Study shows that Homophobia is not actually a phobia!
From the article…
“The findings suggest that social conditions and attitudes, not psychological factors, create homophobia, the researchers said. In other words, homophobia is closer to racism than it is to a phobia.
Regarding treatment for homophobia, the study’s authors recommended altering social conditioning in homes and schools. “
Like the post and its response I just posted, this is a post and response from Itchy Feet. I have included my mother’s original post and the response that she deleted and then tried to block me from posting.
Must be the Alien Experiments
Sometimes I have to ask where in the world did these people come from?
I have been doing family tree research as of late and tracing branches of the family back to the 1600’s in the United States and prior to that it appears they came heavily from Ireland, and England with just a bit of Germany and Italy tossed in to the mix.
But nothing can explain where these people came from.
I can at least be thankful that the whiney bitch that thinks 20 friends are not good enough and it should have been closer to 200, is not related to me.
I have said many times that I have good kids. I guess that means that they arn’t openly schisophrenic and none sitting in jail.
Then again I would rather someone came out as insane, than thinking they were “omni-sexual” whatever bullshit that represents. Now the last statement made by that person that claims to be coming out has told me that he had never had sexual relations with anyone. I assume that is a lie. One can not choose to be any-sexual if they do not choose to have sex.
As far as talking or not talking to my children about their sex lives, no problem. I know alot about sex and its … perversions and what is acutally a satisfying sex life, and frankly I am not afraid to talk about any detail of it. However I will never attempt to pry personal details out of anyone about thier goings on.
Just as some people know how to push others away when they are claiming to be trying to establish relationships, they think that it is invisible when they are trying to set their own mother off by talking about same sex relationships.
Once I understand the topic and motivation, it is hard to ruffle me with a little lewd verbal flaunting. It of course was this person who had to hang up on me and claim, “I have nothing further to say to you at this time”.
Despite his best efforts it is he who hangs up on me, and not me on him. I think he wants me to hang up on him. He wants me to reject him as he gets others to reject him too.
Never fear!
I do reject him!
I reject that he knows what the hell he is talking about. There is no omni-sexual humans. men do not have menstral cycles where they hold water as women do. (I must explain this one a bit. Women have hormonal changes once a month because their bodies are preparing to grow a baby. When the extra fluids are no longer needed and the lining to the uterus usefull, then the body rids itself of it, and the cycle starts again, always preparing to grow a baby. Men do not grow babies, they have sperm and ejacualte at the ready all the time and do not replenish it once a month. It is more likely that the moon and the tide effects the body because of gravitational pull and that is why insanity is deemed lunatic, because lunatics go off more during the full moon, or maybe it is just the alien visits that effect the lunatics bodies )
Am I accepting of his sexual orientation? (whatever it may be)No, of course not. He was born a male child (I remember stressing over the circumcision question alot), he was attracted to females long before he was attracted to males. He is just trying to make waves, trying to prove in more ways that he is unique and different from all other humans. ( I think it is referred to as delusions of grandure).
He doesn’t claim to be chosen of God to be a perfect man, and he doesn’t claim that he has seen a vision of the virgin mary in his plate of enchiladas, but he does have several other delusions that qualify him as suspect.
Some of you reading this may think it is rude of me to say such things that might embarrass the poor young man, but get over it, there is no embarrassment worse than “coming out”.
He might as well raise a flag and say, “Hey look at me, I am a sex addict, if it moves I get turned on by it!. “
Ahh but no, he is special, he is “omni-sexual”. Ahh the uniquness of it all. Lucky him. It is not surprise that he surrounds himself mostly with people with the morals of houseflys. That is what he professes that he wants to do to. He hasn’t done enough of it yet and needs more. Goody for him. But then I have already said that I think he has been lying about more than his attraction to men, I think he has openly lied or mislead in his statements about any sexuality.
There ya go, you posted so I would post back, now you have it! Yeah you are still my son, but you are a stupid, egotistical, selfish fool. Who thinks he can impress people with being ultra-unique. Get a clue (the kind you need are cheap, just take a step back into reality).
I used to be impressed with your IQ and your quick wit. But it gets old real quick when you pervert it into a quest to be Mr/Ms Sexually Unique.
By the way when you get it on, are you the man or the woman?
Ha! that is so lame! lesbians use dildos and claim they don’t need men, then why the need to imitate one? gay men have a dominate male/passive female relation, so who are they fooling.. oh thats right themselves.
