Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
My friend Andi sent along a link to this study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, which found that those who are homophobic are much more likely to be aroused by male homoerotic imagery than those who are not. The abstract is below the fold:
The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.
Very interesting indeed. I don't have access to the full text of the study and would appreciate getting it if any of my readers does have that access.
Comments
I'm curious as to how they quantitatively measured homophobia. Or how much they had to pay a group of open homophobes to sit through gay porn. (not a whole lot I'd guess, if this study means anything)
Posted by: Brandon | March 31, 2008 9:36 AM
I remember reading about a similar study and one alternative explanation was that the homophobic males experienced greater anxiety and that was a better of their apparent arousal. Wish I could find where that was again, but I cannot. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm explaining it the right way either...so I'm basically useless.
Posted by: frank | March 31, 2008 9:49 AM
I remember reading about a similar study and one alternative explanation was that the homophobic males experienced greater anxiety and that was a better of their apparent arousal. Wish I could find where that was again, but I cannot. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm explaining it the right way either...so I'm basically useless.
Posted by: frank | March 31, 2008 9:49 AM
Oops, sorry for the double post, just a quick correction:
a better explanation of their apparent arousal.
Posted by: frank | March 31, 2008 9:52 AM
Posted by: Taz | March 31, 2008 9:57 AM
Brandon, here's a questionnaire that should give you a good idea of how they measured homophobia.
Ed, here's an article that gives a little more information about the study. Though if anyone has the full text I wouldn't mind getting a copy either (DearAbbyNormal@hotmail.com). I seem to recall seeing it when the study first came out in '96. But I could use a refresher.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 10:13 AM
Homophobes are gay or bi. The more vitriolic and vociferous they are, the more that is apt to be true.
Really, if you think that sexual orientation is a choice, then you are by definition bisexual, because those of us who are either totally gay or totally straight don't have that choice, but bisexuals do.
Posted by: dd | March 31, 2008 10:19 AM
And, it's a UGA study! Go Dawgs!
Posted by: Farb | March 31, 2008 10:24 AM
There may be a bit of self-selection bias here: I suspect that a homophobe would not volunteer for this study if he were not, at least a little bit, atracted to the opportunity to watch gay porn and have his dick measured. There may be plenty of non-homoerotic homophobes, but they didn't (and wouldn't) volunteer to be studied.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 31, 2008 10:32 AM
I've just sent PDFs of the article to Ed and Abby. Let me know if you have problems receiving them.
Posted by: Gretchen | March 31, 2008 10:34 AM
It's another explication of the "he who smelt it dealt it" school of sexual revelation.
Anyone who's been around a while knows that every man who too-quickly expresses distaste for Teh Gay is in fact an angry, repressed Friend of Dorothy.
Posted by: dswift | March 31, 2008 10:36 AM
Sex of any kind is an evil, evil, dirty, nasty, filthy thing. . . . and should be experienced only with the person you love most in the world . . . . because God loves us . . . . or something. To be honest, I'm getting mixed messages on this one.
Posted by: Doug | March 31, 2008 10:48 AM
While I find the results aesthetically pleasing from a karma perspective; I question the validity of the study that allows one to draw any conclusions given the very small sample size, which I assume is why Ed printed the values.
Hopefully these researchers will develop a more comprehensive study.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 31, 2008 10:53 AM
A couple of very conservative evangelical Christian types I know who are no social liberals by any measure put it this way: anyone who is that obsessed with gays has got some serious issues of their own.
Posted by: celcus | March 31, 2008 10:55 AM
Full document is available at:
http://www.oogachaga.com/downloads/homophobia_and_homosexual_arousal.pdf
(I think it's a free download.)
Cheers.
Posted by: FastLane | March 31, 2008 10:57 AM
This is a pretty well-known paper; I remember reading it not long after it came out, and it pops up in discussion often. I've heard the "greater general anxiety" interpretation before too....the idea would be that homophobes are just made more anxious by scenes of gay sex, and experience more general arousal as a result of, e.g., their discomfort or disgust...and that this to some extent generalizes to erectile arousal.
