Majority of people disliking gays? Natural or influenced?

[Stark]

I think religious people feel the same way about piss-jesus and other 'blasphemous' art. It's a low-level thing, but it's still 'learned'.

[General Zod]

I'm inclined to agree with D. Wong is alluding to. By the way, that study everyone has been referring to was out of Emory University.

These days, I think people are much quicker to assume that human behavior, especially the reactions people tend to have, have to more do with cultural mores and less to do with human biology. Frankly, I'm not sure it's even possible to separate one from the other; culture and biology both play important parts in making up who a person is. That being said, it's hard for me to believe that the prejudice directed toward members of gay society comes from our cultural values. When I see gay covers on porn movies, for example, I feel as if I have a visceral reaction; it actually makes my stomach hurt. Now, I'd like to think that I'm enlightened enough to never act upon this feeling, or treat anyone any differently, but I'd be lying if I said that it didn't make me feel sick. I feel as if there's more than just cultural conditioning at work here...

How does this work with some species, like bonobos, that have sex with anything and everything, though?

[Superman]

I think religious people feel the same way about piss-jesus and other 'blasphemous' art. It's a low-level thing, but it's still 'learned'.

You might be right about that. I think that Christians, in that case, have a vested interest in their religion and what it teaches. As far as I know, I don't have any kind of "interest" in straight society; I don't think that anyone should ever deny who they are... especially when the penis is dictating what it needs. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just not so certain that this could be dismissed as being purely in the realm of environment.

[Superman]

How does this work with some species, like bonobos, that have sex with anything and everything, though?

I don't know. I could speculate and say that it might just be a difference between our species; Bonobos settle conflicts through sex, we humans seem to do it through combat, but I don't know for sure.

[Stark]

To use Mike's example of the surgical stuff, that sort of thing can turn my stomach if I really focus on it and think about - but the 'gross' part is thinking about what I'm seeing means about me, in that how gross it is to think about a guy slitting my stomach open and fiddling around in the tubes in there with blood going everywhere. Gore doesn't bother me in this way, because it's not showing me anything that makes me feel anything. Maybe that's the 'straight' reaction to gay porn; you're seeing something, and because it's an 'issue' of our culture we internalise it and think 'how would I feel if that was happening to me', to get a similar king of reaction? It doesn't generally bother me except in it's most graphic, for instance; gay guys hooking in or getting head doesn't really cause any reaction in me I wouldn't get from any other unattracitve people doing the same thing, even when it's in the flesh and across the room from me.

I think it's an interesting issue, though. I'm just interested to think about my own reactions, really.

[Superman]

snip

Yeah, that's a good point too. I think this is one of those areas that probably needs to be looked into more. One interesting thing from that study, though, was that the researchers who participated with the fMRI discovered that they too registered a bilateral threat response, and all of them claimed to have no conscious awareness of it. One of them stated he had always felt sort of indifferent to the idea of homosexuality.

[Stark]

Yeah, I remember those results also.

[Plekhanov]

Oh come on, I'm a big supporter of gay rights but that doesn't mean I have to pretend that the male threat response to homosexuality is a surprise, or THE EVIL CONSERVATIVES. Humans have a social conformist instinct; they view anything which is different as potentially threatening, because it's from outside the tribe. The more different it is, the more threatening it is. Homosexuals are very different, so there is a natural tendency towards hostility.

Homosexuality may seem almost instinctively 'other' in societies that have been under the influence of deeply homophobic Abrahamic religion for centuries but I wonder how 'different' it would seem to for example an ancient Greek, Roman, pre Columbus American... where so far as I'm aware homosexual activity was pretty much the norm.

As I understand it despite the determined exporting of Abrahamic religion over the centuries there's still no taboo against homosexuality in places like Thailand. I'd be interested to see how prevalent the 'male threat response to homosexuality' is in societies like Thailand which thus far have been relatively uncontaminated by Abrahamic religion.

Chances are that the study on 'subconscious responses' to gay porn was carried out in a Western University with overwhelmingly western subjects who'd been brought up in a society deeply affected by Christianity, unless they also did the same tests on numerous subjects from non-Abrahamic societies I really don't think we can safely conclude that subconscious threat responses to male to male homosexuality are inborn as opposed to learned.

[Korto]

I'll admit, I find the very thought of male homosexual sex repellant, nauseating (while having no problem with the thought of female homosexual sex... my wife... another girl... me watching... how do I arrange this...?).
This I recognise as just some kind of instinctive reaction that doesn't reflect anything at all on anyone else, and doesn't even reflect badly on me as long as it doesn't affect my behavior.
At the same time, I've known a few gay people (an old supervisor, and my ex-neighbour probably was) and it was never a issue I even noticed. I mean, maybe the thought of gay sex sickens me, but why think about it? They don't tell, I don't ask, everyone's happy.

