do your own study”.
“Disagree with the science” is a disingenuous oversimplification bordering on nonsensical. People are calling into question the methods of the study, and the conclusions reached by the scientists interpreting the data. All of which can be accomplished with good critical thinking, and all of which is part of the scientific process. We’re not “disagreeing with the science”. We don’t need to repeat this experiment or run our own to be able to point out that it looks like there are flaws in this study - we just need to have good critical thinking skills.
If you disagree with the facts, it is your responsibility to disprove them.
What facts? Are you implying that the content of a scientific study becomes “fact” simply because a scientist publishes it? Because that’s wrong, and any published scientist will tell you as much.
Ah, thank you for quoting my words back to me. Now kindly fuck off.
No u
Critique and analysis of a study or experiment is the default. It isn’t a religion; science thrives on repeat analysis.
Which is why someone should repeat the study to confirm or contradict it.
This whole discussion you see above is part of the process of repeating a study. You can’t just do exactly what the previous study did and expect all the flaws to magically disappear. You need to first uncover the flaws, and more eyes and collaboration means a higher likelihood that the flaws get found, hence the importance of these discussions. Then you redesign the experiment to fix those flaws, and then you can run it again.
I agree with you.
Yeah gimme a bunch of money lol
Lemme just reach into my giant money bag … Hey, who took my giant money bag!?
You left it in the parlor
That explains why the butler was looking shifty when he announced brunch …
I discovered Fly My Pretties when I was trying to come up with a name for my band. I thought of “Fly My Pretties,” Googled it to see if it was taken, and up pops this wonderful band that has been active for years.
Do you know what peer review means?
Are you a scientist?
Is this why Republican senators keep getting caught kissin’ with other men in public restrooms?
I mean grindr always reports an increase in traffic around the republican conventions.
This sounds like it would be something that’s an interesting anecdote and a “GOTCHA”. Has there ever been any confirmation of this from Grindr? As amusing of a story it is, it’s only really useful information if it’s provable.
The world would be so much better if they stopped being so concerned with what other consenting adults are doing in private.
It’s always important in science to do the experiment or study, even if you’re pretty sure you already know the answer.
Sometimes, the result will be surprisingly counter-intuitive. And other times, like in this study, it confirms what seems blatantly obvious.
What could it possibly mean when a man who identifies as heterosexual feels threatened by the mere existence of homosexual men? What could it mean???
And then they’re like "huh… that’s weird“ and discover time travel by accident.
“Turns out all we needed to travel forwards in time is to burn homophobes!”
“1.21 GIGAHOMOPHOBES?!”
That’s a banger quote. Where does it come from?
I think it could be reuse with burn the kings, and burn the capital owners
I made it up.
What are you referring to with time travel? Seems interesting
And more proof is always useful. Science runs on it.
And sometimes, just sometimes, studies are framed to find what the experimenter wants them to find.
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I always assumed that homophobia is about a subconscious fear of spreading diseases and stuff, as that’s more common in gay people by a lot.
Don’t conflate promiscuity with homosexuality. There are plenty of gay people who are monogamous and who are no more likely to spread disease than anybody else. And there are plenty of promiscuous heterosexual people who are spreading diseases.
Also, you shouldn’t apologize for this bigotry by saying it’s subconscious. This is learned behavior.
you’re right, i should have been more careful about this.
i just contacted an old friend of mine who had that view, and he too says that he’s changed his mind about this and no longer sees it that way.
IIRC, this hasn’t been debunked per se, but it was a very small, very limited study, and doesn’t really do a great job of explaining homophobia in a broader population. (I mean, you’re talking about 64 people in total; depending on your inclusion criteria, that could be a meaningless sample size.) Penile plethysmography is a proxy for sexual arousal; it’s useful in some instances–like predicting whether or not someone will commit more sexual offenses in the future–but isn’t even that great in those instances. If I remember correctly, there’s strong evidence that disgust is a trait strongly associated with conservatism, and homophobia is a an extreme disgust reaction.
FWIW, I was casually–but quite virulently–homophobic when I was younger. I’d been raised in a very conservative, evangelical religious group, and I believed all the bullshit that I’d heard about gay people. That changed once I lost religion, and actually met people that were gay. That, of course, is only anecdotal evidence, and does assume that I’m neither gay nor bisexual (and I don’t believe that I am), but it fits with what I’ve seen from conservative thought.
