I would like to address a very challenging and oppressive issue lesbians encounter. The issue is homophobia. Facing this complicated interwoven system of thinking, so prevalent in our society, is essential to empowering our identity, our relationships, and our quality of life. Regardless of the number of successful, or unsuccessful, coping mechanisms we utilize with our conscious awareness to deal with or deny its presence, it is always there and active in our psyches and in our world.
Homophobia is a term used to describe the fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. It can also mean hatred, hostility, disapproval of, or prejudice towards homosexuals, or homosexual behavior. The term is frequently used in academic and scientific journals, but homophobia is not a clinical phobia. There are people who disagree with any usage of the concept homophobia and several dictionaries characterize this type of fear irrational.
The concept of homophobia was first introduced by psychologist George Weinberg in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual. It was published one year before the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
In recent years some people have tried to introduce new terms such as heterosexism because it doesn’t have the association with a phobia. Heterosexism refers to the privileging of heterosexuality over homosexuality. Recent psychological literature has suggested the term homonegitivity to differentiate between fear-based thinking instead of reflecting disapproval of homosexuality.
Gregory Herek, seeking to avoid both focus on individual psychology of “homophobia” and the collective cultural factors of “heterosexism” has proposed the term “sexual prejudice”, referring to “all negative attitudes based on sexual orientation, whether the target is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual.”
In a 1998 address, Coretta Scott King asserted that, “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that is seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.”
Various psychoanalytic theories explain homophobia as a threat to an individual’s same-sex identity, which can cause repression, denial, depression, confusion and numerous health issues. This form of homophobia is called “internalized homophobia”. It occurs when a person who is gay feels that being homosexual is wrong or immoral. Internalized homophobia produces uncomfortable feelings when a lesbian is unable to accept and love herself as a homosexual. We usually associate this experience with “being in the closet”. There may be times when being "out" is safe and comfortable and other situations when a decision is made to not share who we are. When these feelings are present, we can be riddled with the frightening perception that we are not normal. This activates an uncomfortable split in our psyches and forces our lesbian identity into our unconscious.
When lesbians are in the closet, two distinct forces are at play. Entrophobia is the fear or discomfort with your own sexuality. Entrophobia creates a lot of torment. Negative voices shouting internalized homophobic judgments in your head berate you unmercifully for being attracted to woman. The fear and interference this produces can sabotage many areas of your life if not made conscious. Damaging your sense of self is the most serious consequence of feeling unconsciously uncomfortable with your sexuality. Some of the symptoms of entrophobia commonly experienced are guilt, inadequacy, anger and depression.
The other force at play when you are “in the closet” is xenophobia. Xenophobia is the fear of being different. It is usually experienced as a fear of parental or social rejection. The way this works in our psyches is that we unconsciously feel different in an unacceptable way. The excessive fear of being unacceptable and the possibility of being abandoned can lead to powerful self-doubt accompanied by feelings of shame, guilt, fear, and anxiety. Not being able to fulfill parental and societal expectations can have a paralyzing and debilitating effect on self-esteem. Unconsciously feeling bad about feeling different can create havoc in all areas of life.
It is much simpler to project our unconscious fears outside of ourselves onto parents, people at work, and society than to deal with the personal homophobia that is torturing us inside. It feels safer to criticize these external views that are threatening us. We are bombarded everyday by hetero-centric themes, images, and stories, so much so, that it has become a hardwired notion in most of us that being heterosexual is the only way to be. After all, our social homophobic environment explicitly or implicitly supposes everyone is heterosexual.
From the hetero-centric point of view, anyone who doesn’t fit into this mold is considered deviant. This makes homophobia lurk within lesbians, while perceiving that it is coming from the outside. After all, we were raised with our family’s beliefs, religious values and within the homophobic environment of our culture and society. It is likely when we were growing up, most people didn’t even think about homosexuality. Their prejudices remain to this day in their unconscious as core beliefs. The familiarity of being immersed in this way of thinking influences us as well. If we let these beliefs go unquestioned, we are extremely vulnerable to negative self-talk and denial of our true selves. It also makes us easy targets for other people’s judgments.
