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When was homophobia invented?

Rufo said:
Homophobia as it exists in American society today (since American society appears to be the one we're discussing) can only exist in a society where sexuality is relatively openly discussed and where people are allowed a sexual identity. The appearance that it was "invented" in the 1950s may come from the fact that homosexuality was discussed more openly. At least such developments were beginning to take place with the aid of, for instance, the Kinsey reports. When sexual behaviors were more clearly defined and publicly known, the hatred and disgust relating to them became more clearly defined as well.
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Interesting, so it appears I could count you among the camp who credits it to the spread of media and information about other people's lives?

I remember Ahmadinejad coming to the US and telling students that homosexuality didn't exist in Iran. Maybe the bigots like to stick their head in the sand and with increased awareness of other people comes increased backlash from those who didn't want to acknowledge reality.

That's not to say there was no homophobia prior to this. If Buchanan was indeed gay (and no, let's not consider that an established fact, we don't know)
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Nonsense. Nothing about a person's personal desires can be an established fact, there can only ever be circumstantial evidence and extreme likelihood (such as that established by the people who read and burned Buchanan's personal correspondence with King, if they were having friendly chats about quail hunting and 19th century politics, burning the letters makes no sense). But for the purposes of a discussion, you can accept certain things...in the same way that people accept that Bill Clinton was heterosexual and cheated on his wife. Especially for this discussion, when what's relevant is the reaction (or lack thereof) to what was commonly believed to be the President's gay lifestyle.

it's safe to say that he had good reason to keep it hidden, and that he could live with another man only because the idea of them having sexual relations was seen as too outrageous to seriously suggest. There were plenty of laws around to punish people who engaged in any kind of sex that deviated from the norm, regardless of partner. And yes, reliance on the Bible was definitely part of the reason for these laws.

It's true that some ancient societies had other views on homosexuality, but most of them (including ancient Greece) had a warped view of gender and human beings in general that makes them difficult to relate to. Looking to them for some sort of roots for enlightened present-day views on sexuality can be pretty disappointing.
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I don't know if lack-of-concern is necessarily enlightened. It certainly makes for a freer existence for everyone, but you don't need to be particularly well-educated to just not give a damn what other people are doing in their bedrooms. I'm interested in what would motivate someone to take a sudden interest in this and even storm into people's houses and arrest them for buggery, as apparently was once common. I'm sure some people thought it was eww-gross, but there's a whole lot of sex that I find ew-gross that I don't want to arrest people for doing.


Historians are doing their best to understand history using our current knowledge of how human beings work. Sometimes they speculate. There's no need to read any agenda into this.[/QUOTE]
 
honestly, I think a low-level of homophobia is actually natural.

I know.....I know....I'm evil. :(
 
EGarrett said:
I remember a few years ago that I was fascinated to find out that though Obama is considered the first black U.S. President, we had a gay President over 150 years ago.

But yet no one seems to make a big deal about this, and according to what I've read it didn't seem to be big deal in the 1850's. A couple of the Senators referred to the President and his life partner as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy" but other than that it didn't seem to have a big effect on the country nor was it made big news.

Now, is this because of the almost utter lack of media information available to the public? Or was this before mass-homophobia became the standard? I've read also that homosexuality in Ancient Greece was quite common and even used to boost camaraderie in the military. It almost seems like homophobia was "invented" (so to speak) in the 1950's. Or perhaps it goes hand-in-hand with the spread of Christianity?

So when did it become standard to shame and fear homosexuals?
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Magellon had two sailors killed, abandoned on an island or something similar for engaging in homosexual activity. I remember reading it in Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe. But fortunately or unfortunatley I can't remember exactly what was done to them.

In reality this may have had more to do with keeping order on the ship than homophobia.
 
