[recycled material - first appeared here]
Roughly twenty years after the birth of the term, I still don’t like homophobia. The word. But before arguing against the use of this term, let me emphasize that by taking a position against the word I am by no means taking a position in support of any or all behavior the term is used to categorize. The issue I address here is solely the perceived misuse of language.
Why quibble over “homophobia”? First, as popularly employed, homophobia implies a diagnosis, and supports a perspective, that rests upon a tenet of pop-psychology. The tenet asserts that behind all aggression, anger, and resistance, exists the true causal emotion — fear. But does fear underlie all aggression, all anger, all opposition?
As Andrew Ortony and Terence J. Turner, researchers specializing in the psychology of emotion, long ago outlined in the pages of Psychological Review, anger is a distinct emotion that has its developmental roots in the infant’s experience of frustration. The infantile experience of frustration, especially that of restraint, develops into the adult emotion of anger. Furthermore, the expression of anger emerges prior to that of fear. Hence anger does not develop out of fear.
What underlies adult anger?
In a 1993 edition of another psychological journal, Cognition and Emotion, renown authority on human emotion Nico Frijda wrote, “As for anger: The most elementary elicitors…are acute goal interference.”
For the above and other reasons, the fear-as-primary-motivator tenet of pop-psychology seems to me to be more than highly questionable. It is likely outright false.
Returning to the specific case of homophobia, opposition to the increasing presence and political clout of homosexuals cannot and should not be written off as a mere symptom of widespread phobia. It is more complicated than that.
If you think about it, the reasoning behind “homophobia,” “homophobic,” and “homophobe,” is almost absurd. With similarly applied reasoning, one could diagnose anti-abortion activists as choice-phobic, environmentalists as development-phobic, and republicans as tax-phobic. As an even more ridiculous example, I myself could be called “creamed-corn-phobic,” for I intensely dislike this canned vegetable and resolutely oppose its inclusion into my diet.
Why not diagnose as phobic all aversive and oppositional behavior? Because the underlying reasoning is defective, and because a term as serious as phobia should not be used to categorize a person or people with reckless abandon.
The second and perhaps primary reason why the popular use of homophobia concerns me is that behind this term lurks moral and political bullying. All too frequently individuals employ the term in an attempt to pathologize opposing perspectives. To force values. To close issues. By labeling and defining people as “homophobic” you easily discredit their concerns. Calling someone homophobic is equivalent to saying, “You are sick. Your feelings and beliefs have absolutely no place in this society.”
True, the “other side” is frequently guilty of the above, but does that justify it?
The questions of homosexual rights (the extension of civil rights to people with differing sexual orientations), and how and to what degree society should accept and accommodate homosexuality, are controversial and complex. Personally, I’m for homosexual rights such as the right to marry and adopt children. However, using words that discredit the holders of opposing opinions and values, and thus, indirectly, the opinions and values themselves, is a strong-arm political tactic–a tactic that undermines the effort to make our communities and nation more free-thinking.
Language is a powerful tool. Sure, it would be nice if we could classify all behavior and persons we didn’t like as pathological, hence undeserving a legitimate place in the world. But it just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, by doing so we undermine a better understanding.
When in my early 20s I knew a particularly hippy-ish guy who believed in ‘free love.’ Remember Bagwan Shree Rashneesh? This guy was a follower. In fact, he even changed his name to something Hindi-and-thus-enlightened-ish-sounding. This young man believed that marriage and monogamy were reflective of worldly attachment and neurosis, of the pathological need to ‘own’ someone.
Even back then, when in my more Buddhist days, I couldn’t fully embrace that idea. I knew that people are basically more animal than spiritual, no matter how hard we try to transcend the fact. And so I could see a benefit in limiting things like jealousy.
New research of the cultural-anthropology sort supports the idea that there may be benefits to the practice of monogamy — beyond limited the spread of STDs.
In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage.
Hmm. The skeptic in me wonders whether there could also be a downside to monogamy. Certainly becoming stuck in a coupling can be bad. Are there other drawbacks?
A recent news release posted at Eurakalert has supported what psychologists have known for awhile: our conscious mind is not all-knowing. And I don’t mean about the world, I mean about oneself.
In research that highlights the limitations of data generated by self-reports, it was found that while human beings may say they are most attracted to, say, intelligence or a sense of humor, their behavior indicates otherwise. In You say you don’t care about dating a hottie?, the use of a new methodology (one that measures implicit attraction vs. explicitly stated preference) reveals a mis-match in “the talk and the walk” of individuals in the arena of attraction to members of the opposite sex.