I don't know whether that's plausible or not, but I think someone mentioned to me once there was a more recent study that ruled it out by showing no difference for homophobes and non-homophobes on and other measures of physiological arousal (but I haven't seen that paper, if it exists).
Posted by: JRQ | March 31, 2008 11:03 AM
I've long thought that someone saying homosexuality is a choice, is someone with some degree of homosexual feelings. It doesn't make sense that someone with strictly heterosexual desires would be able to get aroused by the thought of sex with a member of their own sex. If you like femininity, and developed breasts and female curves, a hairy chest and ass with a boner just isn't the same. Even after 10 martinis and a blow job in the fog, you probably wouldn't get on the phone and try to set up another date.
Posted by: soboco | March 31, 2008 11:05 AM
Ted Haggard. 'Nuff said.
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | March 31, 2008 11:23 AM
I've always taken that as a given. Once I asked a particularly vocal homophobe if he remembered when he decided on women. He claimed not to understand the question and I answered; "Look, if it's a choice, you must have chosen at some age, right? So you could have gone the other way?"
Good conversation ender, at least in that case.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 31, 2008 11:25 AM
I don't buy the anxiety explanation, for one simple reason: I've been in many situations that caused me anxiety and in none of them was I aroused.
For some reason I didn't get Gretchen's email of the paper, but I got 6 others. Thanks guys!
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 31, 2008 11:40 AM
The study looks interesting and all, but I am waiting to see the response of male-bonded partners Sean Hannity and Karl Rove.
Posted by: J-Dog | March 31, 2008 11:44 AM
Strictly anecdotal: I have observed (people confide in me for some reason) that homophobic men ALWAYS make fun of, e.g. notice, the 'glrlish' aspects of other men, AND despise every gay guy they see.
Posted by: Rod | March 31, 2008 11:53 AM
I'd echo the self-selection concern, although the result is not at all surprising (of course, those results are the ones we need to be extra careful about). I was a bit surprised by this: "Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli". There were no gay men in the non-homophobe group?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 31, 2008 11:55 AM
dd, what a sophomoric attitude and post. A bisexual, by definition, is a person who is attracted to both genders, has sexual contact with both genders, or would participate in sexual contact with both genders given the chance. Thinking that sexual orientation is a choice does not make a person bisexual; it makes them an idiot.
Posted by: Chapman | March 31, 2008 12:08 PM
I don't buy the general anxiety excuse either. Erection is a result of parasympathetic (rest and digest) stimulation and if not the result of sexual excitation (or a conditioned response) can be the result of general parasympathetic outflow (hence morning wood). Axiety will result in a general sympathetic (fight or flight) response. Sympathetic outflow is also responsible for ejaculation as well.
Caveat at the end: I am only a first year medical student and not a physiologist. If a physiologist comes on here after me, listen to them.
Posted by: FutureMD | March 31, 2008 12:20 PM
Chapman, I think dd is saying that a bisexual who self-identifies as heterosexual has made a choice to ignore the homosexual half of their feelings. So in their mind they have made a choice about their sexuality and project that everyone else does too. While I think it's a bit simplistic to say this is at the root of all homophobia, it's a good theory as far as it goes and is supported by the evidence.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 12:29 PM
In a sample of just 29, that's certainly feasible. Or perhaps they simply didn't take out gays into their sample -- I haven't read the paper.
Posted by: David Marjanović | March 31, 2008 12:31 PM
Only heterosexual Caucasian males were selected for the study.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 12:40 PM
Anxiety would explain changes in heart rate, body temperature, and such, but I've never noticed an association between anxiety and "changes in penile circumference" (erection). What, have you?
I'm curious whether these were self-identified heterosexuals or if they were evaluated somehow.
Posted by: Azkyroth | March 31, 2008 12:46 PM
No, Abby, that is not what dd was saying. Here is the entire text of the post:
"Homophobes are gay or bi. The more vitriolic and vociferous they are, the more that is apt to be true.
Really, if you think that sexual orientation is a choice, then you are by definition bisexual, because those of us who are either totally gay or totally straight don't have that choice, but bisexuals do."
dd is saying that IF a person thinks that sexual orientation is a choice, then they also believe they themselves have the ability to choose their sexuality. Since bisexuals have the ability to chose their sexuality, and since homophobes think everyone has the ability to choose their sexuality, those homophobes are bisexuals.