EGarrett said:
It might be said that cultures that glorified heterosexual behavior reproduced more. There have been groups in the past that were entirely abstinent and that no longer exist today. I'm interested though in how homophobia appears to show up en masse at some times in history and then at other times seems non-existent. Both Christianity and Islam seem to be highly homophobic, and I keep feeling like that has something to do with it.
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I would think that "epigenetic effects" could explain this variation. If there is a fundamental aversion module perhaps it is expressed more often in societies where producing homosexual children will cause real or perceived limits on wellness.

There are other theories of how homosexuality arose for purely positive benefits, a positive variation on the species. Of course there is a spectrum of bisexuality to consider as well. It's clear that there has to be a limit on how much influence this variation has on the species so there is kind of a "selfish gene" battle going on here and the verbal controversy over it is just a representation of this.

Perhaps being born a homophobic climate leads to homophobic people the same kind of like a cricket exposed to a spider (a huge potato bug just fell on me from the ceiling, weird coincidence? quantum woo? message from the angels? I figured it was a spider at first) has fearful offspring. The inference is obvious, if there are no spiders around it pays to have fearless crickets running around cricketing, if there are the output changes.

I kind of feel like this explains the entire phenomenon because I wouldn't have a basis for any alternative.
 
EGarrett said:
Interesting, so it appears I could count you among the camp who credits it to the spread of media and information about other people's lives?
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Not exclusively, but yes, to some extent. I'm not saying there was no homophobia prior to this. However, hatred and fear of a group is bound to be more vague if it is not clearly defined. As sexual behaviors were scientifically defined and people identified with sexual preferences, grouping people based on sexual orientation became easier, and homophobia became more distinct from generally hating or fearing people who acted outside the norms of society.

I remember Ahmadinejad coming to the US and telling students that homosexuality didn't exist in Iran. Maybe the bigots like to stick their head in the sand and with increased awareness of other people comes increased backlash from those who didn't want to acknowledge reality.
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Definitely. In Iran, this might have to do with construing gender roles and sexuality in such a fashion that homosexuality as a concept has no place in it. From what I recall, it's pretty messed up.

Nonsense. Nothing about a person's personal desires can be an established fact, there can only ever be circumstantial evidence and extreme likelihood (such as that established by the people who read and burned Buchanan's personal correspondence with King, if they were having friendly chats about quail hunting and 19th century politics, burning the letters makes no sense). But for the purposes of a discussion, you can accept certain things...in the same way that people accept that Bill Clinton was heterosexual and cheated on his wife. Especially for this discussion, when what's relevant is the reaction (or lack thereof) to what was commonly believed to be the President's gay lifestyle.
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Assuming this for the purposes of the discussion then, was that really commonly believed? As previously pointed out, many state sodomy laws were in effect, and although these might not constitute a strict "law against homosexuality", they were pretty clearly construed as something of the sort. Would the President have been exempt from these? Given that this was a crime people were reluctant to even name, like it was Voldemort, isn't it more likely that they assumed a platonic relationship where it's easier to see a sexual one today?

I don't know if lack-of-concern is necessarily enlightened. It certainly makes for a freer existence for everyone, but you don't need to be particularly well-educated to just not give a damn what other people are doing in their bedrooms. I'm interested in what would motivate someone to take a sudden interest in this and even storm into people's houses and arrest them for buggery, as apparently was once common. I'm sure some people thought it was eww-gross, but there's a whole lot of sex that I find ew-gross that I don't want to arrest people for doing.
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It's hard to take part of the blame off religion. At least in America, it seems relatively clear that the Bible was one source of these laws. If people are going to violate someone else's privacy to intervene and stop a crime, they need a reason to think said crime is very severe. Religion is good at supplying (or bypassing) this need.

Taking an apologist stance, it could be argued that the ancient societies (like Greece) where same-sex relations were accepted in some shape or form didn't exactly meet modern standards on sexuality either. Doesn't really justify the Biblical laws and their later counterparts, though.
 