That would cause me to think that if being sickened by gay sex is a reasonably common male response, then homophobia is a natural offshoot. If you have a bad response, you want a good reason for the response. If you feel bad about gay sex, then gays must be evil. The idea it's just a mental quirk of your own and is therefore (if it's anyones) it's your own fault is not acceptable.

[Darth Wong]

Oh come on, I'm a big supporter of gay rights but that doesn't mean I have to pretend that the male threat response to homosexuality is a surprise, or THE EVIL CONSERVATIVES. Humans have a social conformist instinct; they view anything which is different as potentially threatening, because it's from outside the tribe. The more different it is, the more threatening it is. Homosexuals are very different, so there is a natural tendency towards hostility.

Homosexuality may seem almost instinctively 'other' in societies that have been under the influence of deeply homophobic Abrahamic religion for centuries but I wonder how 'different' it would seem to for example an ancient Greek, Roman, pre Columbus American... where so far as I'm aware homosexual activity was pretty much the norm.

Well of course the reaction might be different if people have been conditioned not to think of homosexuals as different from the norm. You can accomplish a lot of things with conditioning. But the instinct of fearing the abnormal is very much built into our genetic code.

As I understand it despite the determined exporting of Abrahamic religion over the centuries there's still no taboo against homosexuality in places like Thailand. I'd be interested to see how prevalent the 'male threat response to homosexuality' is in societies like Thailand which thus far have been relatively uncontaminated by Abrahamic religion.

That would indeed be an interesting experiment. However, I think the homo-friendly nature of other societies has been exaggerated somewhat. Even if you take away the "it's eeeeevil!" mentality of Abrahamic religion, it's still weird to see two macho-looking guys going at it. Even in most societies where such activity was allowed or approved, it was usually between an older man and a young male body-servant, who was rather androgynous-looking. And in other societies, it was merely tolerated, the way we tolerate the weird old guy in a small town who bicycles down Main Street drunk every day.

[FSTargetDrone]

I think religious people feel the same way about piss-jesus and other 'blasphemous' art. It's a low-level thing, but it's still 'learned'.

I'm always amused at assertions of religionists that such art is somehow "blasphemous" or "insulting" towards their god. How exactly can humans "insult" a deity, anyhow? Is such a deity so sensitive that it can be offended at the relatively insignificant actions of a mere mortal being? Of course, it's pretty clear from the Ten Commandments and the Bible that their God is a jealous god, so who knows.

Anyway, I am somewhat repulsed by depictions of male homosexual sex, but at the same time I don't find it offensive or immoral. It's not my scene. If people engage in that, hey, it doesn't bother me. I just don't want to watch it.

[Stark]

Well it's clear what they really mean is that it's offensive to THEM, but their religion is really central to their self-image so it affects them in a powerful way. Nobody really believes this 'it offends god' crap.

[FSTargetDrone]

Well it's clear what they really mean is that it's offensive to THEM, but their religion is really central to their self-image so it affects them in a powerful way. Nobody really believes this 'it offends god' crap.

Can you be so sure? Portraying God or other religious figures (saints, Jesus, etc.) in a way that these believers see as insulting is quite a big deal for these people. Imagine, placing a Crucifix in a jar of urine, what does that look like in their eyes? To me, it's simply bad art or art created for its shock value, but to them, it's profane. Who dares place the likeness of Christ, he who suffered and died to Save us, in a jar of urine? It's not so different from the cartoon treatment of Mohammad in the past few years, a situation that actually resulted in some deaths because of some perceived affront to a holy figure.

[Justforfun000]

Darth Wong Wrote

Even if you take away the "it's eeeeevil!" mentality of Abrahamic religion, it's still weird to see two macho-looking guys going at it.

Until you get used to it. Funny enough, before I came out back in 1996 I was here in Toronto at the Gay Pride Parade, and I remember one of the last scenes I looked at before leaving downtown was two girls sitting side by side and kissing and I had that reaction of "Oh for fuck's sake, this is just WRONG! It doesn't look right, it doesn't feel right..."

I went and moved down east and fought it for another couple of years until a major event happened that finally brought me out of the closet and thankfully, into a proper way to live my life and not a horrible closeted sham.

Yet I remember how easy it was to still see this behavior and react judgmentally to it and try to take this as evidence that it wasn't right.

