It's official: Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic indiv

[hedgehog]

Journal of Abnormal Psychology Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1996, Vol. 105, No. 3,440--445 0021-843X/96/$3.00
Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?
Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, Jr., and Bethany A. Lohr
University of Georgia
The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted
negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic
men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups
on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980).
The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual,
and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed
an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992 ). Both groups exhibited increases
in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic
men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in
aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic
individual is either unaware of or denies.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u47/Henry_et_al.pdf

[eleny]

1. kr

[Touchdown]

2. Study done in 1996, and NOW you exclaim it's official?

No one can accuse you of overstatements, can they?:rofl:

BTW: They were college boys... You know, the ones who get erect when the wind changes. Sometimes bigotry is just bigotry. You straight people are not absolved of homophobia, so stop trotting out this old story to try to claim your purity back.

[hedgehog]

4. I'm a slow reader.

[elias7]

7. and sometimes assholes are just assholes

regardless of their preferences

[Touchdown]

14. Are you offering yours?

:shrug:

[elias7]

44. Not to you, buddy

You're too angry...

[Toasterlad]

29. "Preference"?

Assholes indeed.

[slay]

10. WTF?

what does this study have to do with anyone being absolved of homophobia? i'm straight. you wanna call me a homophobe? i don't think you understand the point the OP was making. this explains why all these evangelicals and focus on the family men (and many republicans) are getting caught with penises in their mouths - THEY are the homophobes. luckily you only put your foot in yours.

and why does it matter what year the study was done? do you not believe in gravity cause the discovery wasn't yesterday too? :crazy:

[Touchdown]

13. I understand completely. I've understood for 30 fucking years

That according to the people who invented the "Smear the Queer" game, and still think gay soldiers look at weenies in the shower, that nobody can be homophobic unless they want to have sex with their own gender.

The whole "Gay haters are secretly gay- AND THAT'S ALL WE NEED TO KNOW!" meme is bullshit on the highest level. They are only anti-gay because society set up a shitload of rules that makes them buy into the "it's bad to be gay" idea. It's that mentality that dismisses The President's slights on gay people in the past year and a half, and excuses everything straight society does, because the take home message of this is it's all the fault of gay people. These hateful guys are fucked inn the head, so gay people must also be at least a little mis-wired.

Instead of questioning the sexuality of everyone who hates gay people, why don't we study and question the religious superstition and delusional fantasies that is the basis of keeping society in so much deep denial?

[slay]

19. "religious superstition and delusional fantasies that is the basis of keeping society in so much

deep denial?"

I'm with ya 100% there. Not just keeping us in denial - destroying the world. :(

I'm sure there are other homophobes than the preachy republican type, but what I took out of the OP was that those who protest against it the loudest have a very high likelyhood of being one. I don't think that means they are the only ones though. :shrug:

[Touchdown]

22. I don't know how long you've been paying attention, but

... this old canard(study) is trotted out almost like clockwork, every six months and sometimes twice a month when someone like Rekers is exposed for their hypocrisy, and all of straight DU goes "Yep! Yup! Yup! Uh' Yup! Yup Yup!" then pats themselves on the back for their cultural sensitivity, then lectures gay DUers that "Now is not the right time to repeal DADT or DOMA! We have elections to win! Not everybody gets their pony right away.".

Bottom line... Yes, there are quite a few who are so afraid what society may think of them, they hide and overcompensate for it by screaming the fag jokes louder, but what does any of straight America plan to do about it? Make more fag jokes at hypocrite's expense?

If one believes this study, then they have to believe all KKK members want to be playing blues in a Chicago night club, and Tom Tancredo secretly wants to cross the border to pick lettuce for 50¢ an hour.

[jgraz]

3. Looks like it's been official for 14 years.

[applegrove]

5. Where would we be without science.

[Initech]

6. Guess they need more rent boys!

[Mojeoux]

8. The first moment I read about this, I thought....

The guy was on a date with a cute boy from the cast of the acclaimed Broadway Show, "Rent."

[Initech]

15. I was referring to that FRC guy who went on vacation with a "rent boy".

:rofl:

[Mojeoux]

17. I know, when it first hit the news , I thought he was dating a "Rent" boy.

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[Initech]

20. I can see how that would be confusing!

:rofl:

[Mojeoux]

27. The result is the same; A Homo-Phobic Bigot dates a cute boy and get's caught.

LOL WTF is up with these fools!!!!!?
Maybe someday, they can just be out and about, without the self loathing anti-gay rhetoric.

Yeah, so I thought............ "Oh one of the boys from the cast of "Rent," is going to get really famous/infamous because of the scandal! He must be a hottie."