A cat is a mammal, a dog is a mammal, therefore, all cats are dogs.
This, of course, is ridiculous for a number of reasons. First is the logical fallacy pointed out above. Second is the conflation of bisexuality with no-sexuality. Third is the fact that homophobes do not generally think sexuality is a choice; they think homo/bisexuals are mistaken.
Posted by: Chapman | March 31, 2008 12:50 PM
Azkyroth, Heterosexuality was determine using a modified version of the Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948)
Chapman, I see what your saying. I focused, perhaps too much, on this part, "The more vitriolic and vociferous they are, the more that is apt to be true." I took that to be a proviso indicating that dd was talking about a tendency, not an absolute.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 1:16 PM
Well, it may not be general anxiety, but anxiety specific to whether or not they are experiencing arousal. You know when you tell yourself not to think about something, but in doing so make yourself think about the very think you're trying not to think about?
It would be more like "Oh my god I think my dick is getting hard. Oh god! Oh no! Gross! GROSS! Dick: stop it! Stop it! [Dean Scream]!!! Noooo! I'm gay!!!"
Sort of like a positive feedback loop. The harder they try not to be aroused the more they damn themselves to focusing on their physical reaction. Whereas a person who wasn't hung up about it might just acknowledge it and move on. I could see something like that happening.
Course, that doesn't negate the initial occurance of arousal though. And it's still funny.
Posted by: Leni | March 31, 2008 1:32 PM
Paul Cameron, the severely anti-gay guy who has been kicked out of several professional organizations for misrepresenting other people's studies in order to maximize anti-gay spin, famously said this in an interview:
"If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one's own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get - and that is what homosexuality seems to be - then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm. [...] It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush. [...] Maritial sex tends toward the boring end. Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does"
Really, does that sound like something a committed heterosexual would say?
Posted by: Alex | March 31, 2008 2:04 PM
Really, does that sound like something a committed heterosexual would say?
Really, it sounds like something a committed idiot would say. As in, someone who never figured out that some married couples would actually make an effort to give each other good sex, becasue that's what they both want.
This Cameron guy sounds like someone whose idea of "family" means a man and a woman legally married and having sex only to have kids -- possibly because he can't imagine his parents enjoying sex, or because he has a virgin/whore complex and can't get his head around having the hots for a woman you love.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 31, 2008 2:36 PM
For me, the correlation between homophobia and arousal due to homoeroticism is obvious. Why else would these people really, truly be homophobic?
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | March 31, 2008 3:36 PM
Abby Normal, you posted the questionaire link twice. Could you post the article?
& i think DD is on to something there.
Posted by: tincture | March 31, 2008 3:45 PM
Oops. Here's the article I meant to link to: http://www.philosophy-religion.org/handouts/homophobia.htm
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 4:04 PM
Normally I would simply file this in the "Screamingly Obvious" file.
I once found myself in the sad position of having to completely disassociate from a friend of mine when I discovered he was a committed "fag-basher"; as in, every Friday night he and his buddies would go to know gay friendly hangouts and attack someone. Then, when I ran into him a couple of years later, he was in a committed loving relationship with another man.
So, based on that admittedly very small sample, I had just naturally assumed that the more vitriolically homophobic someone was, the more likely they were to be actually gay.
Posted by: Richard Crawford | March 31, 2008 4:10 PM
I disagree. Bisexuals can get attracted to both sexes, but nobody ever decides who they actually fall for. Even worse for bi people, because everybody might be telling them "oh, why aren't you with (opposite sex person) then, if you swing both ways?", while they might be falling for a same-sex person against their better judgement (better according to hetero people and the current legal status issues, that is).
Choice has nothing to do with it. The sooner we settle this, the sooner we are going to be tackling LGBT issues effectively.Posted by: steppen wolf | March 31, 2008 4:21 PM
This is both old news and conventional wisdom in the gay community. I know, I know--we need empirical evidence--but come ON! Haven't we been snagging enough closeted Republican congressmen?
