Homosexuality and Homophobia.

[swestrup]

It has often been pointed out that the opposite of love is not hate -- its indifference. People don't hate things that fail to sexually arouse them -- mailboxes, cd cases, armchairs, etc (If any of you take exception to that list I'm not sure I want to hear about it!). Hate would seem to be more appropriate as a reaction to something that DOES sexually arouse you, but that you cannot deal with.

Homophobia has often been described in this manner, but I've never before seen any kind of a study that tried to prove it. Now this study (warning: PDF) has done just that. The study tested men who had scored both high and low on standard questionaires for homophobia, and later testing showed that only the homophobic men showed significant signs of arousal when presented with male homosexual porn.

Comments

[helenkacan.livejournal.com]

I love it when Science.Is.Our.Friend.

The thing I always wondered about was how men who had been the non-violent/non-coercive recipients of other men's attention reacted by attacking them and, in some cases, killing them. It makes you wonder if the logic behind that was: the guy who came on to me is out of the picture, so nobody will ever suspect me of being one of them faggots.

Unfortunately, the whole thing is so fermented with hyper religiosity that it then becomes a moral imperative to go out and hunt down and eliminate gay people.

So, just how many times can I sigh?

Too many, it seems.

Sad hugs,
Me.