Homophobia

Boys Beware, a 1961 U.S. propaganda film warning boys to beware the "predatory" dangers of homosexual men. The film pushes the common homophobic tropes that homosexuality is a mental illness, and that gay men are pedophiles.[1]

Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual.[2][3][4] It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, may be based on irrational fear and may sometimes be attributed to religious beliefs.[5][6]

Homophobia is observable in critical and hostile behavior such as discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientations that are non-heterosexual.[2][3][7] Recognized types of homophobia include institutionalized homophobia, e.g. religious homophobia and state-sponsored homophobia, and internalized homophobia, experienced by people who have same-sex attractions, regardless of how they identify.[8][9]

Negative attitudes toward identifiable LGBT groups have similar yet specific names: lesbophobia is the intersection of homophobia and sexism directed against lesbians, gayphobia is the dislike or hatred of gay men, biphobia targets bisexuality and bisexual people, and transphobia targets transgender and transsexual people and gender variance or gender role nonconformity.[10][2][4][11] According to 2010 Hate Crimes Statistics released by the FBI National Press Office, 19.3 percent of hate crimes across the United States "were motivated by a sexual orientation bias."[12] Moreover, in a Southern Poverty Law Center 2010 Intelligence Report extrapolating data from FBI national hate crime statistics from 1995 to 2008, found that LGBT people were "far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime."[13]

  1. ^ jmccarty. "Teaching (Hetero)Sexuality: 1960s Sexual Education Films in the United States". Queering the Web. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  2. ^ a b c Adams, Maurianne; Bell, Lee Anne; Griffin, Pat (2007). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. Routledge. pp. 198–199. ISBN 978-1135928506. Retrieved December 27, 2014. Because of the complicated interplay among gender identity, gender roles, and sexual identity, transgender people are often assumed to be lesbian or gay (See Overview: Sexism, Heterosexism, and Transgender Oppression). ... Because transgender identity challenges a binary conception of sexuality and gender, educators must clarify their own understanding of these concepts. ... Facilitators must be able to help participants understand the connections among sexism, heterosexism, and transgender oppression and the ways in which gender roles are maintained, in part, through homophobia.
  3. ^ a b Renzetti, Claire M.; Edleson, Jeffrey L. (2008). Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence. SAGE Publications. p. 338. ISBN 978-1452265919. Retrieved December 27, 2014. In a culture of homophobia (an irrational fear of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender [GLBT] people), GLBT people often face a heightened risk of violence specific to their sexual identities.
  4. ^ a b Schuiling, Kerri Durnell; Likis, Frances E. (2011). Women's Gynecologic Health. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. pp. 187–188. ISBN 978-0763756376. Retrieved December 27, 2014. Homophobia is an individual's irrational fear or hate of homosexual people. This may include bisexual or transgender persons, but sometimes the more distinct terms of biphobia or transphobia, respectively, are used.
  5. ^ *"webster.com". 2008. Archived from the original on 2012-12-05. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  6. ^ Newport, Frank (3 April 2015). "Religion, Same-Sex Relationships and Politics in Indiana and Arkansas". Gallup. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
  7. ^ Meyer, Doug. Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination. Rutgers University Press.
  8. ^ Williamson, I. R. (1 February 2000). "Internalized homophobia and health issues affecting lesbians and gay men". Health Education Research. 15 (1): 97–107. doi:10.1093/her/15.1.97. PMID 10788206.
  9. ^ Frost, David M.; Meyer, Ilan H. (2009). "Internalized homophobia and relationship quality among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals". Journal of Counseling Psychology. 56 (1): 97–109. doi:10.1037/a0012844. PMC 2678796. PMID 20047016.
  10. ^ Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. (2010). Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology (2 ed.). Springer. p. 524. ISBN 9780387717982. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  11. ^ Thomas Spijkerboer (2013). Fleeing Homophobia: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Asylum. Routledge. p. 122. ISBN 978-1134098354. Retrieved December 27, 2014. Transgender people subjected to violence, in a range of cultural contexts, frequently report that transphobic violence is expressed in homophobic terms. The tendency to translate violence against a trans person to homophobia reflects the role of gender in attribution of homosexuality as well as the fact that hostility connected to homosexuality is often associated with the perpetrators' prejudices about particular gender practices and their visibility.
  12. ^ "FBI Releases 2010 Hate Crime Statistics" (Press release). FBI National Press Office. 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2022.
  13. ^ "Anti-Gay Hate Crimes: Doing the Math". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2023-01-02.