Posted by: gary l. day | March 31, 2008 4:53 PM
When someone says homosexuality is a "choice", I tend to think that he's really saying this:
1. If something is not a choice, it cannot be a sin.
2. The Bible says that homosexuality is a sin.
3. If homosexuality is not a choice, the Bible is wrong.
4. The Bible is never wrong.
5. Therefore, homosexuality must be a choice.
On the other hand, when someone makes homophobia a focus of his life, or describes homosexuality as a "temptation", then yeah, I tend to assume that he's a self-denying gay.
Posted by: Nemo | March 31, 2008 5:17 PM
Regarding the self-selection concerns - surely the researchers didn't provide details on the study to the subjects, did they? I would expect them to have gathered a group of clueless volunteers, tested them for homophobia, selected the two groups for the arousal study, and then completed it. Telling them ahead of time what they'd be doing seems such an obvious mistake.
Posted by: BobApril | March 31, 2008 7:13 PM
You are correct BobApril. They tested a large pool for homophobia, sexual orientation and aggressiveness, and then selected the ones best suited to the study. However, when the volunteers showed up the researchers outlined the experiment and gave them the option to back out. The report does not mention if anyone took that option. But, if so it could have an impact.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 8:05 PM
This finding has been suspected for years by people who deal mainly with psychology. I've read studies that have claimed things like this for years. They just weren't set up quite so "scientifically". How valid they are, I don't know. OTOH, it's awfully odd that a lot of politicians lately, foam at the mouth about things like "gay marriage", yet end up being "outed" in one way or another. One has to wonder.
Anne G
Posted by: Anne Gilbert | March 31, 2008 8:33 PM
Of course anecdotally we all say we know this to be true. Anyone who knows me from middle and high school would label me as a homophobe, not the violent type, but deeply "anti-gay" because it's a defense mechanism, and an effective one. I don't trust this study entirely though, for reasons that some have brought up, but you never know what reasons someone may be "aroused" by the scenes (let him who hasn't gotten an erection at an inopportune time cast the first stone). What I would trust is a study done using fMRI or something similar, which would detect areas of the brain that are active as they're watching these scenes. That has a better chance of getting to the truth.
Posted by: paul | March 31, 2008 9:11 PM
I'm still skeptical about the general application of this study, and I think Leni and Nemo make good points.
I think it's plausible that a "homophobe" would be more concerned with his body betraying him, and, in his anxiety, producing the very result he wishes to suppress.
I also think that most homophobes get no farther in their thinking than the outline Nemo provides: "The Bible says homosexuality is a sin, and a sin is an act that is chosen. I happen to be on the right side of this one, so a pox on all those who aren't."
My guess is that some homophobes are closet homosexuals -- perhaps a higher percentage than the general population -- but the overwhelming majority are not.
But it would be really funny if I'm wrong.
BTW, where do I sign up for a study that measures my penile circumference while I watch porn? I'm free Tuesdays, Wednesdays ... well, really just call.
Posted by: itchy | March 31, 2008 9:28 PM
You can sign up at my email address above. I don't have much budget for fancy equipment, so I'm afraid I'll have to do the measuring manually. Don't worry, I'm a professional. /reassuring smile
Like you and some other's I'm skeptical. I know some homophobia is tied to repressed homosexual urges. It was certainly true of me until I cam to terms with my own bisexuality. But I think the biggest factor is really just social conditioning. Even if the study were taken at face value, only 54% of homophobes showed significant physical arousal and 20% had no measurable reaction at all.
We are complicated creatures, not easily measured, identified, and categorized.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 31, 2008 9:58 PM
Some years ago on NPR there was an interview with a conservative clergyman fighting against the inclusion of 'gay acceptance' classes in school. His reason was illuminating, he admitted that when he was young he was very uncertain about his sexuality, and felt that if it had been too socially acceptable he might have explored a gay orientation. Since he felt that would not have been a good thing, he felt comfort in a social pressure against it. I guess he viewed such pressure the same way as we might positively view pressure against alchohol abuse, or adultery.
Now while there are logical problems with his argument it was an interesting (and interestingly candid) explanation.
