360 degree: Anger, not fear, at core of homophobia

The tragedy that unfolded at a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12 has led to an intense focus on homophobia and the attitudes of societies across the world that, directly or indirectly, foster discrimination. Homophobia refers to hatred or aversion to being around lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT) people and manifests in dislike, bias, prejudice or discrimination towards the LGBT community and individuals.

For a psychologist, homophobia seems wrongly worded since it doesn’t fit with other phobias, which typically represent an irrational fear or anxiety that exists for different things, like heights, spiders, closed spaces, etc. and require confronting this specific fear to overcome it.

Homophobia is not a fear. It’s  a sense of disgust or loathing for people of different sexual orientation and requires major attitudinal shift to defeat it.

Anger rather than fear appears to be at the core of homophobia and this is often seen in the brutal nature of violence that occurs against LGBT individuals. It is easy to delude ourselves that violence related to homophobia occurs rarely and the Orlando shooting was an aberrance. The reality is that while we hope largescale brutal violence such as what happened in Orlando won’t ever occur again, LGBT individuals face discrimination, prejudice and violence in different forms repeatedly in their daily life. From jokes about sexual orientation to verbal abuse to physical violence, many people exhibit their homophobic attitudes quite openly in our country.

Where does such an attitude and belief system such as homophobia develop? Like all attitudes and beliefs, it grows out of one’s social environment, religion, societal views, parental influences and prevailing laws and policies that encourage discrimination.

Research in this area indicates that homophobia develops in people who are more religious, conservative and traditional in their outlook towards life and believe in specific, rigid sex roles. Conservative religious beliefs appear to support the notions that homosexuality is wrong or sinful and this view finds significant support within religious institutions which actively promote the belief that homosexuality and homosexuals should be hated as they are abnormal, unnatural and deviant.

Further, people who are homophobic are likely to not personally know any LGBT individuals and often live in areas where negative beliefs about LGBT people are strongly held. The fact, of course, is that homosexuality/bisexuality is not abnormal or pathological and is just as normal as heterosexuality.

When we raise a child to believe that only heterosexuals are normal, and inappropriately joke about or discuss other sexual orientations as being pathological, we create the perfect environment for homophobia to develop.

If a child struggling with his/her own sexual identity/orientation is given both subtle and clear messages that being gay is abnormal, hateful and sinful and is exposed to the prejudice and discrimination forced on LGBT people — viola, we’ve created “internalised homophobia” in that child.

This is the sense of self-hatred or self-loathing that many LGBT individuals go through before they accept their identity. This self-loathing, or internalised homophobia, can manifest as excessive judgements and hatred about other LGBT people, depression, anxiety, anger, to leading a secret life where they try to deny their own true feelings and rationalise their true feelings and behaviour.

To live life faking what you really feel, hiding your real self for fear of stigma, bias and discrimination, and not being able to accept yourself for who you are leads to conflicting feelings and often times anger and frustration. This anger, when directed inwards can become a mental health concern (depression, anxiety, low self-esteem), and when directed outwards, can take the shape of violence towards others.

While we do not have all the details of what happened in Orlando, preliminary reports have indicated that the shooter was possibly struggling with his own gay identity whilst also holding extremely homophobic beliefs.

All his possible self-loathing, mixed with conflict about his identity, his religious beliefs and significant anger problems, appear to have created a perfect cocktail of violence against others which ended in  him wreaking havoc and killing innocent people. While not everyone who is homophobic will react violently, fact is that.

Hate crimes are about prejudice, ignorance, fear and intolerance. While we will never know what was in the Orlando shooter’s mind as he wrecked so many lives, his homophobia is something we can all learn from.

We might not be people who can ever be as violent towards others, however, our thoughts, words and deeds often do impact others in a significant manner.