> I thought Carrol's explication of the meaning of Marx's epigram 'The
> anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape' was very good. But just
> to go one further, we could ask not just whether homophobia existed in past
> eras, but also whether it exists today. My friend Pete Ray wrote this
> seventeen years ago, arguing that homphobia is itself a myth, because it
> takes a social force and turns it into a psychological reaction:
>
> The myth of homophobia
> Peter Ray examines why there is such hostility to homosexuals
>
> [clip]
>
> Anti-homosexual bigotry is a fact. However, the idea that this is the
> result of something called homophobia is a myth.
>
> Although liberal journalists and political activists use the term freely,
> they rarely spell out exactly what homophobia is supposed to mean. The word
> was coined by American psychologist George Weinberg in his 1973 book Society
> and the Healthy Homosexual. Weinberg defined homophobia as a 'dread of being
> in close quarters with homosexuals' which manifested itself as a panic
> reaction in both heterosexuals and closeted gays.
>
> It is easy to see why the idea of homophobia has caught on. To anyone who
> has been on the receiving end of anti-gay abuse or violence, the perpetrator
> often seems to be motivated by an irrational and morbid fear of gay
> sexuality, with more than a hint of the panic reaction associated with more
> conventional phobias.
>
> Better still, calling it homophobia makes ironical use of the same kind of
> quasi-medical terminology that has been mobilised against homosexuals. For
> most of this century discussion about homosexuality has been dominated by
> the idea that it is a mental illness, and debate has raged as to whether it
> is acquired or innate. In this patronising view the homosexual was to be
> pitied rather than condemned, and 'cured' if at all possible.
>
> Turning tables
>
> The 'medicalisation' of homosexuality means that for a long time
> homosexuals have been stigmatised as (and often believed themselves to be)
> sick, inadequate and self-destructive individuals. The discovery of
> homophobia appears to turn the tables: where once it was the lesbian or the
> gay man who was diseased, now it is the 'homophobe'; where once
> psychiatrists assembled character traits to come up with the 'homosexual
> type', now they can be gathered to form the 'homophobic type'. The
> homosexual can triumphantly tell the bigot - 'You are screwed up because you
> think I am!'.
>
> If homophobia were simply used as an ironic description of the
> queer-basher's personality it would be harmless enough. But homophobia is
> being used indiscriminately to describe any manifestation of hostility to
> homosexuals, and not just those associated with individual politicians,
> judges or pop stars either.
>
> Eurohomophobia
>
> The Guardian recently reported Moscow gay activist Roman Kalinin saying
> that 'Russian society is extremely homophobic'. In Britain, Gay Times
> columnist Simon Watney has characterised both Europe and America as
> homophobic societies. What can this mean? That everyone in Europe and the US
> suffers from this same irrational dread?
>
> Others argue that there are such things as 'homophobic laws'. So another of
> the four aims of OutRage is to 'expose and challenge state homophobia'. The
> idea here seems to be that homophobia in society is sustained and promoted
> by the repressed and bigoted attitude of those in authority.
>
> Some claim that the whole of society is homophobic, while some say it is a
> problem of the elite. Either way, the inescapable conclusion is that there
> must be something systematic at work in our society reproducing such fear
> and loathing on a large scale. But if this is the case, why describe the
> problem in medical terms, as homophobia, as if it were a psychiatric problem
> of individuals?
>
> Not irrational
>
> Dread of spiders or enclosed spaces is discussed as arachnophobia or
> claustrophobia precisely because there is no systematic social cause for
> these fears. There is no reason to fear spiders or enclosed spaces in
> themselves, most people don't. But hostility towards homosexuality is
> different. For some sections of society it is not irrational; in fact it is
> a positive necessity.
>
> The capitalist authorities have every reason to be hostile to the shameless
> pursuit of homosexual desire. The establishment values the nuclear family as
> a key bulwark of the social order, defining the social roles of men and
> women, disciplining youth, and providing domestic care and attention (on the
> cheap). The family is promoted by its supporters as the natural (and
> therefore unchanging) order of adult human relations. The family is natural
> because it is based on the natural instinct to procreate. Healthy sexual
> desires are therefore heterosexual, and preferably monogamous.