Posted by: jayh | March 31, 2008 10:07 PM
by Itchy: "I also think that most homophobes get no farther in their thinking than the outline Nemo provides: "The Bible says homosexuality is a sin, and a sin is an act that is chosen. I happen to be on the right side of this one, so a pox on all those who aren't.""
I don't think so, a lot of the homophobes I have met here in Australia have pretty much been non-religious. However this was at an all boys school, so their behaviour may have had more to do with the social environment than actual beliefs.
Posted by: Alex | March 31, 2008 10:12 PM
Is the bear Catholic?
Posted by: Hypatia | March 31, 2008 10:27 PM
First, before you question the methodology of the study, read it:
http://www.oogachaga.com/downloads/homophobia_and_homosexual_arousal.pdf
(Thanks to FastLane for posting the link)
Second, re: RagingBee's post:
This is a valid question because the researchers do not state in their paper what percentage of the young men they asked to participate in the "lab portion" of the study refused or what percentage terminated their participation prior to completing the penile plethysmograph.I'm actually surprised that the Journal's editors didn't catch that omission.
Third, this is clearly a preliminary study, which the authors emphasize in the Discussion section by highlighting alternative explanations for the findings (e.g., the anxiety hypothesis) and deficiencies in some of the measures (e.g., the homophobia scale).
While the classic psychoanalytic explanation to homophobia--it's a result of denial, repression, and reaction formation to the homophobe's attraction to males--makes intuitive and experiential sense to me, there are other explanations that are also possible.
For example, in addition to the anxiety hypothesis, I'm not sure if researchers have ever ruled out male sexual abuse victims as a subgroup who might exhibit homophobia as a result of the sexual assault (by a male perpetrator).
I looked for follow-up studies but couldn't find any in a relatively quick online search. I'll post them if I find any later on.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Worthen, Psy.D. | March 31, 2008 10:50 PM
How they measured the arousal response: penile plethysmograph.
Why this experiment was a valid measure of sexual arousal: Males do not get erections in response to anxiety or fear or disgust. In fact those emotions are precisely what causes erections to deflate, and the mechanisms for that are hardwired in the body. There are rare exceptions such as people who get off on sex under dangerous conditions and people who have fetishes for things that normally provoke disgust e.g. urine, excrement, vomit, etc. But both of those exceptions are very small numbers of people, in the range of 1 - 2% of the general population, if that.
So there is no need to measure activity in the brain to find out what's going on here: a boner is a boner, and unless the guy just woke up from being asleep, it means he's either consciously or subconsciously aroused.
---
As for bisexuality and choice: People in general don't have much choice about who they find attractive or about what causes them to become aroused. They do however have a choice about whether to act on their natural feelings. If a guy has natural feelings for both men and women, and he's been raised to believe that having feelings for men is evil, he will choose to wage war against that part of himself and attempt to develop relationships with women because he considers that to be acceptable.
Thus, take the normally-distributed population of all persons raised to believe that same-sex relations are evil. Statistically you'll have a subset of that population who are gay, and another subset who are bisexual. Both subsets will wage war against their gay feelings: in both cases, whenever gay feelings come up, these individuals will fight like hell to suppress them.
The bisexuals in that population will say that they were able to successfully choose to have heterosexual relationships, and those relationships may succeed since they are natural for bisexuals.
The gay guys in that population will have a more difficult time developing heterosexual relationships: according to their own nature, the thought of sex with women is as unpleasant as the thought of sex with men is for a naturally heterosexual man. However they may persevere and may succeed. And in any case they will associate sex with nastiness, disgustingness, and so on: because the type of sex they have forced themselves to have is, according to their own nature, unnatural for them.
The bisexuals in this population will become the "homosexuality is a choice" crowd, and the closet gay folks in this population will become the "sex is disgusting" crowd. And if you look closely at all the puritans running around, you will see that they basically are one of those two flavors.
---
For a future experiment: Do this:
Hypothesis: homophobic males who show increased penile circumference while watching "straight" porn (showing males and females copulating) may be getting off on seeing the naked guy doing his thing.
Independent variable: Whether or not a male is depicted in a picture or video.
Dependent variable: penile circumference via penile plethysmograph measurements.