Like a cute gay version of the old politico in the fountain with the show-girl/stripper.

[Initech]

33. I tell you, I used to go to a born-again church. They are all the same!

And sometimes you can say that and not mean it, but really they're like the space monkeys from Fight Club. Every single person I met at that church was a classic self-loather, whether it was drugs, guns, sex, homosexuality... you name it.

[Mojeoux]

37. My dear friend's Mom in Texas changed churches.

In her new church, many people have gay sons and daughters and my friend got to move back to Texas and reclaim his birthright.
His Mom got to have the best looking gay son in the congregation.

[safeinOhio]

9. Demand the "peter meter" for all

anti-gay activist. If you don't pass, STFU. Then we can demand Baptist be held under water a little longer.

[annabanana]

30. [spittake]

:rofl:

[Angry Dragon]

11. Make copies and give them to the tea baggers

[aikoaiko]

12. That's a great study (from UGA, Go Dawgs!) but even the authors don't say its official...

...just suggestive.

[Behind the Aegis]

16. Consider.....

Discussion
The results of this study indicate that individuals who score in the homophobic range and admit negative affect toward homosexuality demonstrate significant sexual arousal to male homosexual erotic stimuli. These individuals were selected on the basis of their report of having only heterosexual arousal and experiences. Furthermore, their ratings of erection and arousal to homosexual stimuli were low and not significantly different from nonhomophobic men who demonstrated no significant increase in penile response to homosexual stimuli. These data are consistent with response discordance where verbal judgments are not consistent with physiological reactivity, as in the case of homophobic individuals viewing homosexual stimuli. Lang (1994) has noted that the most dramatic response discordance occurs with reports of feeling and physiologic responses. Another possible explanation is found in various psychoanalytic theories, which have generally explained homophobia as a threat to an individual's own homosexual impulses causing repression, denial, or reaction formation (or all three; West, 1977). Generally, these varied explanations conceive of homophobia as one type of latent homosexuality where persons either are unaware of or deny their homosexual urges. These data are consistent with these notions.

Another explanation of these data is found in Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck's (1983) theory of the role of anxiety and attention in sexual responding. It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se. Whereas difficulties of objectively evaluating psychoanalytic hypotheses are well-documented, these approaches would predict that sexual arousal is an intrinsic response to homosexual stimuli, whereas Barlow's (1986) theory would predict that sexual arousal to homosexual stimuli by homophobic individuals is a function of anxiety. These competing notions can and should be evaluated by future research.

The hypothesis that homophobic men are merely aggressive individuals is not supported by the present data. There were no differences in aggression scores between groups as measured by the Aggression Questionnaire. However, this questionnaire is a general measure of aggression and does not address the possibility of situational aggression or hostility where the situation involves homosexuality or interacting with a homosexual person. It is possible that aggressiveness in homophobic individuals is specific to homosexual cues.

These data also indicate that subjective estimates of arousal and erection are largely consistent with physiological indices of penile erections, with correlation coefficients ranging from .53 to .66. Because the relationships between subjective measures of erection and arousal were quite high, ranging from .78 to .95, it is likely that these two estimates are measures of similar or identical events. Most of these latter correlations were in the .90 range with the exception of nonhomophobic individuals' ratings of arousal and erection to homosexual stimuli, which was .78. As noted before, these results were probably due to the small penile responses to this stimulus, making subjective estimates more difficult and less consistent.

A major difficulty in this area of research is in defining and measuring homophobia. For example, with the scale used in the present study, we found it difficult to find heterosexual men who scored in the high-grade nonhomophobic range (0-25). Similarly, Hudson and Ricketts (1980) found that 56% of their sample scored in the homophobic range (i.e., > 51 ). This problem may be due not to a high prevalence of homophobia; rather, it may be the result of the nature of this and similar scales. As O'Donahue and Caselles (1993) suggested, scales that assess homophobia measure only cognitive and affective components. The IHP and similar scales would be greatly strengthened by inclusion of a behavioral component that measures "fight or flight" reactions commonly found in phobia scales, such as the Fear Questionnaire (Marks & Mathews, 1978). Modification of these scales is needed and should include items that specifically assess actual or potentially aggressive or avoidant acts toward homosexual individuals or homosexual activities, as suggested by O'Donahue and Caselles (1993). In our opinion, negative attitudes and cognitions toward homosexuality are probably not sufficient to warrant the label of homophobia.