You really should check into getting t-shirts that say “Fuck off Teel” and just hand them out to people when you meet them, cause they will need it later when you finally push them away hard enough.
Posted by Fluff at June 10, 2002 10:10 PM
First, I would like to clarify that I never claimed to have a “menstrual cycle”. I am keenly aware that I do not menstruate. Yet I am also aware that about once a month I have symptoms similar to those women assume they own wholly. If it is the moon and the tides or some chemical imbalance or something wholly psycho-somatic makes no difference; the symptoms are real. If you choose not to believe me, about this or anything else, that is your prerogative.
Sexual orientation has a lot more to do with attraction and interpersonal relationships than it does with how much and how often someone does or does not have sex. Of course, the gender of the people that they choose to have sex with is usually related to who they are attracted to, and who they are having interpersonal relationships with. Just because I have chosen to abstain from sex doesn’t make me any less attracted to guys (or girls) any more than a devout Christian abstaining from sex until marriage is relieved from experiencing attraction as a result. Nor does it mean that I lack a sexual orientation, any more than a virginal bride lacks a sexual orientation the day before her wedding. Your statements are ridiculous.
When I breached the topic of same-sex relationships, it was not to “set you off”, just as it was not my intention to “set you off” with my posts today. The point is to be honest with you (and with myself and anyone else who chooses to read my site) about my life and my choices. Hanging up on you, as I mentioned, was over an hour later when you said flat out that you “refuse to accept that there could be any other way to understand” what i had written, which had been understood by everyone else who read it, and myself who wrote it, to mean something other than what you chose to believe. If you’re going to admit that you refuse to see that there could possibly exist truths other than the ones you have chosen, there is no reason to continue communicating with you. Which you also rejected, resulting in my disconnection of our call.
I don’t want you to reject me. if I wanted you to reject me, I would probably have been more open with you about my attraction to the same sex when I was 13 or 14 instead of 23. Except my impression at that time was that if I did so, I would be severely beaten and perhaps tossed out on the street or subjected to some bizarre spiritual cleansing, none of which would change the fact (the fact) that I am attracted to men. Even a year ago when the topic came up on my website, I could see your reaction was strong and emotional and actually what I had expected, so I told you what you wanted to hear (which is still as true now as it was then), that I have not at this time engaged in sexual intercourse with either men or women, and do not have any immediate plans to do so. Still, against the recommendations of everyone I know that knows you, I decided that continuing to hide this part of me (that’s right; it’s been a part of me the whole time – it’s not just a decade-long phase I’m going through) from you was doing more harm to me than the truth could do to you.
Are you accepting of my sexual orientation (whatever it may be)? No. Which means that even if my sexual orientation were monosexual, heterosexual, straight-and-narrow, boring breeder, you would not accept my sexual orientation. So why bother hiding the truth from you? As far as “trying to make waves” goes, I can’t imagine what the benefit of lying about this to you would be, or where you think these “waves” will propagate. Everyone I know but you and dad that I have had any sort of contact with in the last six months either knows or has known for years that this is the truth. If you want to believe that I was attracted to girls before I was attracted to boys, that’s fine; at least some part of you is beginning to acknowledge that I am attracted to boys. Oh, and as to whether you can embarrass me about my own sexuality: you cannot. That’s what we mean by “Pride”; we’re not embarrassed about who we’re attracted to, not matter what others may think of it.
It’s really too bad that you can’t see more to someone with a sexual orientation other than your own as anything but having the “morals of houseflies.” There really can be a lot more to same-sex relationships than just sex, just as there really can be as little to opposite-sex relationships as just sex. People are people, no matter who they’re attracted to, and how much they choose to have sex or abstain from sex.
As far as whether I am more aggressive or submissive, top or bottom, dominant or passive in any sexual or non-sexual situation; it depends. Because I have a mind open to more than one idea, I am able to choose a role appropriate to my relationship with the person, our moods at the time, and maybe the position of the moon. I am not defined by societal norms of how people with a similar genetic makeup should behave, but like many of the more enlightened people in the world, choose my own role in life.
On pushing people away: it is something I have definitely done in the past, and wish to avoid in the future. I have made a lot of progress that you are clearly not aware of in this and many other areas of my personal development, though I agree that I have more work to do, more development to make. In the last few years the problem has not been my pushing people away, but my not pursuing them actively enough that has reduced the number of people I spend time with, and my frequency of ‘romantic’ relationships. Your advice and feedback on my not following through was helpful, and I have made progress even in the time since out conversation in correcting my behaviour. Despite the fact that you apparently thought the point of that part of the conversation was to “set you off.”