Operationalization: Take those homophobic males and show them different types of porn that vary in relation to the gender of the persons depicted. For example:
a) Man and woman
b) Man and man
c) Woman and woman
d) Man by himself (masturbation)
e) Woman by herself (masturbation)
Test: Correlation coefficient between degree of maleness of video or pictures, and degree of response on the penile plethysmograph, where response should increase from low to high as follows: (c or e), a, (b or d). Or two-tailed T-test wherein (c and e) are one group and (b and d) are in another group, and (a) is not considered.
I do believe we'll find it's the nekkid guys who give the 'phobes a "rise."
Posted by: g347 | March 31, 2008 11:29 PM
"I disagree. Bisexuals can get attracted to both sexes, but nobody ever decides who they actually fall for... Choice has nothing to do with it."
Actually, speaking as a bisexual person, in my experience choice does have *something* to do with it. I don't have a choice about who I'm attracted to, and I didn't have a choice about who I fell for... but when I was dating, I did have a choice about who I dated and who I socialized with. At the time that I fell for Ingrid, I was dating women, and socializing in the lesbian community, a lot more than I was with men and in the hetero community... out of choice, because on the whole I like women more than men, and, given my druthers, I would have preferred to be involved with a woman rather than a man. Other bisexuals date and socialize more heterosexually, again out of choice.
It is, IMO, one of the differences between being bisexual and being monosexual. You can, in theory, be happy being sexual and romantic with someone of either gender, and you have at least some degree of choice about which gender you get involved with. At the very least, you can weight the dice.
Posted by: Greta Christina | March 31, 2008 11:43 PM
These samples seem pretty small to me. Maybe big enough, but only just.
Also is the "Index of Homophobia" a scale rather than a binary distinction? If so I'd really like to see something like a Logit model run where p(arousal) is modelled as a function of the degree of homophobia. With such a small sample every little bit of explanatory power helps.
Posted by: James K | April 1, 2008 12:05 AM
I read somewhere that men get more aroused by watching heterosexual sex than watching solo women or lesbian sex, and that the theory is watching other men with erections induces a competitive response in their own body.
I can't remember where I read it, and I have no idea if it's true, but if it is then that muddies the waters even more when it comes to guys watching male gay sex.
Posted by: tacitus | April 1, 2008 1:00 AM
There's another factor which muddies the water. Being gay isn't the same as finding all gay porn arousing, just as being straight isn't the same as finding all members of the opposite sex attractive.
Sexuality isn't just a matter of which gender(s) you prefer. It also involves which activities, situations, body types and indeed personalities you're into.
If person X is a homosexual male who's tastes run to anal sex and black men, then images of caucasians masturbating won't turn them on much - or maybe at all depending on how horny they're feeling that week. If they're also homophobic and denying their sexuality, the test is less likely to uncover that sexuality.
If so, then the number of homophobes who are secretly homosexual may actually be higher than the test suggests.
Posted by: Kapitano | April 1, 2008 3:44 AM
Tacitus wrote- "I read somewhere that men get more aroused by watching heterosexual sex than watching solo women or lesbian sex, and that the theory is watching other men with erections induces a competitive response in their own body.
I can't remember where I read it, and I have no idea if it's true, but if it is then that muddies the waters even more when it comes to guys watching male gay sex."
Actually, I read a study involving plethysmography that found differently. In testing males that self-identified as gay or straight, the test results found that gay men were most aroused by erotic images that were the "most male", which incidentally were also the "most homosexual".
The tests on straight men revealed that they were most aroused by erotic imagery that was the "most female" (girls and more girls), NOT the "most heterosexual".
http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Landscapes-What-Love-Whom/dp/0684187051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207046039&sr=8-1
Posted by: Rick R | April 1, 2008 6:41 AM
Thank you, Mark Worthen, for the clarifications.
Quite frankly, I find it hard to believe that ALL homophobes are motivated merely by denial of their own gay tendencies. Given the wide range of bigotries and irrational hatreds we humans show all over the world, I think it's safe to say that we can find a huge number of reasons/rationalizations to hate any particular group of people.