But now after 11+ years of being out I've been so constantly in the gay community and seen so much gay porn, that now, if I DON'T see two absolutely gorgeous, buff masculine guys getting it on when they're on the screen, I'm like "WHAT?? They're far too hot to be straight.."

Lol. Seriously. I've had a complete mind fuck/flip. I'd venture to say that conditioning has a lot stronger response then most would imagine.

You know....one of the only ways I guess you'd be able to narrow this down is to somehow extract people that somehow escaped any serious negative conditioning growing up. Maybe one's raised by gay parents, or living in a community like the village here in downtown Toronto with progressive teaching establishments and what have you..Comparing their reactions statistically and in scientific experiments like the ones mentioned above would be very interesting...

But on the other hand, as progressive as we are even here, homophobia and bigotry is still far too prevalent. It'd be a rare child who never came across SOME clear indication that it wasn't exactly a "neutral" subject in the best of cases..

[Darth Wong]

Darth Wong Wrote

Even if you take away the "it's eeeeevil!" mentality of Abrahamic religion, it's still weird to see two macho-looking guys going at it.

Until you get used to it. Funny enough, before I came out back in 1996 I was here in Toronto at the Gay Pride Parade, and I remember one of the last scenes I looked at before leaving downtown was two girls sitting side by side and kissing and I had that reaction of "Oh for fuck's sake, this is just WRONG! It doesn't look right, it doesn't feel right..."

I went and moved down east and fought it for another couple of years until a major event happened that finally brought me out of the closet and thankfully, into a proper way to live my life and not a horrible closeted sham.

Yet I remember how easy it was to still see this behavior and react judgmentally to it and try to take this as evidence that it wasn't right.

I don't think that's really the same phenomenon. Judging people is clearly a conscious process. Looking at someone and saying "That's not right!" is a conscious judgment. It's not quite the same as the sort of reflexive revulsion that a hetero guy gets from gay imagery. That reaction can be strong even if the guy doesn't judge them at all, and does NOT have a "that's just wrong" reaction. I went through a teen homophobe phase, followed by enlightenment and eventually becoming an open supporter of gay rights, and through that whole process, I don't think that my gut reaction to gay imagery has changed at all.

But now after 11+ years of being out I've been so constantly in the gay community and seen so much gay porn, that now, if I DON'T see two absolutely gorgeous, buff masculine guys getting it on when they're on the screen, I'm like "WHAT?? They're far too hot to be straight.."

I'm not sure that necessarily requires much conditioning. There's a pretty commonly known stereotype about gay guys being prettier than straight guys, so if you see a movie with a bunch of pretty-boys in it, I think even someone who'd never watched a gay porn in his life would say "hmmm, that looks gay".

But on the other hand, as progressive as we are even here, homophobia and bigotry is still far too prevalent. It'd be a rare child who never came across SOME clear indication that it wasn't exactly a "neutral" subject in the best of cases..

But I think that even a child who had no negative judgment of gays would probably still have a negative impulse reaction upon seeing it, simply because it's abnormal. Look, you're not going to have some huge proportion of the population turning gay in the future, so gays are always going to be a very small minority. That makes them an aberration by definition, and people have an instinctive negative reaction to people who enter the tribe but don't act like the tribe.

[Justforfun000]

First off I have to say, Wow. You're up late too. It's after 4:00 in the morning here in in TO.

Darth Wong Wrote:

I don't think that's really the same phenomenon. Judging people is clearly a conscious process. Looking at someone and saying "That's not right!" is a conscious judgment. It's not quite the same as the sort of reflexive revulsion that a hetero guy gets from gay imagery. That reaction can be strong even if the guy doesn't judge them at all, and does NOT have a "that's just wrong" reaction. I went through a teen homophobe phase, followed by enlightenment and eventually becoming an open supporter of gay rights, and through that whole process, I don't think that my gut reaction to gay imagery has changed at all.

I'm still trying to figure if there is any real difference in my reaction though...I mean as stupidly obvious as it should have been to my own mind that I MYSELF desired same-sex sexuality, I first reacted as if it was a physical recoil within me. Then I used this to justify the part of my mind saying it just shows that I should be fighting it.

Interesting though. It's so hard for me to truly know the majority's reaction as I'm on the other side of the fence. It's not even truly comparable to have me and my reaction to lesbian porn which would I think be the closest analogy..because they are still opposite genders to me and the people in question to your situation are the SAME gender.

What a weird combination of sexual situations. No wonder it's been such a complicated mess..lol.