>
> Family norms
>
> Unfortunately for the establishment, modern urban society makes it possible
> for some men and women to escape the requirement to live in a family, and to
> organise their personal lives around the pleasure that their sexual desires
> bring them, regardless of their capacity to procreate. The fact that many
> try to do this has been both a challenge to the idea that the family is
> natural, and an opportunity for the establishment to develop new strategies
> for promoting the family as the norm.
>
> The castigating of homosexuals as diseased or perverted, or at the very
> least deviant, confirms family life as the natural, healthy and normal
> lifestyle. Someone who is sufficiently sick, evil or irresponsible as to
> indulge their homosexuality is clearly not to be treated as if they were
> normal, and since the 1880s homosexual behaviour has been subject to severe
> legal penalties. For a long time the social stigma and threat of a prison
> sentence proved to be an effective deterrent to any public challenge to the
> superiority of the authorities' preferred domestic arrangements.
>
> The Tories made this logic explicit in the infamous Section 28 of the Local
> Government Act 1988, which states that schools should not be allowed to
> teach 'the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family
> relationship'. In other words, lesbian and gay lifestyles are not an
> acceptable alternative to the nuclear family.
>
> No doubt the Tory frontbench is afflicted by all sorts of sexual hang-ups,
> and Garry Bushell does seem to have a personal axe to grind against gays.
> But that is not why the authorities maintain legal discrimination against
> homosexuals, not why the media rages against lesbians and gay men. The
> defence of the family as a social institution requires the criminalisation
> of sex that is not 'natural', not responsible, not compatible with family
> life. The many laws which discriminate against homosexuals, and the whole
> political and moral climate of prejudice, stem from this reality.
>
> Morbid symptoms
>
> In these circumstances it is absurd to diagnose some psychiatric disorder
> when confronted by bigotry. When somebody reacts with panic, scorn or
> violence to finding themselves 'in close quarters with homosexuals' they are
> acting as any responsible citizen might when confronted with a sub-class of
> person whom the authorities regard as a threat to public health or welfare.
> This behaviour is irrational only to the extent that society is irrational,
> sick only because it is a morbid symptom of a decaying social order.
>
> It is a telling irony that Weinberg should have published his ideas about
> the new disease called homophobia in 1973, the same year that the American
> Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of illnesses.
> The really destructive aspect of explaining away the systematic oppression
> of lesbians and gay men as homophobia is that it depoliticises the problem:
> which is precisely what the 'medicalisation' of homosexuality achieved prior
> to the 1970s. In both cases a problem of oppression rooted in the backward
> structures of a divisive and exploitative society is reduced to a problem of
> individuals' irrational fears and desires. And since such fears are not
> susceptible to a political solution, those who believe in homophobia must
> conclude that you cannot get rid of it.
>
> Of course, for many homophobia is just a word, and who cares what word
> people use to describe anti-gay prejudice? But as a concept homophobia
> cannot explain what causes the oppression of homosexuals, and can only
> confuse those who want to end it.
>
> Reproduced from Living Marxism issue 44, June 1992
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
I don't buy it. First off, in my opinion every "psychological" reaction is constituted or at very least given its meaning by some sort of "social" force. So this point is simply rhetoric masking as terminological pedantry - most people with decent sociological and psychological knowledge can see that many of the times the two necessarily overlap, and that differentiation between them is usually a matter of communicative clarity. Secondly, claiming that other phobias have no social causes is just empirically wrong. Take a tribe in Indonesia with a taboo set on some sort of animal. This taboo takes the same shape as a phobia among this tribes members. Although this isn't as distinguishable in more advanced civilisations, its very clear that different cultures show different inclinations towards various types of phobia - a classic example from the old psychoanalytic case histories is that an irrational fear of having one's hand chopped off is far more likely to occur in Saudi Arabia than in Brazil... I wonder why.
I mean I could almost see the argument for re-naming "homophobia" along the lines of the gay equivalent of misogyny as the two seem to be quite similar - certainly more comparable than spider phobias... although couldn't we equally well coin a term to designate misogyny as a phobia? - but, to be quite frank, I don't really see the point. Whatever you call it it exists - and if we haven't yet learnt the lesson that slapping PC terms onto things generates as much trouble as it solves, then we've learnt nothing.