this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025

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839

is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

145 comments fedilink hide all child comments

doi: 10.1037//0021-843x.105.3.440

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 days ago

Not sure what is up with this screenshot. Looks like someone erased something from the sides? I dunno, but the quality is not great. Here's a new one:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8772014/

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Is this why Republican senators keep getting caught kissin' with other men in public restrooms?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I mean grindr always reports an increase in traffic around the republican conventions.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Most of what I learned about LGBTQ came from homophobes. The ones who would not shut up about it.

For example when I didn't know that rainbows were associated with the community. I had friend school over one time. He saw a blanket with a rainbow stripe pattern. He basically had a gay panic meltdown. He was so certain we were a family of closeted gays.

So anyways later on he got a degree from a bible college or something. And he joined an evangelical church. One where they travel around to city streets around preaching from megaphones. Kind of like that Westboro Baptist thing.

In our early 20s he sexually assault me. I found out later from another guy we went to school with that he also forced himself on that guy too.

He's not the only person I've known like this but certainly the most crazy one.

If there's any true to the saying that gays rub their identity in everyone's face. Then it's the homophobe ones. It's got to be a massive projection. It's like they're trying to tell the world but it manifests as some kind of self-hate in denial or something.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

This is going to get the fundamentalists to hate science even more. Heh.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago

Attraction to women doesn't make people not misogynist.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Uuh that's a very difficult thing.

It's like wearing agressive perfume full of hormomes. It might cause somebody to get an erection but it's still hella uncomfortable and annoying. Not really consensual and i see why it pisses people off.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago (4 children)

TIL people get erections from perfume.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

yeah it actually did happen to me irl some years ago when we were on a field trip and a girl who had already flirted with me for the past two days suddenly wore a perfume and i think it was that that made it really difficult for me to stay clear-minded. could have also been the flirting though, i'm not sure actually.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Right here. Maybe not full blown blue steel, but I get chubby if a woman's smell hits me right.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah, that's really weird. I've never heard of this. But I guess if you just make an association in you brain, then it can be a turn on.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago

People will spend a lot of money if a marketer lies to them enough. It should be noted that scientists don’t recognize any human-arousal pheromones. Only shady websites that wanna sell you overpriced perfume.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Aight thats really fair

[–] [email protected] 90 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I really don't like the idea of citing this study. It's always this same one from the 90s, and if it were acurate I expect the results would have been reproduced more. It's also not clear that the results indicate what the paper says. There's other reasons than sexual arousal that could explain the results. It could be they're imagining the scenario and are axious or disgusted by it. There's this paper that indicates homophobia is usually caused by fear or hate.

I don't like the idea of putting the blame for homophobia on closeted queer people. It's seems extremely likely to me that most homophobic people are straight, since most people are straight. Also we should respect other people's own identification instead of trying to force labels on people, even if they're bigots.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I always felt like that study from the 90s is missing part of the picture. Like, it's less 'closeted gay people' that are the problem, and it's more the people who are closeted because it was beaten into them at a young age that being gay means they deserve the worst of the worst.

I think you're spot on with fear being the root cause, and we really have done a good job at making people afraid of their own sexuality.

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[+] [email protected] -25 points 5 days ago (4 children)

If you disagree with the science, perhaps you should do your own study?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah gimme a bunch of money lol

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Lemme just reach into my giant money bag ... Hey, who took my giant money bag!?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

You left it in the parlor

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Do you know what peer review means?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 5 days ago

Are you a scientist?

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Nah, nope, nuh-uh, that's not how science works. A person's concerns about the methodology or conclusions of a particular study are not invalid just because they haven't run their own experiments.

It's pretty easy for even a layperson to question this particular study, for a few reasons:

The sample sizes are very small
Some men can get erections/aroused if the wind blows the wrong way, or even for no reason at all - putting porn in front of someone and expecting them not to become aroused is a dubious assumption at best
Using some external test to determine someone's sexuality, instead of using the person's self-identification, goes against the last 30 years of progress we've made in gender and sexuality studies
The conclusion of the study may indicate some level of homophobic or anti-homosexual bias

Don't gatekeep good critical thinking. Good critical thinking is the only thing you ever need to question any scientific study.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

Point 2 is covered by having a control group and point 3 seems to be missing the point: well yeah, don't take the conclusion too far, but that doesn't mean measuring arousal is bad science.

Bigger issues are low sample size (as you mentioned) and the fact that it's a correlational study that hasn't done any work to causally link them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I think that you make some good points. But I take issue with your third point. People lie about things to researchers (or simply don't know have some sort of self-knowledge) all the time. This is the whole concept of "revealed preference" in economics. Someone can say that they care about sweatshop labor, but do they actually make any effort to avoid buying products produced in sweatshops?

Not questioning the experiment subjects' stated sexual identity just neuters the whole point of the study: is homophobia driven by repressed homosexual desire. If it is repressed, we should expect subjects to say they are straight even if they aren't. Could the methodology be flawed? Sure! But there is nothing wrong with trying to actually measure the homosexual attraction of someone who says they are not so attracted.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's fair, but I get the feeling that the researchers came up with their conclusion before performing their study, and then interpreted their findings to fit that pre-supposed conclusion. The only thing this study can fairly claim is that some homophobic men may harbor homosexual desires. They've failed to demonstrate any causal linkage between those two attributes, but they're heavily suggesting one exists. Maybe their abstract grossly oversimplifies things, but it seems to extrapolate their findings far beyond any reasonable conclusion in my opinion, and that makes me question their methods and motives more than I normally would. The publication date also raises flags, as the common pervasive sentiment about homosexuality was very different in 1996 than it is today. All of those things combined indicate to me that this study should be carefully considered with plenty of grains of salt at hand.

But to get back on topic a little bit - my original intent was to refute the notion that if someone has a problem with the methodology of a scientific study, then they must perform their own study and present evidence to support a contrary claim. The examples I listed are things it would be reasonable to expect a layman with solid critical thinking skills to point out as potential flaws in this particular study, potential areas to look further into, to confirm whether or not the study is scientifically sound.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago

I definitely agree with you on all counts there. A single underpowered study does not sound science make, even disregarding the authors' potential biases.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Someone should repeat the study. That's all I'm saying. If the criticism is that the study was too small or done too long ago, or whatever. The anti-science crowd are the ones who reason away the results of science with no basis of fact. If you disagree with the facts, it is your responsibility to disprove them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No, what you said was "if you disagree with the science, perhaps you should do your own study".

"Disagree with the science" is a disingenuous oversimplification bordering on nonsensical. People are calling into question the methods of the study, and the conclusions reached by the scientists interpreting the data. All of which can be accomplished with good critical thinking, and all of which is part of the scientific process. We're not "disagreeing with the science". We don't need to repeat this experiment or run our own to be able to point out that it looks like there are flaws in this study - we just need to have good critical thinking skills.

If you disagree with the facts, it is your responsibility to disprove them.

What facts? Are you implying that the content of a scientific study becomes "fact" simply because a scientist publishes it? Because that's wrong, and any published scientist will tell you as much.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah, thank you for quoting my words back to me. Now kindly fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

No u

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Critique and analysis of a study or experiment is the default. It isn't a religion; science thrives on repeat analysis.