I'm not sure that necessarily requires much conditioning. There's a pretty commonly known stereotype about gay guys being prettier than straight guys, so if you see a movie with a bunch of pretty-boys in it, I think even someone who'd never watched a gay porn in his life would say "hmmm, that looks gay".

But that's not the kind of guys I'm thinking of. I don't care for pretty boy looks. I like very masculine, beefy and even naturally furry (common term) guys. Guys that are in Titan or Falcon video are some typical examples.

I'll try to find a couple of examples of urls just to give you an idea:

(Aside...you have NO idea how hard it is to browse for gay porn stars and find any relatively CLEAN pictures. ! since I wanted to give some examples without throwing a dick in your face, I've been sifting. These are 'clean' in general, although I had to sacrifice better looking ones to me.. )


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But I think that even a child who had no negative judgment of gays would probably still have a negative impulse reaction upon seeing it, simply because it's abnormal. Look, you're not going to have some huge proportion of the population turning gay in the future, so gays are always going to be a very small minority. That makes them an aberration by definition, and people have an instinctive negative reaction to people who enter the tribe but don't act like the tribe.

Yeah, I guess there's no getting away from this point. We're never going to match the hetero population and neither can I imagine anyone wanting us to. We're fine in small doses but ultimately, too much of a good thing....

It's true. Humans are just as vulnerable to the biological instinct to conform. It's a known fact birds shun albino's as just one example. We have to deal with instinct over reason as a hurdle.

[Rye]

Well of course the reaction might be different if people have been conditioned not to think of homosexuals as different from the norm. You can accomplish a lot of things with conditioning. But the instinct of fearing the abnormal is very much built into our genetic code.

Actually, it's probably not really that ingrained as much as the amenability to be conditioned is. If you put a young baby in a pen with a harmless snake or spider, it will play with the snake like any other toy until it receives a bad reaction from the parent. Babies will also happily eat chocolate styled to look like shit until they spot the disgust reaction from their parents. When they get a little older it gets more pronounced through conditioning and humans tend towards a system of repetition and sameness.

That said, since obviously, the majority of people come from environments without much exposure to homosexuality as a normal state, most people (even, I suspect, homo/bisexuals upon first viewing/awareness) will feel threatened due to their unfamiliarity. I mean, some heterosexual people feel threatened by heterosexual affection, and I wouldn't be surprised if these people felt such a way because in their early life there wasn't the exposure to a "normal" heterosexual affection between their parents (and also mass culture), not the normal bonding between parents and child, etc. I would think a child brought up by gay parents would not be grossed out by homosexual affection between others for the same reasons.

An interesting idea for a long term experiment would be to compare a few babies and their reactions to it, one set brought up in a home where it was commonplace (and where media exposure to it was regular and positive) and one set where it was the "standard" control upbringing.

[Alyrium Denryle]

A threat response is a threat response, we react the same way to predatory threats as we do to social threats, same basic neurologic arousal, same adrenaline rush, etc etc. That having been said, the idea that a specific stimulus is hard-wired is idiotic.

Humans do not actually come with the same threat responses that other animals do, what we fear is based almost entirely on experience and is the result of phenotypic plasticity. Even threats that you would think should be givens due to our simian ancestry, like snakes, have to be learned. The only exception to this might be loud noises and things bigger than you. What is hard-wired is the pathway for the response and the learning of threats.

Now to address specifics.

However, I did hear about a Functional MRI test that was conducted where people were shown various images. In the men, depictions of male homosexual pornography threw up a subconscious threat response in their brain.

This does not actually provide any evidence that there is a genetic basis for homophobia, because those subconscious fear-responses could just as easily be learned. You would have to see if small unsocialized children, children who have not been exposed to homophobic attitudes, exhibit the same responses.

Sure, if you're proposing that men learnt to treat gays as a threat due to the roving gangs of homosexuals beating up straight people.

You are an idiot. Fear responses can be triggered for more than physical threats. Threats to social status, threats to a person's individual identity, all of them trigger the same fear response. A person could feel fear when exposed to homosexual images because it threatens their sense of their own straightness, they could feel fear because they fear that being associated with homosexuality will lead to them being percieved as gay and is thus a threat to their social status. Need I go on?

Personally, I think it's very likely that it's normal for a male brain to instinctively register male homosexuality as a threat.

After all, being raped by a male or group of males is a very serious concern.

No moron. Male-male rape is only a concern in dominance struggles, see prisons. The average male wandering about has little to fear of rape, and indeed it is not a threat to their reproductive success so unlike females, fear of rape will not be hard-wired as there is no selective pressure to do so.