Posted by Teel at June 11, 2002 11:24 AM
The following is a post that my mother made last night on Itchy Feet and then deleted, I guess because she didn’t like my response (included below) or maybe she realized she was wrong (heaven forbid!).
And Another Thing
College Advisors:
Oh please… don’t even. Poor little orphan. One would think he was hatched and left to fend for himself all his life.
Mother’s statements:
On graduating High School at 16: “I am glad you are graduating high school early, then you can get at least 2 years of college under your belt before you run off to find life.
On planning for College: You should make an appointment with an advisor to make sure you are taking the right classes. In fact you should get an ASU catalog and see if you can see an advisor out there.
On moving beyond community college: You need to make an appointment with an advisor. What will he do? He will help you figure out how your classes transfer and what you should do next.
Then… I went with you to your meeting with the advisor and suggested that you meet with him again to be sure that you understood how it would work out.
Then you changed your major and I imagine you saw an advisor at that time. But by then you had moved to Tempe and lo and behold, you couldn’t/wouldn’t pass your classes. Presumabley because you were trying to find yourself and trying to get the teachers to see that you were too unique to do the assignments as assigned.
Now you say that after all these years you finally know what advisors are for as if you had not been told by not only me but your father too.
Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that you finally decided to stop being pig headed about your education and go back and finish it. And alot sooner than your dad did, who took 20 years between starting and finishing his degree.
I do think it is rude to act as if you were on your own about it all. The only thing I did was to insist that you make the appointments yourself, because a college student must learn to make phone calls by himself for important things.
Poor little boy raised by wolves and no wonder he is so confused… and here I thought I was accused of being an over protective mother the other half of the time. sheesh..
Posted by Fluff at June 10, 2002 11:42 PM
Clearly you are ignorant of the full role of the advisor, because their job is supposed to encompass a lot more than was done in the meeting you were present for in the Physics department. That little meeting, I have learned was like a little pre-meeting for full advisement that never took place. When I switched majors to English, I actually managed to get an advisor who did less advising than that head of the Physics department. He was over-booked, sure, and did the bare minimum, which was the same as the one-minute meeting I had a couple of weeks ago; make sure I’ve got the right sort of classes written down and put his electronic signature on my account. No guidance, no actual advisement, just wham-bam-out-the-door.
As far as whatever bullshit you’ve decided to believe about why I didn’t pass my classes, I’ve said it many times to many people, and admit that it will probably continue to be a problem for the rest of my life; I have no interest in politics and brown-nosing. I also have no interest in any corporate ladder, and I’m not actually going back to school because I want a degree. I want to paint, and I’d like to be ‘classicly trained’ and ASU offers that to me. I’ll jump through a few hoops to get to the training I’m looking for, but I’m likely to not get far in the Fine Arts program because I refuse to Politic and brown-nose. Just like I’m not kissing your ass right now. Your parenting style was to let me figure things out and make mistakes on my own, and if you so much as begin to claim that you did anything else, you’re exaggerating. So, I did my best to figure things out, and you’re right after 2.5 years of college I decided that the brown-nosing wasn’t for me. I also realized that I couldn’t possibly work full time and devote myself to a full load of classes. That’s for the brown-nosers, I think. The ones who do things other than work to get ahead. I’ll admit that I’m lazy, but I’ve earned everything I’ve got from my job and my ability to live on my own to my debt. I didn’t kiss anyone’s ass or play the game of politics to get what I’ve got.
What you failed to do, what perhaps you are incapable of doing, what left me “raised by wolves”, was that neither you nor anyone else impressed upon me the importance of ass-kissing and politics and the right and expected way of going through life from early on. I don’t want to blame you; I don’t consider myself bad off, just different. I didn’t learn what I was supposed to be doing in high school until years later, and it wasn’t from you. I didn’t find a good reason to go to college until I learned what I wanted to do with my life, but maybe I’d have finished college anyway if I’d been set on the right track a little sooner. It wasn’t community college and then ASU, by the way. If I had started working towards it sooner, if I had known how early I needed to start, I could have gone to any school in the country. I could be doing work at MIT’s Media Lab right now.
But instead I’m running some increasingly popular websites (which makes me happy) and writing novels and poetry in my spare time (which makes me happier) and painting beautiful and captivating works when I can (which makes me even happier and more fulfilled). I may decide to work towards that job at the Media Lab someday, but I’m fine with the way things are going.
