MORE ON THE HOMOPHOBIC MIND

From PBS' Frontline documentary site:

First of all, it has to do with what we fantasize that "being gay" means, which is to say, for men, being the passive receptor. To be gay inverts the gender order. In the public fantasy, in the homophobic mentality, to be gay is to be a man acting like a woman, or a woman acting like a man. One of the most common questions that straight people ask gay people is: "Which one of you is the boy, and which one of you is the girl?" It upsets the order of things. It throws the whole cosmos into chaos. You don't know who's the boy and who's the girl, and that's the only way we're able to see things.

. . . In a heterosexual relationship, you always have gender inequality, because you have a man and a woman, and they bring with them gender inequality. You can't get away from it. But a gay relationship actually makes gender equal. It neutralizes it. If there's going to be a power imbalance, it has to be based on something else. And it often is--on race, on size, on class, on all manner of things. But in the idea of a gay relationship is also the possibility of both being the penetrated and the penetrator, both the active and the passive. When people ask gay couples which one of you's the boy and which one of you's the girl, the most common answer is, "We both are," because you can move back and forth. And that really makes things confusing. . . .

Click here for the rest.

This is actually only one interview from the overall site devoted to the Frontline episode "Assault on Gay America." I haven't seen the documentary, myself, but I have seen some video clips on the site, and it looks pretty cool. Actually, there's lots of cool looking articles there, and I urge you to check it out. For instance, I found this:

Homophobia Questionnaire

For much of this century, homosexuality was defined by the medical and scientific community as a psychiatric disorder. In the last several decades, however, "homosexuality" has been removed from the diagnostic manual of disorders, and research emphasis has shifted to the other side of the problem: the study of the negative, sometimes pathological, reactions to homosexuals by heterosexuals.

The term "homophobia" has gained currency as a one-word summary of this widespread problem. Since the early 1980's, scientists attempting to measure homophobia have developed a number of different homophobia scales and questionnaires.

In 1996, as part of his study on homophobia, Dr. Henry Adams and his colleagues at the University of Georgia developed their own "Homophobia Scale" by modifying scales used by other researchers in earlier studies. It's a 25-item questionnaire "designed to measure your thoughts, feelings and behaviors with regards to homosexuality." The instructions stressed: "It is not a test, so there are no right or wrong answers."

Below, FRONTLINE has reproduced this "Wright, Adams, and Bernat Homophobia Scale." It is not a perfect measure of anti-gay feelings or ideas, and is not a predictor of potential for anti-gay violence. [Though this scale was used in a research project designed to test the theory that homophobia is a manifestation of repressed homosexual desire, the scale is not a measure of homosexuality.]

Do you secretly fear homosexuals? Take the test, here. I scored as a "high-grade non-homophobic." But then, I'm from the theater: gayness is quite fabulous there, and if you don't like it, that's just too F'ing bad.

What about YOU?

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