Internalized homophobia brings insecurity and intolerance. There are many ways our unconscious homophobia manifests. Probably the most common one is “passing”. This happens whenever we dress and act as if we are heterosexual. Another way is avoiding being seen with lesbians who are “out” for fear of being discovered by association. Failing to share things in our lives creates a wall of protection that can hide our discomfort. Feeling superior to heterosexual women by rejecting them or believing that lesbians are no different from them can be another coping mechanism. Having huge out-of-proportion negative feelings about lesbians as parents, artificial insemination, and bi-sexual, lesbian, gay or transgender people is another way the intolerance of our unconscious internalized homophobia appears.
One of the problems in recognizing our struggles with internalized homophobia is that it is something we rarely talk about. The isolation this produces, keeps us locked in our own loop, with no way out. Lesbians often feel shame even having these feelings. This makes the topic seem out of the question to talk about with other lesbians. The fear of being rejected by society pales when doubts and self-hatred for being a lesbian emerge in the company of other lesbians.
One important way healing can begin for lesbians is to establish a safe forum within our community to be able to talk about internalized homophobia. We do not have to face these feelings alone. Every lesbian struggles with these learned beliefs. Heterosexuals also need to open their minds and hearts to better understand. We are dealing with a collective issue that will continue to create confusion and pain for everyone until it is dealt with.
In order to live in a healthy way, it is so important for lesbians to become conscious of the deep scars remaining from growing up with all the disapproving homophobic messages sent by our families, schools, churches and society. We deserve a safe and comfortable world where we can be happy, live authentically and feel proud of whom we are. Separating from our learned way of thinking will help us discover our own belief systems and values. This awareness can help us live a more authentic and empowered life. Being able to validate and celebrate being a lesbian is the path to a healthy self-identity.
Once our awareness becomes conscious and integrated, the opinions of others will no longer carry the power they do now. This will make it possible to let them have their unresolved homophobic beliefs without taking them on as our own. It will put us in the position of offering them positive role models and let them have a new experience of lesbians as we live our lives in a secure balanced way.
Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, included in her book Dream Work, a poem that beautifully captures the struggle, the understanding and the hope for our transformation of internalized homophobia.
WILD GEESE
You do not have to be good.
You do not have o walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
Are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
Homophobia is a term used to describe the fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. It can also mean hatred, hostility, disapproval of, or prejudice towards homosexuals, or homosexual behavior. The term is frequently used in academic and scientific journals, but homophobia is not a clinical phobia. There are people who disagree with any usage of the concept homophobia and several dictionaries characterize this type of fear irrational.
The concept of homophobia was first introduced by psychologist George Weinberg in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual. It was published one year before the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
In recent years some people have tried to introduce new terms such as heterosexism because it doesn’t have the association with a phobia. Heterosexism refers to the privileging of heterosexuality over homosexuality. Recent psychological literature has suggested the term homonegitivity to differentiate between fear-based thinking instead of reflecting disapproval of homosexuality.
Gregory Herek, seeking to avoid both focus on individual psychology of “homophobia” and the collective cultural factors of “heterosexism” has proposed the term “sexual prejudice”, referring to “all negative attitudes based on sexual orientation, whether the target is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual.”
In a 1998 address, Coretta Scott King asserted that, “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that is seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.”
Various psychoanalytic theories explain homophobia as a threat to an individual’s same-sex identity, which can cause repression, denial, depression, confusion and numerous health issues. This form of homophobia is called “internalized homophobia”. It occurs when a person who is gay feels that being homosexual is wrong or immoral. Internalized homophobia produces uncomfortable feelings when a lesbian is unable to accept and love herself as a homosexual. We usually associate this experience with “being in the closet”. There may be times when being "out" is safe and comfortable and other situations when a decision is made to not share who we are. When these feelings are present, we can be riddled with the frightening perception that we are not normal. This activates an uncomfortable split in our psyches and forces our lesbian identity into our unconscious.
