Stigma and Sexual Orientation

Understanding Prejudice against Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals

Gregory M Herek

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9781506320465
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Interpersonal Relations in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This timely and accessible contribution towards a deeper understanding of homophobia provides much-needed insight into the issue of prejudice in general.

Topics discussed include: the nature of antigay prejudice, stereotypes and behaviors; the consequences of homophobia and related phenomena on the well-being of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals; and the critical need for psychology and science to examine homophobia and related issues.

1

Unassuming Motivations

Contextualizing the Narratives of Antigay Assailants

KAREN FRANKLIN

---

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, which made the writing of this chapter possible. Deepest thanks also go to Greg Herek and Kathleen Erwin for their inspiration and thoughtful feedback.

Bias-related violence against homosexuals is believed to be widespread in the United States, with perpetrators typically described by victims as young men in groups who assault targets of convenience (Berrill, 1992).¹ Victim accounts suggest that assailants possess tremendous rage and hatred; indeed, documentation of horrific levels of brutality has led gay activists to characterize the violence as political terrorism aimed at all gay men and lesbians (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 1993). Other motives for antigay violence suggested in the literature include male bonding, proving heterosexuality, and purging secret homosexual desires (e.g., Goff, 1990; Harry, 1990). Due to a dearth of empirical research with assailants, motives are largely inferred from victim accounts and a handful of publicized cases. Thus, the goal of the research discussed in this chapter was to investigate assailants’ self-described motivations for their assaults.

I present below the stories of three assailants whom I interviewed as part of my dissertation research into the motivations and attitudes underlying antigay violence (Franklin, 1996). For the larger study, 11 assailants were recruited through newspaper advertisements and public records of criminal convictions. People who admitted assaulting gay men or lesbians were asked to complete a 2-hour interview. They were paid $20 and were assured of confidentiality within legal limits. The semistructured interviews elicited details of the assaults; the assailants’ explanations and justifications; biographical information on the assailants, as well as descriptions of their families and friendship networks; and the interviewees’ beliefs about social issues such as homosexuality, AIDS, and sex roles.

The larger project also included a survey of antigay behaviors and attitudes among 484 young adults at six community colleges in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The 137-item anonymous questionnaire consisted of a lengthy violence inventory as well as indexes of attitudes toward homosexuality, attitudes of respondents’ parents and friends, and beliefs about masculinity.² The survey results confirmed the commonplace nature of antigay behaviors in a region known for social tolerance, with 1 in 10 students admitting to physical violence and another 23.5% to name-calling directed at gay men and lesbians.

In this chapter I explore four central components of antigay violence. Although for heuristic purposes the constructs are presented as distinct, in fact my interviews supported the thesis of multiple determinism, in which a variety of social, psychological, and situational forces converge to create a violent incident (Pervin, 1986). The three cases presented here illustrate how these central elements play out in the context of one particularly prevalent pattern of antigay violence: assaults by men in groups or pairs on suspected homosexual men who are strangers to the assailants.

Other than their assaults, Andrew, Brian, and Eric have little in common.³ They span the spectrum of opinion toward homosexuality and, indeed, contemporary lifestyles more generally. Brian is a young White man with a college education; a self-described liberal, he has gay friends and argues against homophobia with family members. Andrew is an African American man in his mid-30s with a postcollege education who also espouses progressive politics and is “down with gay rights”;⁴ he resigned from, the military after witnessing a brutal gay bashing by fellow soldiers, but he also expressed personal revulsion for male-male sex acts, saying he would rather “lick my dog’s butt” than kiss a man. Eric is an economically and politically marginalized biracial (Native American and White) man who professes hatred of “faggots” and a litany of other groups, including both Jews and “rednecks,” but denies committing assaults based on sexuality per se:

Faggots are disgusting. It’s sick…. That’s why they destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, because all these guys were butt-fucking each other.… But what they do is their business. Some people beat the shit out of people instead of just accepting it. And that’s wrong I don’t like niggers, I don’t like faggots, I don’t even like too many White people. But I’ve never assaulted anyone just because they’re a fag or a Jew or a Black.

Andrew

Andrew is a soft-spoken 35-year-old “born-again pagan” from a large and “crazy” Catholic family. As a child, he was subjected to “unimaginable acts of cruelty” by his father, who tied him up and beat him for associating with the wrong crowd. Although liberal about race issues, Andrew’s father is virulently homophobic and has accused Andrew of being a “fag” and effeminate. Andrew’s mother is the opposite: “She doesn’t care if I marry a homo as long as he’s a Black one.”

Andrew expressed considerable preoccupation with homosexuality. Seeking reassurance from me that he looked heterosexual, he explained that not only his father but several other relatives and acquaintances as well have insinuated that he is gay Andrew frequents a local gay bar, where he allows men to buy him drinks and then tells them that he is not gay. “Who am I to argue with a free drink?” he explained.

