Gender and Homophobia

[Mischa87]

I've never seen a woman pick on a lesbian. Honestly, when I read this thread title, I thought it was going to be about how the percentage of women who are homophobic is far less than how many men are homophobic.

On a semi-related note, homophobia, and transphobia can actually be attributed to sexism. When a male-bodied person is with other male-bodied people in the intimate sense, it appears they are taking a more "feminine" role, they're giving up power, to homophobes, this is wrong, and bad. When a female-bodied person is with other female-bodied people, they're seen as taking a more "masculine" role, and grasping for power, which is seen as an okay/good thing. This is part of why lesbians generally get less flak.

Male-to-female transsexuals are seen as taking a more feminine role (obviously) and are seen as giving up power, this is bad in the mind of the trans/homophobe, while like the example in the last paragraph, female-to-male transsexuals are seen as taking the obvious route towards masculinity, grasping for power, which is all good in most trans/homophobic minds. Which is why transmen (Female to male transsexuals) get far less hate directed at them than transwomen (male to female transsexuals)

As outlined above, the creation of these trans/homohobic attitudes stem from sexism, in that men, and masculinity is superior, which is generally a male-view, which is why you see it far less in women.

This is an interesting proposal, but I don't think it completely explains attitudes towards transsexualism. For instance, feminists can also be fiercely opposed to male-to-female transsexual transition. Have you ever read some of Germaine Greer on this stuff? What she sees in transsexualism is male encroachment on female identity - the idea is that the presumption that physical and chemical self-alteration is all that is required to be "just as good at being a woman" is quite a hostile act in and of itself.

Whether her view stands up isn't that important to the thought that the supposed superiority of one's own gender doesn't mean transsexualism one way will be accepted while the other rejected. You might simply reject both the deserters and the turncoats.

Oh for sure, I'm actually a transwoman, and I know all the flak we get from some feminists (I'm a pretty avid feminist myself) But this was mostly in response to the general public, ie hetero cismen/ciswomen who never bother to think of things like gender or orientation, or basically anything beyond their own situation. The whole "Just as good at being a woman" is pretty silly, we're not trying to be women, we're trying to be ourselves, it just happens to be that we're female.

Didn't mean to derail the thread, just thought it was related in a way *shrug* If you wanna talk gender, and feminism/equality, send me a private message.

 

[Doclector]

There does seem to be quite the pattern in my experience, yes. Why is another matter, more to the point why the hell we even have homophobia in a major enough proportion to be noticeable. But of course the same could be said for any prejudice; surely we're supposed to be smarter than this by now, but we're not.

Don't get me started on that train of thought though...