Alas, A Blog casts a bit of doubt upon the widespread belief that suppressed sexual arousal prompts antigay bullies to act violently against persons assumed to be gay.
Citing a study that measured the penis response of homophobic and non-homophobic males to the sight of homosexual pornography, Alas points out that other things besides sexual arousal cause penis size to change. Things like anxiety and fear.
You know, the things that make someone phobic.
That depends on what the phobia is rooted from, such as being insecure of your own sexuality. But I agree that the experiment states that not all homophobes are latent homosexuals, some are just plain wusses that get queasy from seeing or imagining gay sex and panic about it.
Odd… I have ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) but they don’t make me..um.. tumescent
Don’t forget, too, that sometimes homophobes are simply people who don’t feel secure, period, and that it doesn’t relate to sex at all. They are trying to feel superior and are opressing the “other” in what they think is socially acceptable to their peers. This is similar to racial bigotry, which is why those who react with animosity to people of other races also have animosity to gay people.
I would encourage everyone to take the time to read the entire responses section of the Alas, a Blog post. There is a wealth of valuable discussion both of the subject at hand and on the limits of this kind of research in general.
I did read the entire responses section of the Alas and yes it was very good. I concur with one of the later responses there. In my late teens I tired of feeling bad about my same sex attraction and found I could push it out of my mind by focusing anger at thoughts of gays. This helped me focus solely on opposite sex attractions I felt as well. At one point I even asked a number of friends to come with me to a gay bar so we could “beat up some fags”. Fortunately they refused and I came to accept and feel okay about being bisexual years later. At that time it was certainly true for me that I was homophobic because I was suppressing a same sex attraction.
Another way of interpreting the results of the penis volume measurement study reported as proving there are no bisexuals is that as a group 1/4 of the time individuals in the group felt attraction to the opposite sex and 3/4 of the time individuals in the group felt attraction to the same sex.
As a bisexual one day (or week) I may prefer one sex, and the next day, week, or hour prefer the other sex. Although at times I am aroused equally by both sexes this typically does not happen and my bisexuality would not likely be made apparent by a single 2 minute viewing of sexual images of men and women. In order to show bisexuality bisexuals would have to be tested several times over several days (or weeks) to see the true pattern of arousal.
Penis volume measurement on exgays exposed to same sex sexual images may not be 100% definitive, but would provide useful information to corroborate or invalidate claims of complete conversion made by Stephen Bennett, Exodus and others.
Further, while it may be true erections are also caused by things other than sexual arousal a number of the early posters imply that means sexual arousal is not the reason for the studied homophobes getting erections while viewing sexual images of men. It certainly may be that the homophobes were turned on, sexual arousal is after all the most common reason for erections.
In the study on bisexuality I believe the use of sterotypical gay publications to advertise for participants caused selection of a “gayer” group than would have been the case if ads for bisexuals had been placed in mainstream publications. Hence there was not closer to a 50/50 proportion of participants aroused by the same versus opposite sex. I believe most bisexuals choose to hide/suppress same sex attractions and identify as heterosexual (as I did until my early 30’s) – bisexuals probably do not ususally read gay publications (I didn’t).
Randi said:
Exactly — I’d even imagine some bisexuals may have even longer cycles of waxing and waning (months? years?), particularly if they are in a relationship and concentrating on that.(P.S. meant to do this before, but have been too lazy — hi, and welcome!)
grantdale, thankyou for the welcome. And I agree totally with your comment. I’ve found this site to be a tremendously helpful resource. I’ve looked at the anti-gay research but you and XGW have shown me I’ve been lost in the nuts and bolts of it while missing the bigger picture of overriding false assumptions that completely invalidate the whole thing. Seems obvious when you point it out, but I’ve missed it anyway. Special thanks to Regan Ducasse who has one of the best perspectives on all of this I have ever seen. You’ve all given me clear simple and relatively brief explanations why the anti-gays are wrong. I could sense problems myself but couldn’t always put it into words.