Future research should focus on several issues. First, more reliable scales for measuring homophobia should be devised that incorporate cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Second, the issue of whether homophobic individuals meet the definitional criteria for simple phobia should be investigated by determining whether these individuals experience anxiety or avoidance when confronted with homosexual cues. Third, the issue of whether homophobia is specific to men or may also occur in women has not been addressed systematically, nor is it clear whether homophobic women may show sexual arousal to erotic lesbian stimuli. Fourth, it has been claimed that homophobic individuals have poor heterosexual adjustment, and this issue should be documented. With answers to these and similar issues, a clearer understanding of the nature of homophobia will be possible.

My conclusion: Whereas some homophobes may be closet cases, it doesn't mean that all or even most homophobes are simply "afraid of being gay themselves." Religion and societal mores are responsible for the vast majority of homophobia and the closet cases who are homophobes are actually a small percentage of anti-gay persons, IMO.

[safeinOhio]

24. Both sides need to remember that the terms

gay and homophobic are not black and white, discrete terms. Both are along a continuum, no individual being 100% of either. More and better studies are needed. I would guess that one subset finds it is a struggle to fight against any normal attraction in an overly defensive posture.

[Raster]

26. Gimme dat ol' time religion! If it's good enough for my Daddy, it's good enough for me.

:sarcasm:

[TexasObserver]

40. Sound argument and conclusion.

Quoting you:

Whereas some homophobes may be closet cases, it doesn't mean that all or even most homophobes are simply "afraid of being gay themselves." Religion and societal mores are responsible for the vast majority of homophobia and the closet cases who are homophobes are actually a small percentage of anti-gay persons ....

[ulaes]

18. It looks like gays are to blame

for homophobia after all. Nonsense.

[Richard Steele]

38. Yup. They deliberately AROUSE decent hetero Christian men...

...by walking around in public, performing the daily tasks
that straight people go about.

Gay men shopping, gay men waiting in line at the car wash,
gay men honking their horns and flipping the bird to assholes
who cut them off in traffic,
and all the while, they deliberately look and dress
exactly like straight folk...

They act like normal men, and do the things normal men do...
What good decent fundamendalist Christian could EVER be expected
to RESIST such hellishly delicious temptation?

Pfft.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. I've been a little disturbed by the subtle homophobia in the "Ha, Ha, Homophobes are GAY!" meme.

Not to defend homophobia in any fashion; but if that meme is, even slightly, homophobic, doesn't that make the people spreading it slightly gay, too?

Oh Nooo!


Now, with something like the "rentboy" thing, surely there is a place for ridicule of the hypocrisy in one of these family-values asshats, particularly a "gay curing" one, being caught in that kind of situation.

But a great deal of the criticism has crossed into- and has a tendency to cross into- "he's GAAAAAY BWAHAHAHAHHAA!"

Which is, really, another form of the shit LGBT people have been dealing with in our society for too long.

The bad thing isn't that the guy is gay- the bad thing is that the guy is a fucking preachy hypocrite and full of shit.

[Touchdown]

42. It's like "Ha, Ha, KKK guys are secretly black."

Or White Cops in Arizona are secretly Mexican!

It's insanity!

[TransitJohn]

23. I'm interested in one of these devices to monitor my penile circumference.

:hide:

[QC]

25. Most homophobic assholes are straight. n/t

[Zoeisright]

32. Well, they THINK they're straight. Odds are they're suppressing.

[Toasterlad]

34. No...Odds Are They're Straight.

If all the people in the world who are homophobic were really homosexual, there'd be a lot fewer people in this world.

[Bluebear]

28. One 15-year old study is not "official", just sayin'.

[Toasterlad]

31. Straight People Sure Seem Desperate To Claim That All Homophobes Are Secretly Gay.

Like the catholics claiming that no true catholic is anti-gay.

As has been explained every time this study is brought up, people get sexually aroused for any number of reasons, including anxiety; like, say, being shown images of homosexual activity when you are actively homophobic. There is nothing in this study to prove that the men were sexually stimulated because they were homosexual.

But that won't stop straight people from continuing to absolve themselves for all the hatred and bigotry heaped on gay people. Because, hey, it's only the GAY people who are doing the heaping! Straight people, as everyone knows, are tolerant as all fuck.

[Touchdown]

41. Exactly!

I was called an asshole up top for my "preference". What balls!:rofl:

[fishwax]

35. the "homophobes must be secretly gay" bit is tired

You don't have to be secretly gay to be a bigot. It's silly to assume that all/most homophobic bigots are secretly gay.

[QC]

39. Yeah, this one got tired a long time ago. n/t

[deaniac21]

36. One study......???

[Touchdown]

43. Why does this retread have 40 votes?

It's like the Lethal Weapon 4 of GD threads. It never dies. So insightful!:eyes: