Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/07/is-sexi...-many.html

EXCERPT: Gay rights have improved hugely in recent years, but prejudice remains a significant problem. Hate crime data from the US show that gay men in particular are victimised more than other sexual minorities and that their attackers are usually heterosexual men. Moreover, survey data repeatedly find that heterosexual men, on average, are especially prejudiced towards gay men: that is, they typically show more prejudice towards gay men than they do towards lesbians, and they show more prejudice towards gay men than heterosexual women do. What's the explanation for these findings?

A popular folk theory holds that homophobia is rife among hetero men because of their own latent and repressed homosexual tendencies. A new study explores a different explanation. Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson at Brock University in Canada argue that an important reason has to do with old-fashioned sexism – heterosexual men, more than heterosexual women, endorse traditional beliefs about men being superior to women, and this then fosters prejudice towards gay men because of the stereotype of gay men being feminine....

I don't think heterosexual men see femininity in itself as weakness. They only see it as such in a man. A woman is a whole other ballgame. To be feminine for a woman is her nature, and so it is her strength and power. But the masculine, taken as an ideal to emulate, excludes femininity as such because it defines itself diametrically to it. What is needed is an enlarged sense of what it means to be a man or a woman, and to be masculine or feminine. A man can be passive and sensitive, and a woman can be tough and aggressive. Men can now be graceful and seductive. Women can now be heroic and powerful. I personally still have a hard time with exaggerated effeminacy in gay men. It seems staged and clownish, as if mocking the feminine in women. Gay men need as well to explore the deeper aspects of what it means to be a man, and accept that they can be gay men without being womanish.

Quote:A new study explores a different explanation. Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson at Brock University in Canada argue that an important reason has to do with old-fashioned sexism – heterosexual men, more than heterosexual women, endorse traditional beliefs about men being superior to women, and this then fosters prejudice towards gay men because of the stereotype of gay men being feminine....

That's not an "explanation", and it has little to do with "science" (as the word 'study' is apparently meant to suggest). It's an attempt (certainly not the first) to link how the authors want gay issues to be conceptualized onto the mainstream feminist agenda. It's trendy left-politics pure and simple.  

I'm more inclined to try to find evolutionary reasons for so-called "homophobia". (I wouldn't class it with other sorts of psychological 'phobias'.)

First, sex is the human reproductive process, it evolved for purposes of procreation. So one would expect sex drives to be directed towards their suitable objects. It isn't far fetched to imagine that attraction for suitable sex objects (sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex) would be accompanied by some kind of innate sexual repulsion toward unsuitable sex objects.

So why would males feel this hypothetical repulsion more strongly than females? Probably because it is males that typically initiate sexual intercourse. We observe that not only among humans, but in mammals generally.

There might also be a Darwinian sexual-selection thing happening. Throughout human evolution, females have bred men to be masculine. It's the hunky guys who behave as females believe men should behave who are more apt to get laid. These more desireable males end up on top, both figuratively and literally. So it's reasonable that men would have acquired some innate drive to behave in ways that increase their reproductive success.