This echoes several findings on racism and other psychological phenomena. We can think one thing while perceiving/feeling/behaving another way. Sometimes we can even believe two, contradictory things. We just try not to recognize both thoughts at the same time. Maybe one is held by our ‘social self’ the other by our ‘private self.’ So to speak. And maybe that private belief is so private, we don’t even know it’s there.
So when you or someone else says, “I am X” about some social preference, we should probably remember to insert “as far as I am aware.”
Let’s face it, grandmothers and grandfathers have sex. We may find that fact disturbing if we visualize the act with one or both of our own grandparents playing a leading role. Or maybe if we aren’t elderly ourselves, so have yet to have the personal experience of perceiving an aged member of the opposite sex as sexy. We may also find the image somewhat distasteful because our “lets-make-babies” genetic tendencies would prefer a real shot at procreation. Of course, grandfathers can still become fathers. Their sperm remain viable, though counts go down.
Why would post-menapausal women have sex? After all, they can no longer procreate. As I see it, there are two reasons. First, that sexual interest and activity persists beyond menapause may simply mean there have been no selective pressures to eliminate it. Or, in other words, it doesn’t bear a cost, so hasn’t been trimmed away by the need to survive. Second, we must consider potential non-procreative benefits to sex.
What got me thinking about this? A new study, of course. In Sexual satisfaction in women increases with age, I read of data gathered from 800+ women over 40 years. Researcher Elizabeth Barrett-Connor reports:
“Despite a correlation between sexual desire and other sexual function domains, only 1 in 5 sexually active women reported high sexual desire. Approximately half of the women aged 80 years or more reported arousal, lubrication, and orgasm most of the time, but rarely reported sexual desire. In contrast with traditional linear model in which desire precedes sex, these results suggest that women engage in sexual activity for multiple reasons, which may include affirmation or sustenance of a relationship.”
Interesting. The above seems to suggest a strong relationship component to elderly female sexuality. And maybe an identity-slash-self-esteem component. And for elderly males? It seems logical that they are likely the ones initiating much of the late-life sex. In their case, are their genetic procreative instincts behind the continued interest in sex? There is likely a relationship/identity/self-esteem element to it as well. But maybe not as much. Maybe. I think.
Are men not from Mars, but the hardware department of Sears, women from apparel?
Scratch that.
Is the average man from the hardware department, the average woman from apparel?
Nope, that won’t do either. One more try:
Is the average, 21st century, middle-class American man from hardware, the average, 21st century, middle-class American woman from apparel?
If so, what the hell was I doing in lawn and garden this weekend?
More seriously now, two recent studies have looked into gender differences. One found a difference. The other questioned a gender difference that may not be as big or innate as presupposed.
For the gender difference discovered, a study of the experimental psychology sort found that men are . . . more sexually hopeful (my words) than females. Or were they more deluded? Lust-impaired?
The research involved 96 male 103 female undergraduates, who were put through a “speed-meeting” exercise — talking for three minutes to each of five potential opposite-sex mates….
The results: Men looking for a quick hookup were more likely to overestimate the women’s desire for them….
The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men’s desire. [emphases added; source]
Men. Those swine. Horny toads. Poor hyper-desirous bastards. At least sexually speaking.
And women. Dare I say they can be clueless?
On another front, the front that has men being mathematicians par excellant, at least when it comes to the leading edge of the gender average bell curve, one study purports that the male “natural” mathematical endowment may have been artificially enhanced by bad science.
Wisconsin researchers linked differences in math performance to social and cultural factors.
The new study, by Mertz and Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematical and computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, was published today (Dec. 12, 2011) in Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The study looked at data from 86 countries, which the authors used to test the “greater male variability hypothesis” famously expounded in 2005 by Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, as the primary reason for the scarcity of outstanding women mathematicians.
That hypothesis holds that males diverge more from the mean at both ends of the spectrum and, hence, are more represented in the highest-performing sector. But, using the international data, the Wisconsin authors observed that greater male variation in math achievement is not present in some countries, and is mostly due to boys with low scores in some other countries, indicating that it relates much more to culture than to biology. [emphasis added; source]
Now what to think? In the least we should conclude that simplistic proclamations are likely bogus.
Beyond that, I don’t know. But if you want to discuss it, you’ll find me shopping for a new socket wrench.
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