EGarrett said:
Pederasty is a subset of homosexuality.
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Debatable. They also tended to have wives and mistresses. Reading about the idealism behind their relationships is interesting, but they don't sound like what we call gay. Partnering with another man exclusively was still not the mainstream.

I have and did acknowledge that other cultures in history saw homosexuality differently. I'm wondering about the origins of it in contemporary culture and particularly if it's linked to specific religions.
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Probably Christianity in the 12th century, when it increased in state influence and also persecuted Muslims and Jews.

Of course, as alluded to above, it is always difficult to take our notion of sexuality and apply it to older cultures, especially ones with different gender beliefs.
 
Thunder said:
honestly, I think a low-level of homophobia is actually natural.

I know.....I know....I'm evil. :(
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I actually have a pet suspicion, more or less unevidenced, that homosexuality and homophobia are two sides of the same population control mechanism built into humans.

Just like some frogs can switch gender in response to population pressures. As in most of our powerful adaptations, our version is located in the brain rather than the gonads.
 
Is "phobia" the right term when referring to a behavior or life style? Ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, and hatred perhaps... but fear?
 
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NoScotsman said:
Is "phobia" the right term when referring to a behavior or life style? Ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, and hatred perhaps... but fear?
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No, it is absolutely the wrong term, good point. Aversion to homosexuality would be more precise. This is an important distinction especially when talking about the evolutionary psychology theories.
 
Here's a hypothesis: degrees of revulsion to homosexuality are inbuilt, and the question is 'when was tolerance invented?'

I also find 'homophobia' to be the same kind of loaded language as bigots used against gays, IE marking your opponent as mentally ill. It wasn't long ago that homosexuality was seen as an illness (I guess it still is to some loons, but I mean in a mainstream, clinical sense).
 
I don't think of people as possessing a condition of homophobia, I just think they're jerks and ******** and pig-ignorant, and some of them are repressing so much it's a wonder they don't fart diamond shards.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I don't think of people as possessing a condition of homophobia, I just think they're jerks and ******** and pig-ignorant, and some of them are repressing so much it's a wonder they don't fart diamond shards.
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I think we need to make a separation here.

People who see a couple of gay guys making out and feel icked out are not being jerks or repressed, it's only when they fail to rise above it and treat others with respect.

Like how I get angry sometimes for irrational reasons, but I'm not one of those knuckle-draggers that will stomp on a stranger's head because I got the 'red mist'.

Another example, adult incest makes me feel uncomfortable on an instinctual level, but who cares? If there's no coercion and they're not hurting anyone I say keep your nose out of it and good luck to them.

At the end of the day we're animals with lots of primitive layers buried in our brains, the important thing is that we rise above and respect each other.
 
Jekyll's Guest said:
At the end of the day we're animals with lots of primitive layers buried in our brains, the important thing is that we rise above and respect each other.
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I don't need respect, I just need people to leave me the hell alone and not try to do nasty things to me, in law or otherwise, because they don't like where I like to stick it. I don't care what they think so long as they aren't jerks.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I don't need respect, I just need people to leave me the hell alone and not try to do nasty things to me, in law or otherwise, because they don't like where I like to stick it. I don't care what they think so long as they aren't jerks.
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Well I meant respect as in 'respect their privacy'. There are very few people who I respect in terms of 'wow, what an awesome person.' I certainly don't feel admiration based on which orifice someone favors.

So "we can find anything icky or stupid, as long as we don't annoy others."
 
Jekyll's Guest said:
Well I meant respect as in 'respect their privacy'. There are very few people who I respect in terms of 'wow, what an awesome person.' I certainly don't feel admiration based on which orifice someone favors.

So "we can find anything icky or stupid, as long as we don't annoy others."
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You don't think I'm awesome? Why not? I'm awesome. Your failure to respect my awesome makes me think you suffer from a condition called awesomephobia. Haven't you seen the public service campaign "It's Okay To Rock and Be Totally Cool"?
 
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