From glbpoc-owner Tue Jul 11 11:14:58 1995 Received: (from root@localhost) by abacus.oxy.edu (8.6.10/8.6.11) id LAA08946 for glbpoc-outgoing; Tue, 11 Jul 1995 11:13:28 -0700 Received: from tumalo.bendnet.com (bendnet.com [199.2.205.1]) by abacus.oxy.edu (8.6.10/8.6.11) with ESMTP id LAA08940 for ; Tue, 11 Jul 1995 11:13:23 -0700 Received: from bendnet.com (bachelor.bendnet.com [199.2.205.2]) by tumalo.bendnet.com (8.6.11/8.6.11) with SMTP id LAA11525 for ; Tue, 11 Jul 1995 11:11:47 -0700 Date: Tue, 11 Jul 95 11:14:03 PST From: Bruce_Amsbary@bendnet.com (Bruce Amsbary) Organization: Electronic Communities Limited Subject: Re(2): Sexism/Male Privilege To: glbpoc@abacus.oxy.edu Message-ID: <1061007.ensmtp@bendnet.com> X-Mailer: ExpressNet/SMTP v1.1b15 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: glbpoc-owner@abacus.oxy.edu Precedence: bulk Content-Length: 5078 X-Lines: 82 Status: RO Exerpted without permission from the book "Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism" by Suznne Pharr. Copywrite 1988 by Suzanne Pharr, published by Chardon Press available through The Women's Project, 2224 Main, Little Rock, AR 72206. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= HOMOPHOBIA - the irrational fear and hatred of those who love and sexually desire those of the same sex. Though I intimately knew its meaning, the word homophobia was unknown to me until the late 1970's, and when I first heard it I was struck by how difficult it is to say, what an ugly words it is, equally as ugly as its meaning. Like racism and anti-Semitism, it is a word that calls-up images of loss of freedom, verbal and physical violence, death. In my life I have experienced the effects of homopohobia through rejection by friends, threats of loss of employment, and threats upon my life; and I have witnessed fat worse things happening to other lesbian and gay people: loss of children, beatings, rape, death. Its power is great enough to keep ten to twenty percent of the population living lives of fear (if there sexual identity is hidden) or lives of danger (if their sexual identity is visible) or both. And its power is great enough to keep the remaining eighty to ninety percent of the popu;lation trapped in their own fears. PATRIARCHY - an enrforced belief in male dominance and control - is the ideology and sexism is the system that holds it in place. The catechism goes like this; Who do gender roles serve? Men and women who seek power from them. WHo suffers from gender roles? Women most completly and men in part. How are gender roles maintained? By the weapons of sexism: economics, violence, homophobia. HOMOPHIBIA works effectively as a weapon of sexism because it is joined with a powerful arm, heterosexism. Heterosexism creates the climate for homphobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual and its display of power and privilege as the norm. Heterosexism is the systemic display of homophobia in the institutions of society. Heterosexism and homphobia work together to enforce compulsory hetersexuality and the bastions of patriarchical power, the nuclear family. The central focus of the rightwign attack against women's liberation is that women's equality, women's self determination, women's control of our bodies and lives will damage what they see as the crucial societal institution, the nuclear family. The attack has been lead by fundamatenalist ministers accross the country. The two areas they have focused on the most consistently are abortion and homosexuality, and their passion has lead to the bombing of abourtion clinics and to recommend deprogramming for homosexuals and estabolishing camps to quarantine people with AIDS. To resist marriaage and/or heterosexuality is to risk sever punishment and loss. To be a lesbian is to be *perceived* as someone who has stepped out of line, who has moved out of sexual/economic depenence on a male, who is woman-identified. A lesbian is perceived as someone who can live without a man, and is therefore (however illogically) against men. A lesbian is percieved as being outside the acceptable, routinized order of things........A lesbian is percieved as a threat to the nuclear family, to male dominance and control, to the very heart of sexism. Gay men are percieved also as a threat to male dominance and control, and the homophobia expressed against them has the same roots in sexism as does homophobia against lesbians. Visible gay men are the objects of extreem hatred and fear by heterosexual because their breaking the ranks with male heterosexual solidarity is seen as a damaging rent in the very fabric of sexism. They are seen as betrayers, as traitors who must be punished and eliminated. In the beating and killing of gay men we see clear evidence of this hatred. When we see the fierce homophobia expressed toward gay men, we can begin to undersatnd the ways sexism affects males through imposing tigid, dehumanising gender roles on them.........When gay men break ranks with male roles through bonding and affection outside the arenas of war and sports, they are percived as not being "real men," that is, as being identified with women, the weaker sex that must be dominated and that over the centuries has been the object of male hatred and abuse. Misogony gets transfered to gay men with a vengeance and is increased by the fear that their sexual idenity and behavior will bring down the entire ssyetm of male dominance and compulsory heterosexuality. We know that the arguments about homophobia originating from mental health and Biblical/religious attitueds can be settled when we look at the sexism that permeates religious and psychiatric history. ******************************************************************************* To send a message to the entire list "glbpoc", email glbpoc@abacus.oxy.edu The list is run by the computer program MAJORDOMO@abacus.oxy.edu *******************************************************************************