I also happen to know another good way they could have gone with better leadership and guidance at a young age.
(Note: I wrote this and tried to post it originally at 00:30, but Cox decided I didn’t need internet access, and I went to bed. Then when I tried to post it in the morning, I found that the entry I was trying to comment on had disappeared.)
I just made this up, but I thought I’d share, since it turned out quite delicious. It’s a pretty basic smoothie, I’m sure, but no one ever taught me how to make one, so I’ve just been making stuff up with whatever I had around. This recipe calls for a standard-size blender.
Berry-mix smoothie
1lb fresh strawberries
1/2cup sugar
some milk
some preserves of a berry other than strawberry
Start by rinsing your strawberries and coring them. Don’t bother cutting them into pieces, just toss them in the empty blender. Add milk (skim is recommended, though 2% or whole should thicken more) until the strawberries are about half-covered. Add 1/2 cup white sugar*. Add two tablespoons of any fruit preserves. Berry preserves are recommended. I used Blackberry Preserves today, but I’ll use Boysenberry Preserves later this week. Cover and blend on ‘Blend’ for at least thirty seconds or until everything appears to be thoroughly blended. Serve immediately for freshest flavour.
I think I’ll have another glass.
I just looked it up – There are about 8 grams of dietary fiber if you drink the whole thing. Delicious.
A while ago, I thought it would be about coming out, but the more I read about it, the more I thought about it, the more I talked to people about myself and my place in the world and the way people think about me already, there wasn’t much coming out to do. I’d made it pretty clear to just about everyone but my family that I was attracted to both sexes, but not in a promiscuous way like many bisexuals. I’d even come up with a better word to describe by sexual preference that anyone who knew me agreed was right; I’m an omnisexual. Which means I’m not a Heterosexual. Which means that if I’m not telling my family that I’m attracted to men, I must be in the closet, right?
Not quite right. My parents seem to have known one way or another that I also like men. I’ve certainly never said that I didn’t. There’s more to it though. There’s the idea of sexuality generally. There’s the idea that one’s parents don’t really want to hear about the sex lives of their children, no matter who it is with. They may want to see them settle down and produce grandchildren and be happy with whomever they’re with, but they don’t want to hear about the physical activities that led up to the production of grandchildren. Parents don’t have that sort of relationship with their children, generally. I know mine don’t want that kind of relationship with me. Sometimes I think they’d like me to be the celibate person I sometimes dread I am going to find myself in the long run, so they never have to hear about my relationships, good OR bad.
I’ve worried so long about the possibility of offending their sensibilities that i have censored myself far too much here and in other areas of my life. When I told my older sister outright in December that I prefer men, she emphaticly advised me that I should wait to tell my parents until sometime after they pass away. When I told my younger sister she said she had ‘always assumed that was the case,’ but that my older sister was right, I shouldn’t bring the subject up with my mother and father. My father, I think, has been worrying about this for a while recently; he keeps hinting to me that there’s something he needs to talk to me about, and he sometimes drops by unexpectedly (usually when I’m not there because I wasn’t expecting anyone) and kept telling my sister (who was living with me for the last six months) that he needed to talk to me, saying something about being a sinner. I haven’t spoken to him on the subject yet, but the last time I saw him was after I brought it up with my mother, and I gave him every opportunity to breach whatever topic is on his mind (maybe I’m wrong; maybe he thinks I’m covetous or an idolator), but he seemed not to have anything he needed to say to me. My mother, when I mentioned casually in a conversation about why I’m still single my difficulty with the gay scene in Phoenix being so centred around bars, didn’t bat an eye. As we continued to discuss my recent difficulties expressing interest in people and ‘picking people up,’ she would substitute female pronouns as I would use male pronouns for the objects of my desire. It was a little weird. the conversation didn’t end well, but that was an hour later over a disagreement of the definition of words, not over my desire to find a nice man to settle down with.
I had a few friends I had to clarify my sexuality with, but everyone basically understood already. There has been almost no outward change in my behaviour since I resolved that it was time to ‘come out’ because I was already living my life pretty honestly. Just not actively, I suppose.
As I lamented earlier today, I feel that I don’t have very many gay friends. I think it’s really a matter of proportion, though. And ignorance. For so long in my social life, I just did the same old things, and they weren’t gay or straight. In fact, they weren’t very interesting at all. I’ve been doing less and less of anything in recent months, though making an active effort in recent weeks to rectify that. I want to be active. I want to make new friends. One of my best friends had a bachelor party at Pookie’s, and whereas most of his friends felt so far out of place that the bachelor and I got literally dragged against our wills to an all-nude all-female strip joint afterwards, I felt totally in my element there. I even got to dance with a couple of nice guys before being pulled away.
