Warning;
This blog will contain - Strong language and Sexual content.
Hey blog world, sorry it's been a while; I've been wracking my brains on a subject to blog about, and from New Year I've been working on the subject of Homophobia.
To start off I'd like to state that this subject came to me while I was in Holland for New Year, along with our usual group (Minus my friends brother) we had an old friend of my friends join us; but I was told that he "didn't want to sleep in the same room as me" and that my friend thought he might be slightly homophobic.
Now, I'm not really one for caring much; everyone is entitled to their own opinions when it comes to sexuality and how they view them - but for a guy who has only met me two or three times to come out with something like this; it fucked me off somewhat. I mean, Holland + New Year = Me too drunk to contemplate anything, let alone actually do anything.
But anyway, I digress; and this topic is going to be fairly lengthy, so I'll apologise now for random tangents.
Lets start by looking at the word: HOMOPHOBIA.
The online dictionary states that the word "PHOBIA" means the following:
noun
a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.
And we can sum up the remainder of the word "HOMO" as a slang term used to describe someone who is homosexual. So in truth then, HOMOPHOBIA means - a fear of gay people.
But...
What exactly does your "average" person have to fear from gay people?
There is the old saying that Homophobics are scared, not of actual gay people; but their own latent homosexual tendancies, this means they then lash out at openly gay people because they fear it within themselves.
If a person doesn't like gay people; should we really be labelling them as "homophobic"? Or should we just label them "homo haters"? As it's clear through plain logic that homophobia is a fear of -not hatred of- gay people.
Back then to my question of What do they need to fear? In answer absolutely nothing at all; a gay person is exactly the same as a straight person or even a bi-sexual person. The only difference is that homosexuals do not feel sexual desire for the opposing sex.
During school we are not (I can only go by my own schooling here) taught to fear gay people, in fact the only place which speaks out against homosexuality is religion - but even then, with the advancement of the 20th Century and coming into the new millenium fewer and fewer people are practicing actual religion. So even here the subject of "evil homo's" is becoming far rarer than in the early 1900's.
I have heard it said that straight men worry that gay men will fancy them. I can only reply to this with "Hello? We have types too you know."
Yes I know (And feel I should put in here) that there are gay men (And women) out there who are labelled "predatory" gays, and they believe that turning a straight guy (or gal) is a crowning achievement. But why label us all like that because of a few individuals? (Who are even shunned in most gay circles) I mean, there are straight people out there who think that "Turning a gay" is their crowning achievement; should we then fear them? Should the term "Heterophobic" become mainstream because of these people?
Social stigma is totally running wild here; it seems to me that homophobia is actually tolerated for the fact that -clearly- we're all out to steal straight people to "our evil fold" but then "hetetophobia" is ignored.
Once again I hit a tangent - lol I do apologise.
With the passing of the Equality Act in 2006 homophobia has become less and less apparent, there isn't as much hate crime against gay people by "homophobics" although it should be said that when the Bill was first brought into Parliament in 2004 it only banned discrimination against Religion or Belief; homosexuality was not added until later (After the general election in 2005) when Openly gay Peer Lord Alli lobbyed to have sex orientation added to the Bill.
The following exerpt was taken from Wikipedia:
The Equality Bill first appeared in the 2004/05 Session, but did not make it into law before Parliament was dissolved ahead of the 2005 general election. In its manifesto, the Labour Party promised to reintroduce the Bill, which it duly did upon being returned to power.
At this stage, only ‘religion or belief’ was included in the anti-discrimination clauses. The Labour Party specifically did not wish to ban discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. There were suggestions this policy decision was made to appease homophobic religious voters in the run-up to the election.[2]
After the Bill was reintroduced, further lobbying by openly-gay Peer the Lord Alli succeeded in forcing the government to add homophobic discrimination to the Bill.
We can see here that once again; Religion plays a part in homophobia, but only religion (as I've said, education does not cause homophobia)
Thankfully the amendments to the Bill were all wrapped up in the Equality Act 2010 - but again I digress.
We'll go back to the guy from Holland at New Year; several times during the night he turned his back to me, standing within gropable reach - if he were truly "homophobic" would he have done that? Knowing full well I was stood behind him.
Now through body language I can say that turning your back on someone is excluding them from something (A gesture of dismissal if you will) and I guess this could play a part, but once again a true homophobe (homo hater) would NOT have been able to turn his back (thus presenting his ass) to an openly gay guy.
And now once more I come back to the subject of the word; HOMOPHOBIA and how I believe it should not be used to umbrella people who generally hate gay people. Although the thought of an actual homophobic by definition of the word gives me a moment of amused chuckling - imagine being scared of a gay person LOL... But yeah, I think the word should be changed completely to eliminate the "phobia" tag since it is not completely accurate.
I'm sorry once again, I kinda hit a tangent and then lost my train of thought lol; so the end kinda sucked. But I thought I would share this with my blog subscriber (Who rocks) and my facebook friends as I think it's definitely a "hard-hitting" subject and was worth the time it took to research and blog.
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