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Homophobia is so gay

Puppycow

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Puppycow
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Plenty of anecdotal evidence for this already, but now a study says the same thing:

Study: Homophobes May Be Hidden Homosexuals

"Sometimes people are threatened by gays and lesbians because they are fearing their own impulses, in a sense they 'doth protest too much,'" Ryan told LiveScience. "In addition, it appears that sometimes those who would oppress others have been oppressed themselves, and we can have some compassion for them too, they may be unaccepting of others because they cannot be accepting of themselves."
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Here are their methods. I wonder if they are reliable?

For the implicit measure, students had to categorize words and pictures flashed onto a computer screen into "gay" or "straight" groups. Words included "gay," "straight," "homosexual" and "heterosexual," while the pictures showed straight and gay couples. Before each trial, participants were primed with the word "me" or "others" flashed momentarily onto a computer screen. The researchers said quicker reaction time for "me" and "gay," and a slower association of "me" with "straight" would indicate said an implicit gay orientation.

In another experiment, the researchers measured implicit sexual orientation by having participants choose to browse same-sex or opposite-sex photos on a computer screen.

Questionnaires also teased out the parenting style the participants were exposed to, with students asked how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as: "I felt controlled and pressured in certain ways;" and "I felt free to be who I am." To gauge homophobia in a household, students responded to items such as, "It would be upsetting for my mom to find out she was alone with a lesbian" or "My dad avoids gay men whenever possible."
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The reaction time tests in particular, I wonder if that really proves anything? Browsing pictures, I think I probably buy that. A gay man wouldn't always choose to look at a picture of a man over a woman and a straight man wouldn't always choose to look at a woman over a man, but I think there would be a somewhat higher tendency to do that in each case.
 
Mmm, just from gut reaction I think the penis measuring study was more reliable, and that isn't saying much :p .

Doesn't stop this from grabbing headlines, though.
 
The late Christopher Hitchens observed:
I have a rule of thumb for [homophobic] clerics and have never known it to fail: Set your watch and sit back, and pretty soon they will be found sprawling lustily on the floor of the men's room.
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Puppycow said:
The reaction time tests in particular, I wonder if that really proves anything?
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It does sound rather questionable. Especially since I don't see how they could possibly have evidence to support it. They're trying to measure something that is inherently unmeasurable directly, using a single indirect measurement. Even if there are lots of other indirect measures not used here that have been shown to agree with each other, I don't see how you could ever prove that the agreement is definitely caused by people being secretly gay, since there's never a measure of actual gayness to compare. And if there aren't lots of other indirect measures, the claim seems to be entirely unsupported.

Even the looking at pictures one sounds a bit odd. "We're doing a study on homosexuality. Do you like pictures of men or women?" That's not an implicit measure of some hidden sexuality, it's about as blatant as you can be about the question. Even given that someone is secretly gay, if they've spent their whole life up to that point pretending not to be they're not suddenly going to start ogling pictures of the same sex just because it's someone in a white coat* asking the question. Unless there was a lot more subtlety involved than the article suggests, I'm having a hard time seeing how that part could be valid either.


* Yes, all scientists where white coats, all the time.
 
As gay men are merely male women then obviously the gayer they are the more attractive to heterosexual men they become. It's not that homophobes are latently gay, it's that gays are becoming more heterosexual, just towards people of the same sex.

Lesbians are just cool. Without them libraries would be boring places where people read books all day.
 
It's a part of a poorly conceived double edged device that is slowly gaining ground and acceptance used to convince people who happen to have a negative attitude towards homosexuality that they are not really feeling that emotion but are in fact gay. Stupid straight people!

It's used to control opinion and attempts (not entirely successfully) to do so using the fallacy that one cannot harbour anything but a positive attitude towards homosexuality because to having any negative feelings about homosexuality means you are a homophobe. You go directly to homophobe, there is no known middle ground. You will not pass go, you will not collect $200.

And we all know what being a homophobe really means.

Along with the "it's genetic" argument it does nothing to aid the fight against the discrimination of LBGT individuals.

As for the methodology used to conduct the test it seems to entirely open to interpretation and the findings are horribly exposed to bias dependant on the sexuality of the person/s interpreting the "results".
 
Skepticemea said:
Lesbians are just cool. Without them libraries would be boring places where people read books all day.
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I may be dense, but how exactly do lesbians make libraries more exciting? I never witnessed any lesbian activity in a library.
 
Mark6 said:
I may be dense, but how exactly do lesbians make libraries more exciting? I never witnessed any lesbian activity in a library.
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Really? I have. Back when I was at college there was one section of the archive stacks that was known for girl-girl liaisons.
 
I think this is doubtful.

We know that racial prejudice exists and we know that many racists are not the same colour of those that they despise and that they are quite sure that they aren't the same colour of those that they despise so I wonder what makes people think that prejudice against homosexuals is merely suppressed homosexuality.
 
angrysoba said:
I think this is doubtful.

We know that racial prejudice exists and we know that many racists are not the same colour of those that they despise and that they are quite sure that they aren't the same colour of those that they despise so I wonder what makes people think that prejudice against homosexuals is merely suppressed homosexuality.
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Well, Roy Cohn, for one thing.

As far as skin color goes, there is reason to think that some lighter skinned African Americans may be biased against darker skin, why would that suddenly disappear at the passing level?
 
I recall Boy George making a comment on this matter.

It wasn't very scientific but he said that in his (extensive) experience, the men who made the biggest deal about how much they hated 'queers', 'faggots' etc, were the men who "Liked to be ****** the hardest" once he had them back to his boudoir.
 
angrysoba said:
I wonder what makes people think that prejudice against homosexuals is merely suppressed homosexuality.
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I do agree with you that the claim is compelte BS.

But if you ask why people still go for it, it's most likely because of individual anecdotes such as Ted Hagert and his ilk.

Although there is probably some wishful thinking here. By that I mean that if homophobia is based on something basic such as that, it would be easily "cured".
 
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