It's not an easy subject, but with hate speech against LGBT+ people on the rise, it's something that has to be addressed. Just exactly what is going on?
In this article, I'm going to explore what homophobia and transphobia are, and try to dig a little deeper into understanding what lies behind the hate speech associated with being homophobic or transphobic. It is well documented that the impact of bullying and hate speech against LGBT+ people is huge. It causes family rifts, mental health decline and tragically an increased risk of suicide. So why do people do it? Where does this hatred come from? Is it ignorance, fear, prejudice, or society? Do people enjoy getting involved in the latest divisive debate and being deliberately provocative to gain notoriety? Or is it a combination of these?
In order to understand where it all started, we need to go back in time. We have clear evidence that in ancient civilisations, little regard was given to a person's sexuality; who you were attracted to was not a huge issue, and there were no terms for sexuality or gender identities. It was with the emergence of monotheistic religion and the subsequent medieval idea of "natural law" that we first saw the normalisation of man-woman hetero-normative stereotyped relationships and the corresponding demonisation of anything different. The law and the medical professions followed suit, so that for hundreds of years, being LGBT+, but especially being a gay man, was demonised by the church, criminalised by the state, and pathologised by the medical profession. It's little wonder then, that LGBT+ people became virtually invisible in society. If being LGBT+ was just a trope, surely it would have died out during those hundreds of years. But these people didn't disappear. Quite the contrary. Vibrant sub-cultures emerged, with their own meeting places, dress codes and spoken codes or secret languages.
It took the law a long time to protect the rights of LGBT+ people, and it was only during the twentieth century that the situation gradually improved in the UK. When I was born, gay sex was illegal, and when I was young, there were no laws protecting LGBT+ from abuse. Quite the opposite in fact, as we had Clause 28 in the 1980s and 90s, banning the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as acceptable. By contrast, we had the Race Relations Act in 1965, the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975 and the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, giving rights to people of colour, women and disabled people, while being gay remained discriminated against in law. This has thankfully changed and the law now better protects LGBT+ people from discrimination, under such legislation as the 2003 Employment Equality Regulations, the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, the 2004 Gender Recognition Act and the 2010 Equality Act.
The state, the medical profession and even the church to some extent in the UK changed course from a view of persecution to one of protection. All of a sudden, people were asked to put aside those prejudices and those fears that had been fed to society for hundreds of years, led of course by the state, the medical profession, and the church. But those prejudices were well rooted. People were asked to start accepting realities they didn't like, realities that had been hidden, and they didn't like it.
In the strictest sense of the word, a phobia is a fear. According to Mind UK, the mental health charity, a phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, "an extreme form of fear or anxiety, triggered by a particular situation or object." This fear can arise from many different causes, such as past traumas, learned responses from previous experience, how we respond to fear, long term stress, and genetic factors. There are many types of phobia. For example, some people are afraid of particular animals, others are terrified of a specific situation, and some people have phobias around food.
Let's compare the definition of phobias with the definition of -isms. I'll use racism and sexism as examples. The Britannica online encyclopedia defines racism as "the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others." And what about sexism? The Cambridge online dictionary defines sexism as "(actions based on) the belief that the members of one sex are less intelligent, able, skilful, etc. than the members of the other sex, especially that women are less able than men." The common theme here is that the person with the -ism feels somehow superior, or believes that the "other" is inferior. This implies that they have disdain, that they dislike the other.
So, a phobia is an irrational fear or an anxiety disorder, whereas an -ism is a feeling or action associated with a sense of superiority.
Looking at definitions of transphobia, homophobia and associated phobias connected with sexuality and identity, I believe that there is a fundamental problem, namely that these so called phobias are as likely to derive from dislike or disdain as they are from fear. I've chosen a few to illustrate the point here.
The Queen Mary (University of London) website defines homophobia, transphobia, biphobia and acephobia as "terms used to describe the fear or dislike of someone, based on prejudice or negative attitudes, beliefs or views about people who are or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, queer, trans, bi or asexual (ace)+."
They go on to say that is kind of behaviour can take many forms such as name-calling, derogatory jokes, intrusive or hostile questioning, threatening to ‘out’ someone, as well as unwanted physical contact and violence. It can happen verbally, in writing, in person or virtually (e.g. by email, messages, social media).
Transactual UK says that "the core value underlying all transphobia is a rejection of trans identity and a refusal to acknowledge that it could possibly be real or valid. Transphobia has no single, simple manifestation. It is complex and can include a range of behaviours and arguments. Transphobia includes, but is not limited to:
Attempting to remove trans people’s rights
Misrepresenting trans people
Abuse
Systematically excluding trans people from discussions about issues that directly affect them
Other forms of discrimination"
Homophobia, as defined by the online Merriam Webster dictionary, is the "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or gay people., and similarly defines transphobia as the "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender people."