When lesbians are in the closet, two distinct forces are at play. Entrophobia is the fear or discomfort with your own sexuality. Entrophobia creates a lot of torment. Negative voices shouting internalized homophobic judgments in your head berate you unmercifully for being attracted to woman. The fear and interference this produces can sabotage many areas of your life if not made conscious. Damaging your sense of self is the most serious consequence of feeling unconsciously uncomfortable with your sexuality. Some of the symptoms of entrophobia commonly experienced are guilt, inadequacy, anger and depression.
The other force at play when you are “in the closet” is xenophobia. Xenophobia is the fear of being different. It is usually experienced as a fear of parental or social rejection. The way this works in our psyches is that we unconsciously feel different in an unacceptable way. The excessive fear of being unacceptable and the possibility of being abandoned can lead to powerful self-doubt accompanied by feelings of shame, guilt, fear, and anxiety. Not being able to fulfill parental and societal expectations can have a paralyzing and debilitating effect on self-esteem. Unconsciously feeling bad about feeling different can create havoc in all areas of life.
It is much simpler to project our unconscious fears outside of ourselves onto parents, people at work, and society than to deal with the personal homophobia that is torturing us inside. It feels safer to criticize these external views that are threatening us. We are bombarded everyday by hetero-centric themes, images, and stories, so much so, that it has become a hardwired notion in most of us that being heterosexual is the only way to be. After all, our social homophobic environment explicitly or implicitly supposes everyone is heterosexual.
From the hetero-centric point of view, anyone who doesn’t fit into this mold is considered deviant. This makes homophobia lurk within lesbians, while perceiving that it is coming from the outside. After all, we were raised with our family’s beliefs, religious values and within the homophobic environment of our culture and society. It is likely when we were growing up, most people didn’t even think about homosexuality. Their prejudices remain to this day in their unconscious as core beliefs. The familiarity of being immersed in this way of thinking influences us as well. If we let these beliefs go unquestioned, we are extremely vulnerable to negative self-talk and denial of our true selves. It also makes us easy targets for other people’s judgments.
Internalized homophobia brings insecurity and intolerance. There are many ways our unconscious homophobia manifests. Probably the most common one is “passing”. This happens whenever we dress and act as if we are heterosexual. Another way is avoiding being seen with lesbians who are “out” for fear of being discovered by association. Failing to share things in our lives creates a wall of protection that can hide our discomfort. Feeling superior to heterosexual women by rejecting them or believing that lesbians are no different from them can be another coping mechanism. Having huge out-of-proportion negative feelings about lesbians as parents, artificial insemination, and bi-sexual, lesbian, gay or transgender people is another way the intolerance of our unconscious internalized homophobia appears.
One of the problems in recognizing our struggles with internalized homophobia is that it is something we rarely talk about. The isolation this produces, keeps us locked in our own loop, with no way out. Lesbians often feel shame even having these feelings. This makes the topic seem out of the question to talk about with other lesbians. The fear of being rejected by society pales when doubts and self-hatred for being a lesbian emerge in the company of other lesbians.
One important way healing can begin for lesbians is to establish a safe forum within our community to be able to talk about internalized homophobia. We do not have to face these feelings alone. Every lesbian struggles with these learned beliefs. Heterosexuals also need to open their minds and hearts to better understand. We are dealing with a collective issue that will continue to create confusion and pain for everyone until it is dealt with.
In order to live in a healthy way, it is so important for lesbians to become conscious of the deep scars remaining from growing up with all the disapproving homophobic messages sent by our families, schools, churches and society. We deserve a safe and comfortable world where we can be happy, live authentically and feel proud of whom we are. Separating from our learned way of thinking will help us discover our own belief systems and values. This awareness can help us live a more authentic and empowered life. Being able to validate and celebrate being a lesbian is the path to a healthy self-identity.
Once our awareness becomes conscious and integrated, the opinions of others will no longer carry the power they do now. This will make it possible to let them have their unresolved homophobic beliefs without taking them on as our own. It will put us in the position of offering them positive role models and let them have a new experience of lesbians as we live our lives in a secure balanced way.
Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, included in her book Dream Work, a poem that beautifully captures the struggle, the understanding and the hope for our transformation of internalized homophobia.
WILD GEESE
You do not have to be good.
You do not have o walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
Are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
Are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