They're strangers and it's being conducted in a clinical fashion. I don't see any reason to concoct this mechanism when it's more likely they simply have a repulsed reaction to seeing something they think is "gross".

Disgust and fear are on different neurological pathways last I checked.

I feel as if there's more than just cultural conditioning at work here...

Not really. Your fear-pathways is hardwired, but what trigger the pathway is learned.

As I understand it despite the determined exporting of Abrahamic religion over the centuries there's still no taboo against homosexuality in places like Thailand. I'd be interested to see how prevalent the 'male threat response to homosexuality' is in societies like Thailand which thus far have been relatively uncontaminated by Abrahamic religion.

In tribal cultures homosexuality is often accepted because they serve as helpers and provide alloparental care and assist in hunting and the like. Males are more useful for resource acquisition and are often at a 1.3:1 sex ratio with females, but too many unmated males causes problems, the solution is homosexuality, and some of the control mechanisms that spawn it are male-density dependent like the fraternal birth order effect.

That would indeed be an interesting experiment. However, I think the homo-friendly nature of other societies has been exaggerated somewhat. Even if you take away the "it's eeeeevil!" mentality of Abrahamic religion, it's still weird to see two macho-looking guys going at it. Even in most societies where such activity was allowed or approved, it was usually between an older man and a young male body-servant, who was rather androgynous-looking. And in other societies, it was merely tolerated, the way we tolerate the weird old guy in a small town who bicycles down Main Street drunk every day.

Not really homosexuality per se. It was a dominance hierarchy thing in greco-roman society it was acceptable to be the dominant individfual but not the submissive, which is why they invented tribadism.

In any case, in tribal cultures where homosexuality is actively beneficial instead of just being an artifact like it is in western cultures, homosexuality is often much more accepted, to my knowledge.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I think that there's no one cause, but one of the major causes that hasn't been mentioned is the premium placed by our animal brains on reproduction. Alpha male wannabes with something to prove fall easily into this base way of thinking that only completely disturbed failures would enter into relationships with men, because anyone with their head on straight would want to attach themselves to the most attractive and sought-after woman they can manage and flaunt their capacity to reproduce to other would be alpha male boneheads. The premium on the actual act of successful reproduction will vary with different subcultures, but either way, there you have it.

I also suspect this is why Abrahamic religions tend to focus so much disgust on homosexuality, as well; tribes that didn't put so much emphasis on reproduction and make it clear that sex wasn't intended for anything but making the tribe bigger and stronger probably couldn't compete with more stringent tribes.

[Superman]

You would have to see if small unsocialized children, children who have not been exposed to homophobic attitudes, exhibit the same responses.

Even that would be insufficient test. Young children have an immature and underdeveloped sympathetic nervous system. Humans have a long maturation process, and quite a bit of our genetic potential is realized as we develop. Sexual relationships are far more complex than running away from an attacking predator.

Ultimately, I don't think biology or environment can be discounted in what makes up a person.

[Finagle]

Humans have a social conformist instinct; they view anything which is different as potentially threatening, because it's from outside the tribe. The more different it is, the more threatening it is. Homosexuals are very different, so there is a natural tendency towards hostility.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. We're not hard-wired to fear homosexuals (and I've used the word fear very deliberately since I don't believe there's such a thing as instinctive hatred - just instinctive fear which leads to a fight or flight response), we're hard-wired to fear people who are different. Since we're all raised in different environments, we all have different subconcious definitions of what makes a person "normal" and what makes a person "different."

Having said that, the vast majority of people in the world today are raised in an environment in which gay is considered "different." The more you're exposed to gay people, however, the more "normal" they seem to you. For a straight person, I'm not sure if this ever seems "normal" enough to entirely eliminate the instinctive fear response, but it's definitely possible to reduce it to the point that you have absolutely no concious awareness of it.

As a bit of background, I'm a hetero man living in Vancouver BC, and when I was a young teenager I was terrified by the idea of being hit on by gay people. Then one of my friends (not a very close friend, but still a friend) came out of the closet, and my concious mind realized that gay people weren't that bad. Since then, I've met and known a lot more gay people, and I've even been hit on by a few gay guys (which wasn't nearly as terrifying as I once thought - in each case as soon as I told them I was straight that was the end of it). There have been 2 periods in my working career during which I was the only straight guy at my workplace, I've got half a dozen gay friends, and my fiance's brother is gay. The long and short of it is that now, if somebody's gay, not only does it no longer make me uncomfortable, but I don't even think twice about it.