All of these definitions, and many others I found online, have one thing in common: they describe a combination of a phobia and an -ism. Alongside fear, these phobias are associated with discrimination,hostility, abuse and exclusion. But, unlike the words racism and sexism, we don't use have the words "homoism" or "transism."
Can you call a phobia discrimination? This is where we get into muddy waters because there is no law against phobia in the pure sense. If homophobia and transphobia are genuinely the result of fear, then could the person displaying those behaviours be viewed in some warped way as the victim somehow? This is one of the reasons why I believe it is deemed somehow acceptable for hate speech against LGBT+ people to permeate; straight cisgender people can hide behind that protective barrier, saying they feel threatened or frightened somehow.
Reading about the situation between JK Rowling and India Willoughby has left a bitter taste in my mouth that won't go away. It's because of the amount of bitterness in Rowling's words. She said that India is a man "revelling in his misogynistic performance of what he thinks 'woman' means: narcissistic, shallow and exhibitionist." Whatever you feel about either person in terms of their politics, their identity or their personal opinions, there is no getting away from the fact that this is a very nasty thing to say. JK Rowling is adamant she is not transphobic. Only she knows how she really feels inside. But the same can be said for India Willoughby. Only she knows how she identifies. How she chooses to present herself is surely her business.
JK Rowling is not alone of course. A brief search online reveals that there are many people out there who seem to actually enjoy having a dig at people who are different from themselves. Here's a snippet from right wing journalist and presenter Katie Hopkins, who recently tweeted this, also about India: "You can chop the d**k off a man, but don’t end up with a woman." It's a flippant remark that took seconds to write, but it has caused deep offence. And of course, it's kept Katie in the news. Prejudice can manifest as banter, often in a toxic male environment. Sometimes it is used as a mask to hide behind one's own insecurities or fears about one's own sexuality. A gay friend of mine admits that he used to join in with bullying a boy at school for being gay, as a way to take the focus off himself.
There is growing evidence in scientific research that sexuality, gender and gender identity are not as binary as some would have us believe. And there are philosophical debates about the concept of a spectrum of sexuality. It is vastly complex. But you don't often see that discussed intelligently in the mainstream media.
For example, there are two schools of philosophical thought about sexuality in society. A number of researchers argue that specific social constructs produce specific sexual ways of being, leading to the creation of sexual categories and the personal identities associated with them. This is a constructionist view. According to this theory, the language we use, and our sexual desires, acts, and identities are all bound by the specific contexts in which we live, and by how we interpret our experience. Constructionists argue that sex and sexuality must be viewed in the context of a setting. Essentialists, on the other hand, claim that categories of sexual attraction are observed rather than created, and that they can be observed throughout history. This model acknowledges that there are consistent features across time and cultures, and therefore it makes sense to speak of specific sexual orientations. Homosexuality would be a specific example, as it has been observed from ancient times until now.
Basically, essentialists believe that sexuality is observable, definable, and universal, whereas constructionists believe that sexuality depends on context, and will change as societies change.
To go back to my original questions, in short, there is no simple explanation as to why people are homophobic or transphobic, and there are many potential causes. It could be any or all of several factors, including fear of the unknown, learned behaviour, which is reinforced by family or the media, masking of one's own sexual insecurities, a way to gain attention and notoriety, and sometimes just plain ignorance. This kind of logic, perhaps: I do not understand this, it's different from me, therefore I don't like it. To justify my feelings, I will distance myself from it and criticise what I don't understand because it must be wrong in some way.
But there is hope, there has to be hope. An individual's feelings may change over time. And societal attitudes can change. This is why we need to keep working, to keep trying, to keep aiming for a society that can learn to accept a person whatever their sexuality or gender identity. We need to educate people who believe that LGBT+ is just a fad, that it's fashionable at the moment and that it'll go away again. LGBT+ culture mustn't be eradicated from the mainstream again. We also need to showcase the contributions that LGBT+ people have made to society - in the arts, in science, and everywhere. That's why we have LGBT+ History Month in February.
And this year we will mark the first Trans+ History Week in May.
I'll do my bit.
Will you?
Parts of this article are based on issues I discuss in my award-winning book.
Bent Is Not Broken. Buy the eBook (various platforms) or get the paperback on Amazon via:
***Queer Indie Awards 2023 Winner:
Best Non-Fiction***
To read more blogs about about LGBT+ culture and history, and to find out more about the author, head to www.bentisnotbroken.com
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