Are Homophob Really Gay? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?
• ARE HOMOPHOB REALLY GAY?
• PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS
• 5 SIGNS YOUR HBAND IS GAY

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

Cred: Getty ImagHomophob should nsir a ltle self-reflectn, suggts a new study fdg those dividuals who are most hostile toward gays and hold strong anti-gay views may themselv have same-sex sir, albe unrver on. Those participants who reported their heterosexualy spe havg hidn same-sex sir were also the most likely to show hostily toward gay dividuals, cludg self-reported anti-gay attus, endorsement of anti-gay polici and discrimatn such as supportg harsher punishments for homosexuals. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns. ”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

“It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists.

Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure.

CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?

The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors. ”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way?

Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at. ” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men.

ARE HOMOPHOB REALLY GAY?

”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc. I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy.

“Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric? ”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement.

The dialogue on latent homosexualy disvered s means to the general public area when the July 26 versn of MSNBC hyped Ann Coulter’s terview wh host Donny Dtsch, which she stated of former Print Bill Clton exhibts “some sort of latent homosexualy. Acrdg to Frd, “latent” or “unnsc” homosexualy which rived om failure of the protectn of reprsn and and sublimatn allow or threaten emergence to nscns of gay impuls, which give rise to battle manifted wh the look of signs. The signs embrace worry of beg gay, goals wh manift and “latent” gay ntent material, acutely aware gay fantasi and impuls, gay panic, disturbance heterosexual functng, and passive-submissive rpons to different mal.

PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS

” The disverg of this rearch nclud that those that exhabed probably the most hostile and unfavorable attus the directn of homosexuals monstrated the hightt gree of sexual aroal when unvered to gay pornography. Psychoanalysts e the ia of reprsed or latent homosexualy to elucidate the emotnal malaise and irratnal attus exhibed by people who really feel rponsible about their erotic pursus and wrtle to disclaim and reprs gay impuls. It is ually agreed amongst most rearchers that nervons about homosexualy sometim don’t happen people who’re same-sex oriented, however often clus people who’re ostensibly heterosexual and have problem g to time perd wh their gay emotns and impuls.

The necsary and sufficient data for this ncept have never been prented, and alternative explanatns prove to be more aquate and pable of homosexualy is a potentialy all human begs unr certa velopmental ndns, so a special ncept is required, except the notn of a dynamic theory of personaly velopment. In the wake of the Orlando shootg at the Pulse nightclub, there were que a number of speculatns floatg around my social media that the shooter himself had been harborg homosexual urg that he had been tryg to reprs.

5 SIGNS YOUR HBAND IS GAY

Reprsn—beg the odd thg that apparently is— this se volved his visg gay nightclubs and g gay datg apps to munite—and prumably have sex—wh other gay men; he might have even been dog all those thgs while tellg himself he had no tert such activi, that they were morally wrong, or at the very least while tryg to keep secret om other people his life. Before nsirg some new rearch on the hypothis, then, I wanted to take a step back and nsir why, on a theoretil level, we shouldn't expect implic or reprsed homosexual urg to predict homophobic attus particularly well.