But I could never really afford to do the upscale Martini Bar scene; I don’t have enough money left over after rent and everything else. This is the cost of living alone, and I accept it. So, find something else. Go out dancing, maybe. I’m thinking I need to go to Freedom this Friday night. Yes, liquidmercurial frequents Freedom, but it was more that reading that jogged my memory that I don’t need to find a ride downtown to go dancing someplace gay-friendly – Freedom is just that Friday nights, and literally one mile away. I could walk. I’ll probably bike. Or maybe I’ll find someone to go with. I don’t know. A cover charge I can afford, and water is free (before after-hours), so it can’t cost much to go and see. Maybe I can re-awaken the idea of a ‘Gay Beer Club’ where we visit a different gay bar/club every week or two. There are enough of them in Phoenix to last 6 months or more at that rate without going to the same place twice.
What’s the point? I like gay men. At the very least, I’d like to make some new gay friends. Making friends with Chris has been a life-saver. He’s really the first gay guy outside of the weird circle of friends that I’ve had for years that I’ve been friends with, and it’s really refreshing to know that I can make new friends afterall. I’ve almost lost contact with that big old circle, and I don’t really want to end up totally alone. Oh, and there’s the other point, that there hasn’t been any ground-breaking, earth-shattering, emotional rollercoaster of a coming out. It’s just been me gradually being more and more out in the places I wasn’t before. Eight months ago if I’d posted about liquidmercurial I wouldn’t have mentioned that she and I both seem to like gay men. Everything else, maybe, but not that. And it would probably have come across to my mother that I was torturing myself over this girl I haven’t seen in years and years. And I admit that I am torturing myself a little over this young woman that I haven’t seen in years and years, but I also admit that if she can introduce me to a great guy or two that she knows is right for me because she knows what loving me can be like, or if we can maybe just have that ‘what does it all mean’ talk that Charlie derides in High Fidelity, that’ll be a help. And I don’t seem to have given up on the hope that the love I originally offered her offered me in return, that there might be happiness between us someday, and I don’t see that going away anytime soon…
Where was I?
Oh yeah. I was trying to say that I’m finally beginning to feel that I don’t need to hide online that I like men and women. That the best kiss I had at the party the other night wasn’t from Heather or Susan or even Dave, but a half drunk (and thus half-gay) Pitr. Although Heather came in a close second. That all the trepidation and all the hype and all the stress about coming out was dissolved in an anticlimactic moment of realizing that it’s really about Being Out. That Coming Out is hard when you’re not ready to Be Out.
I took the ‘Which Queer As Folk character ar you?’ quiz earlier today, and though I know the questions were more about my artistic bent, I know that Justin is the character I feel like most because he’s the newest into the scene. Except that by now (the end of the 2nd season) he’s become so acclimatized to the scene that I feel almost retarded in my ability to find my way in. I know there’s an in. I’ve seen it. I went to AZ Pride. I was surrounded on every side by thousands of hot, gay men and women (some hot because they work out more than I could ever commit to, but mostly because it was nearly 100 degrees with no shade in sight). I’ve been to a gay club or two, I’ve been to Pookie’s, I know they’re out there. I’m just a little slow at joining them.
I kind worry that I’ll be rejected for not knowing something or someone or some way to be. I feel so old. A recent article in The Advocate said that the average age that American males ‘come out’ now is 13-14. I feel ten years behind, and I don’t want to feel ten years behind every time I make a new friend. I know, I know. My fears are irrational. The gay community is about acceptance, not rejection. (Except I know a few people who have been rejected by monosexuals for being bisexuals. I worry that the same thing will be said of omnisexuals like myself, even though I know the rejection is usually based on perceived promiscuity and the same thing that makes Americans want to divide themselves down party lines. Pick a side or be rejected by all. They see no room for third or fourth (or more) choices.)
I almost feel bad for writing so much today. Must be all the not writing a novel I’ve been doing for the last two weeks. I got all that inertia going and it doesn’t want to let me stop. My only paper for this English class is shorter than what I typed in an average day last month for my novel. All I have to do is come up with a single idea and the whole thing will be done in a couple of hours. oh, and not writing about Being Out was starting to get to me. I probably won’t have as much to say about it next time I say something about it.