Is there any study showing that white racists are secretly fascinated by African, Hispanic or Asian cultures? Or that Jew-bashers are secretly interested in converting to Judaism? Or that people who rave about Islam as a "terrorist religion" have a shamefeul secret fascination with Muslim beliefs and culture?
At the risk of sounding obstinate, I stand by my "self-selection bias" arguments: how many bigots normally show enough interest in what science says about their bigotry to volunteer their time to participate in a scientific study? My own (admittedly uninformed) subjective impression is that a homophobe would have to have some sort of curiosity (acknowledged or unacknowledged) about the issue before he even considered answering the advert. Those who have no such curiosity or inner conflict would not waste any time with such a study, and would therefore not be represented in the sample.
Posted by: Raging Bee | April 1, 2008 9:47 AM
Finally, a scientific context in which we can legitimately use the famous equation,
Posted by: Monado | April 1, 2008 11:28 AM
I remember it being,
"The angle of the dangle is in proportion to the throb of the knob provided the sag of the bag is constant."
Posted by: tincture | April 1, 2008 5:22 PM
Yes, but the samples grew larger after the subjects became aroused ... oh, wait, that's not what you meant.
Fools! Did you think you could escape without encountering a sophomoric small-penis joke?!?
Posted by: itchy | April 1, 2008 9:30 PM
I think it's more likely that most homophobes are not closet homosexuals but are "closet sinners." They may be adulterers, liars, thieves, whatever.
But they know that if they keep the masses focused on "that other sin," there won't be time and energy enough to take arms against the one(s) they commit.
Posted by: itchy | April 1, 2008 9:35 PM
r.e. Mark Worthen,
The paper has been cited 48 times, one of which is:
Meier, B.P. et al. (2006) A secret attraction or defensive loathing? Homophobia, defense, and implicit cognition. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 377-394.
This paper doesn't appear (from a quick scan) to support the conclusions of Adams et al. The abstract is:
Psychodynamic conceptions of homophobia suggest that homophobics may have a latent attraction to gay sex. Although at least one study has partially supported this idea, the implicit cognitive reactivity to gay images has not been examined. We conducted the current study to investigate such cognitive forms of reactivity with the intent to better understand defensive homophobia. Participants completed two implicit sexual interest tasks in addition to questionnaires of self-deception and homophobia. We found that self-deception moderated the relationship between homophobia, and performance within the implicit tasks. Contrary to the idea that defensive homophobics (i.e., homophobics high in self-deception) harbor an implicit attraction for gay sex, we found that such individuals displayed evidence of a phobic-like aversion. We also identified a non-defensive form of homophobia (i.e., homophobics low in self-deception) that was relatively inconsequential for performance within the implicit cognitive tasks related to gay sex. The results suggest that defensive homophobics have an implicit aversion rather than an implicit attraction to gay sexual stimuli.
Posted by: SteveF | April 2, 2008 7:09 AM
Ah, sorry - I got this from a discussion list where members are usually very good about not posting stories that are more than a day old so I've gotten spoiled about looking at dates. I thought this was more confirmation of old studies.
But as expected, lots of discussion. :)
Posted by: Andrea | April 2, 2008 9:07 AM
If the images shown were of naked individuals, would that have affected the results?
If there was a wide enough variety in age, body shape, ethnicity/race, and other variables, wouldn't that minimize the effects that Kapitano mentioned?
Since most cases of Gaybashing seem to be committed by young men, and coincidentally most of these studies use college students (who are generally in that same age bracket), wouldn't a larger scale study in multiple colleges provide more useful information?
Posted by: droughtquake | April 3, 2008 4:43 AM
Chapman, actually Abby Normal got what I was trying to say exactly right. Of course I was oversimplifying and generalizing. And what's with the burr up your butt anyway?
Posted by: dd | April 4, 2008 8:58 PM
I'm been married for 30 years, served in the marines and loved all kinds of women. The one thing I have noticed is that the more homophobic a man is the usually more gay he is. I have seen this countless times in the military and in other situations. If a man is really into women he doesn't have to go around hating gays or trying to be overly macho. More macho = Liking men!
Posted by: Chuck Blackwell | December 15, 2008 10:32 PM