A new Australian study begins to explain why homophobia occurs in some male teens and not others, and why the homophobia so often leads to anti-gay bullying.
It might seem like we can just use our intuition to figure out what’s what (homophobes and bullies are just closeted gays), but as we attempt to show homophobic people the truth about what being LGBT is, we need to understand how those people view and interpret truth. And we also need to know why homophobic people respond the way they do when they are exposed to LGBT people.
The results of the study?
The majority of defences that contributed to the prediction of membership of the high homophobia group were immature defences, specifically denial, somatisation and devaluation. This provides an important insight into the psychology of the adolescent homophobe who finds the acceptance of homosexuality to be so deeply threatening that the very idea of it must be radically negated at a psychological level. In such a state of immature defensiveness, recourse to a violent enactment of the denial of homophobia is rendered more probable.
. . . [Also] adolescents who perhaps have idealised notions of masculinity, and therefore perhaps more rigid ones, also struggle to accept homosexuality.
What do these words mean?
Idealization: “A process of attributing overly positive qualities to another person.”
Somatization: “When anxiety is so strong, it leads to physical symptoms.”
Devaluation: “Coping with the anxiety caused by ambivalent feelings by instead viewing the object of ambivalence as completely flawed, worthless, or as having exaggerated negative qualities.”
I read through this I kept thinking what a tremendous insight this study provides for people trying to stop the anti-gay bullying in our schools — at the source.
28. July 2009 at 5:54 pm
But isn’t this just stating the obvious? We know already that homophobes find “he acceptance of homosexuality to be so deeply threatening that the very idea of it must be radically negated at a psychological level”-in fact, that’s a good definition of it. But it begs the question of why some people react that way and others don’t.
29. July 2009 at 7:59 am
I agree that this study is stating the obvious. But I think by transforming our intuition about the origins of homophobia into something a little more palpable — a study — we can get a better handle on what we can and can’t do.