Two years before the assault, Andrew was “sitting around smoking dope and drinking” with his martial arts partner and good friend of many years, when the friend tearfully confided that he was gay. Although the friend feared that Andrew “would think badly of him,” Andrew said he did not in fact lose respect. “He is no less of a man for telling me he’s gay. I’m prejudiced against certain types of gays, effeminate men…. My friend is a man’s man. He’d be the last person I’d expect.”

The assault took place while Andrew, his gay friend, and three other friends were “getting drunk” at a park and a man passed by smoking marijuana. When Andrew asked if he could buy a joint, the man reportedly patted Andrew’s buttock and said, “Sure, if I can take you in the bushes and fuck you in the ass.”

“He said it in Spanish, and at first I thought I’d mistranslated or he was joking,” Andrew recalled. “I didn’t give a thought to the man being gay till he opened his mouth. He sounded effeminate.”

Andrew said he “snapped.” He threw the man’s motorcycle down an embankment, punched the man in the throat, and kicked him once before his workout partner was able to restrain him. “I would have killed him.”

In line with his expressed animosity toward effeminate men, Andrew also recounted a separate incident in which he threatened an effeminate gay coworker whom he described as “lewd and obnoxious.” When the man joked about Andrew’s new shoes, Andrew retorted, “You drink the semen out of men’s penises and you have the nerve to insult me!” The man became angry, and Andrew “told him to calm down before I kicked his ass.”

Andrew’s emotional intensity and preoccupation with male homosexuality seem to fit the folkloric explanation of antigay violence as a defensive reaction to internal homosexual impulses. Nor is the fact that Andrew assaulted a homosexual in front of his close gay friend probably coincidental. How better to prove his masculinity and heterosexuality than by demonstrating it to his gay friend?

Reaction formation is probably the most popular explanation for antigay assaults. In this classic psychoanalytic defense mechanism, individuals replace anxiety-producing same-sex attractions with hostility and disgust (Ferenczi, 1914/1952). Particularly for young men reaching sexual maturity, same-sex attractions or difficulties forming intimate relationships with girls often combine with societally induced fear of homosexuality to cause insecurities about sexuality. Because young men feel they cannot discuss these concerns, their worries may lead to confusion, anxiety, shame, and—in some cases—public denigration of homosexuals in order to prove masculinity (Goff, 1990).

This defensive explanation is alluring both in its simplicity and in its location of the problem within the individual, thus psychologizing the phenomenon of heterosexism. However, my own research and that of Herek (e.g., 1987) suggest that negative attitudes and behaviors toward homosexuals are more commonly based on social affiliation needs and value conflicts than on exclusively defensive factors. Furthermore, because same-sex attractions do not engender defensiveness in cultures where homosexuality is not constructed as problematic, the defensive explanation is somewhat circular in that it does not explain why homo sexuality is perceived as threatening in our particular culture in the first place. Although a minority of individuals like Andrew may indeed be attempting to exorcise forbidden homosexual desires, this interpretation fails to explain the behaviors of the majority of people who assault gay men and lesbians.

Brian

Brian is a trim, athletic 27-year-old who sported a Malcolm X cap during our meeting. Raised in a White, middle-class Protestant family with “the ’50s paradigm, father-knows-best and all,” he rebelled against his parents’ conservative religious and political values and became a Libertarian and Jesse Jackson supporter. He prides himself on being an independent thinker who opposes male “tribalism” and “groupthink.”

At age 21, Brian committed a series of four late-night assaults on gay men. All were committed with friends in a secluded area known locally for gay male cruising. The first assault occurred when Brian and a friend went to the location to “check it out.” To prove to his doubting friend that a man loitering nearby was looking for sex, Brian approached the man and, “in a gay voice, with a lisp,” said, “We’re looking for some action.” When the man exhibited a “bitch attitude” by not responding, Brian punched him and knocked him down. “One punch,” Brian recalled. “I was surprised. The guy couldn’t take a punch.”

The next two assaults occurred when Brian and the same friend returned to the area to commit robberies, ostensibly because the friend wanted to steal a calling card to make telephone calls to another state. Because Brian’s friend was a “rough-looking Black dude” of whom potential victims might be afraid, Brian’s role was to “do the gay talk” and “lure” the victims. He enticed one target into the bushes, where he and his friend beat the victim and robbed him of money and a calling card. But when they tried this scheme again, their next target was able to escape:

I told my friend, “As soon as I ask the guy for a light, rush him.” The guy swung at my friend, and my friend ducked. The guy tried to run, but tripped. It was so funny watching this guy flip over in the air and then try to run. I was chasing him but dying laughing.… I made a mistake. I should have given him an uppercut when he lit my cigarette. The guy was big, about 6-foot-4 and husky, and we had a misconception that just because he was gay we could take him.

Brian’s fourth assault involved the same basic plan, but it was committed with a different friend. Again, the plan went awry when the victim saw the second assailant:

I got this guy and said, “Why don’t we go in the bushes and do something?” But when the guy saw my friend he got nervous and took off. I chased him.. He looked back at me like a scared deer.

