The crease the number of visible gay and trans people is sometim treated as a cursy or a e for ncern by crics, but ’s not a surprise. It’s normal.
Contents:
- AFTER YEARS OF PROGRS ON GAY RIGHTS, HOW DID THE US BEE SO ANTI-LGBTQ+?
- THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT
AFTER YEARS OF PROGRS ON GAY RIGHTS, HOW DID THE US BEE SO ANTI-LGBTQ+?
A slew of bills are rollg back recently won eedoms for gay people. Is Ameri ready to fight for LGBTQ+ rights all over aga? * people that hate gay people *
Homophobia Is a Real Fear … but of What, Exactly? To be a homophobe 2014 is, creasgly, to fd onelf on the fast track to social srn. In an environment of growg acceptance, we nmn homophobic feelgs, particularly men, bee we thk they e om si the dividual and are th his full rponsibily.
A man who says hateful thgs about gays is “backward. ” He’s protectg his social stat, or maybe he’s secretly gay himself.
However, the ntued existence of homophobia—spe the obv downsis—rais qutns about s basic nature: Do psychologil theori like those above really expla why gayns, specifilly, evok such fear, the kd that n sometim even lead to vlent speech and actn? Do they acunt for why homophobia is such an easy bulwark agast mascule secury? The only way to answer the qutns is to stop thkg of homophobia as a personal choice and unrstand as the evable and liberate rult of the culture which Amerin men are raised.
THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT
* people that hate gay people *
Clearly, men Ameri have grown up learng to be sred of gayns. Put another way, the zero-tolerance le means that if a man mak one “wrong” move—kiss another man a moment of dnken fun, say—he is immediately assumed to be gay. Once young men realize they are gay, they bee A Gay Person.
We don’t hear about gay men disverg an tert women later life, and we rarely believe men when they say they are bisexual—the mon, if erroneo, wisdom is that any man who says he is bi is really jt gay and hasn’t admted yet. The rult of all this is that men are not allowed “plex” sexuali; once the prumptn of straightns has been shattered, a du is tomatilly gay.
Ined, such erasure is sry even if homosexualy self isn’t a bad thg. Even if relign and Esquire didn’t teach men to be sred of each other’s bodi, they would still be aaid of the way a bsh wh gayns n so sudnly erase the rt of their sexualy. High-schoolers acce each other, their activi, and even objects of beg gay wh precisely the zero-tolerance attu that they themselv are navigatg.