Eric

Eric is a shy, wiry 26-year-old whose childhood was filled with numerous traumas, from parental alcoholism and death to adoption and abandonment. By age 15 he had garnered 10 arrests and was serving time in youth prison for a shooting. Economically marginalized and alienated from the political system, he resents “sniveling minorities” who are always “pissing and moaning.” He said American Indians such as himself “have more right than Blacks to piss and moan, yet they don’t.”

Despite his avowed racism, Eric differentiated himself from skinhead friends, whom he said “will walk by a Black person and spit at him.” Eric had been present when skinhead friends assaulted African Americans but said he did not participate. “It’s not my place to stop them or condone it. You can’t stop them.”

Eric admitted numerous assaults on a variety of people, including four assaults on gay men. The one group attack occurred while he and some friends were en route to a concert. Having just broken up with a girlfriend, Eric had “a total fuck-it attitude” and was heavily intoxicated. When a group of businessmen began staring at Eric and his friends—who were sporting Mohawks, nose rings, tattoos, and camouflage attire—Eric’s hotheaded friend Mike yelled, “What are you looking at?” The men laughed, prompting Mike to retort, “Are you guys a bunch of faggots or something? Suck my dick!” One of the businessmen yelled back, “Fuck you,” and the fight was on.

Mike jumped out of the pickup truck and struck the businessman twice. The man picked up a metal pole and swung it at Eric, hitting him in the boot. Eric and his friends piled out of the truck and chased the man. “Mike kicked the shit out of him.; all I did was kick him in the stomach. I was calling him faggot, cocksucker, puke.” Eric said the businessmen were “probably fags,” but he does not know for sure.

Eric recounted three other assaults on men whom he believed were homosexual. In one, he chased and kicked a biracial transvestite, for no reason other than that the man looked “weird” and was staring at him. Another time, he beat up a “fag” for stealing his cousin’s jacket. (“He was a fag and a thief, so that made it twice as bad.”) Most recently, he beat up “a total fag” acquaintance while the man was playing a video game at the home of one of Eric’s relatives:

He’d talk about his boyfriends all the time. One night I just got tired of it. I said, “Don’t talk about that shit in front of me.” He kept on, so I beat the shit out of him. I gave him an uppercut, and split his cheek open. I put his head through the glass table, got him down on the floor, and kicked him a bunch of times. He kept saying he’d had enough, but I said, “I don’t think so.” … The next day I felt bad. I apologized to him.

Eric stressed that he assaulted this man not because he was homosexual, but because “he wasn’t respecting me. I didn’t care that he’s gay, if he’d shut up about it, be quiet about his preference.”

Enforcement of Gender Norms

Although their assaults fall within most legal definitions of hate crime, Brian, Andrew, and Eric—like the rest of the informants I interviewed—all insisted that their assaults were not motivated by hatred of homosexuals. To reconcile the apparent contradiction between the socially normative attitudes often held by assailants and the viciousness and brutality of their behavior toward gay men and lesbians, during the course of my research I came to conceptualize the violence not in terms of individual hatred but as an extreme expression of American cultural stereotypes and expectations regarding male and female behavior.

From this perspective, assaults on homosexuals and other individuals who deviate from sex role norms are viewed as a learned form of social control of deviance rather than a defensive response to personal threat (Millham & Weinberger, 1977). Thus, heterosexism is not just a personal value system, it is a tool in the maintenance of gender dichotomy. In other words, through heterosexism, any male who refuses to accept the dominant culture’s assignment of appropriate masculine behavior is labeled early on as a “sissy” or “fag” and then subjected to bullying (Green, 1987). Similarly, any woman who opposes male dominance and control can be labeled a lesbian and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Perspectives
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• 1. Unassuming Motivations: Contextualizing the Narratives of Antigay Assailants
• 2. Homophobia in the Courtroom: An Assessment of Biases Against Gay Men and Lesbians in a Multiethnic Sample of Potential Jurors
• 3. Do Heterosexual Women and Men Differ in Their Attitudes Toward Homosexuality? A Conceptual and Methodological Analysis
• 4. The Relationship Between Stereotypes of and Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gays
• 5. Authoritarianism, Values, and the Favorability and Structure of Antigay Attitudes
• 6. Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, and Stigma: Voter Attitudes and Behavior in the Politics of Homosexuality
• 7. Minority Stress Among Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals: A Consequence of Heterosexism, Homophobia, and Stigmatization
• 8. Internalized Homophobia, Intimacy, And Sexual Behavior Among Gay and Bisexual Men
• 9. Developmental Implications of Victimization of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youths
• 10. The Postmodern Family: An Examination of the Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives of Gay and Lesbian Parenting
• 11. Bad Science in the Service of Stigma: A Critique of the Cameron Group’s Survey Studies
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors