The Dictionary of Homophobia (65 page)

Finally, among specifically gayphobic discourses, we must also mention the issue of AIDS. Significantly, soon after AIDS became known in the early 1980s, it was referred to as the “gay cancer,” as if it were a punishment designed specifically for Sodom (but which spared Gomorrah, apparently). Odious beliefs became widespread: some thought that gay men, as a “group at risk,” should be subject to mandatory screening or tattooing, or quarantined in “AIDS-a-toriums.” Gay men were being punished for their sins; the
debauchery
of the gay male lifestyle was finally getting its just reward. Further, in addition to being responsible for their misfortune, gays were also guilty for the misfortune of other “innocent victims” of AIDS: hemophiliacs, patients receiving transfusions, and heterosexuals. When it became clear that more and more heterosexuals were contracting the disease, the gayphobic arguments lost some of their rhetorical relevance, and thus their effectiveness. And AIDS, which seemed like a “windfall” for hard-core homophobes, ended up paradoxically providing a more socially sympathetic image of gays due to their suffering and pain.

Overall, gayphobia is manifested in two areas of perceived privilege for gay men: their sexuality and their power (be it social, economic, or political). Lesbians are exempt from these, given that they are perceived to have neither a self-determined sexuality nor significant socioeconomic power. On the other hand, this notion of gayphobia allows a better understanding of the differential treatment accorded to gay men and lesbians in most societies. It is arguable that homophobia is most often directed at gay men rather than lesbians, as exemplified by the frequent use of gayphobic insults that are also used to insult heterosexual men (“queer,” “poof,” “fag,” etc.); lesbophobic insults are less common. The difference between gayphobia and lesbophobia is directly connected to differences in social constructs as they relate to
gender
.

In heterosexist culture, sexual relations between women are often perceived as either benign or unthinkable; they are hardly considered a threat to heterosexual men, and may in fact be a source of sexual excitement—after all, if they fail to fall into line, such women can always be controlled by forced marriage or punitive rape. On the other hand, sexual relations between men are perceived as the
peril
of perils, a direct threat to masculinity and thus to public, natural, and divine order. These differences seem to correspond to the differences inherent in the two phobias: lesbophobia generally involves a forced reclusion of the nearly powerless—women who fail to adopt society’s social arrangements disappear from view, while gayphobia more often resorts to forced exclusion, a visible and spectacular exclusion from the social field.
—Guillaume Huyez

Bourdieu, Pierre.
La Domination masculine
. Paris: Le Seuil, 1998.

Capitan, Colette, and Colette Guillaumin. “L’Ordre et le sexe: discours de gauche, discours de droite.”
ProChoix,
no. 20 (2002).

Fourest, Caroline, and Fiammetta Venner.
Les Anti-pacs ou la dernière croisade homophobe
. Paris: Prochoix, 1999.

Huyez, Guillaume. “Dix Ans de ghetto: le quartier gay dans les hebdomadaires français,”
ProChoix,
no. 22 (2002).

Rubin, Gayle S. “Penser le sexe,” (1984). In
Marché au sexe
. By Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler. Paris: EPEL, 2001. [Published in English as “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.”]

—Anti-PaCS; Discrimination; Gender Differences; Feminism (France); Heterophobia; Lesbophobia; Marriage; Pedophilia; Rhetoric; Transphobia.

GENDER.
See
Gender Differences

GENDER DIFFERENCES

In the humanities and social sciences, it may be possible to suggest a connection between gender differences and homophobia. But the answer is not so simple.

Gender Differences & Relationships
The difficulty lies in that the field of gender studies is dominated by the issue of gender inequality. This issue is certainly legitimate, but causes us to forget that the study of the relationships between genders relegates gender difference to the rank of an intangible that is based on unquestionable evidence: that two human genders exist, male and female; no more and no less. It is precisely because there are two genders that it is necessary for the two to relate to each other, and that this relationship be studied in its various forms. In other words, gender relationships and gender differences are nothing more than two aspects of the same issue. But the unequal treatment of men and women has largely eclipsed the presupposition edifying male domination: to dominate the other, the first and most fundamental condition is that one must establish one’s otherness.

To be able to establish a possible connection between a homophobic position and the very idea of gender differences, one must reconstruct an intermediary bridge between the two, and ask how sexual differences come into play around the question of gender relationships. Thus, through infinite variations in doctrine, the answer is structured around two positions that appear to have little in common: either the justification (or lack thereof) for the oppression of women, or the fight against it. Both subscribe to a theorization of sexual differences, but it is only after having examined them that one can tell for certain whether or not there is an implication of homophobia.

Woman-Nature, Man-Culture
For a long time, and including today, androcratic ideologies have haunted scholarly rhetoric. The example of one of the great founders of sociology, Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), is typical of this situation. Durkheim, sensitive to problematic new developments within “the social division of labor,” attempted to preserve a “sexual division” that is particularly and clearly conservative, full of the inequality and oppression which we are more conscious of today. Perhaps one day, he conceded, women in society could occupy certain jobs that were traditionally reserved for men, but under the condition that they stay confined to domains to which they were already strongly predisposed, such as education.

It is not hard to feel the reticence in Durkheim’s concession to a regrettable yet inevitable evolution. Even more interesting than this is the argument that serves as the basis for his statement: the nature of sexual difference. In truth, it is a strange sort of argument, but one that merits being uncovered: the real difference between the genders is not simply biological or functional, of a nature that is “natural,” but is much more deeply rooted in the opposing ways in which each gender relates to its “nature.” The nature of men predisposes them to a greater socialization, the “civilization” of his instincts, a superior mastery of his emotions, and a greater receptiveness to reason. The nature of women, on the other hand, is the inverse of men’s: resisting the push toward rationalization that is part of a man’s nature. A woman’s nature is more closely tied to impulse and sentiment. By way of example, in his study on the subject of
suicide
, Durkheim noted: “The needs specific to the female gender are of a less mental character, because, in general, her mental life is less developed…. Because woman is a more instinctual being than man, in order to find peace and calm, she has only to follow her instincts.” At the very least, credit has to be given to this argument for being clear: the differences between the genders, which justify woman’s subordinate place in social life, are based on the existence of two opposing “psychological types.”

In androcratic thinking, of course, there are other ways to establish an irreducible specificity of male and female natures, which most of the time are treated as fact. However, no matter how far back one goes in the exploration of the various relationships between men and women, and no matter how shocking the interpretations, one always seems to come to the same conclusion: man somehow finds the legitimacy necessary to establish and maintain his superiority.

Is this thesis a sign of collusion with a heteronormative point of view? It is easy to see that following this line of thinking, the concept of homosexuality is inconceivable. Indeed, in this perspective, the homosexual is more than just a moral monstrosity (the point of view as taken by religion and psychiatry: the pervert); he is a monstrosity of logic. If the masculine is defined by its greater socialization in comparison to the feminine (i.e. more “civilized,” less “emotional,” and more “rational”), then what to make of a man who possesses a feminine side?

Based on this, we can come to a first conclusion: the masculinist tradition permeating the history of the humanities and social sciences, the wide existence of androcratic structures and representations (or phallocratic, another word meaning male domination), correlate (be it indirectly or implicitly) to the existence of homophobic mental structures. In other words, to perceive the relationship between genders as, in essence, unequal supposes a naturalizing perception of the difference between genders that, in turn, implies a heteronormativity. Male dominance and homophobia both belong to the same kind of discourse, to the same “ideology,” so much so that the identification of the inferiorization or deprecation of women can always be considered symptomatic of a negative perception of homosexuality: the two go hand in hand.

Symbolic Law & Homophobia
Is it then possible to turn this proposition on its head and find an intrinsic, inverse link between
feminism
and the struggle against homophobic prejudice? The contemporary history of feminist and homosexual struggles reveals specific convergences: oppressed women and homosexuals discern that they have common adversaries. It is all the more interesting to consider this in the context of gender difference within the confines of
anthropology
and
philosophy
. The
symbolic order
in its entirety, and for that matter the very possibility of thought, is supposedly founded upon this difference that is primordial, irreducible, and even precious. As French anthropologist Françoise Héritier claimed in her opposition to the recognition of homosexual couples: “It is the observation of the difference between genders that is at the basis of all thought, traditional as well as scientific…. It is the ultimate end-point of thought, on which a fundamental conceptual opposition is based, that which contrasts the identical with the different.”

Thus, Lacan’s theory of sexuation is intertwined with a sexual order, where the difference between genders plays the crucial role. It is important to properly understand the scope of this leap in logic. Certainly, humanity is divided according to the sexes, but this fact does not explain its pertinence nor what value should be conferred, except to immediately recognize within it a “symbolic law” that defines what is human, a sort of figurative “naturalization” that closes the gap between a fact (the sexual being) and the meaning assigned to it.

Starting from the same sacred premise of sexual difference, French psychoanalyst Pierre Legendre’s emphasis is on parentage, a fundamental expression of the difference between man and woman. From this perspective, the idea of a homosexual union constitutes, in the strictest sense, not only an absurdity, but the very soul of a crime of
lese humanity
. Herein lies homophobia’s claim to legitimacy.

A further example is interesting, insofar as it is deployed in a feminist and “left wing” space. One quickly grasps how an essentialist perception of the gender difference can lead unmistakably, despite an obvious prudence of form, to a philosophy that is unimaginatively conservative and homophobic. “What to think of the difference between genders,” French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski wrote, “when they cease to depend on one another, when they separate, and instead of the desire for the opposite sex, the desire for the same is encountered, which today is called homosexuality?”

A striking point emerges from this. There are two important threads: whether it is linked to a psychological nature, in the inegalitarian and phallocratic sense (the Durkheim case), or to the “nature” of a symbolic law in the egalitarian and feminist sense (the Héritier case), the difference between the sexes can be used (implicitly in the first sense, and explicitly in the second) by a blind adherence to heteronormativity, that is to say, homophobia.

The avenues shared by those who reinforce or struggle against male domination—by those who, in order to analyze socio-sexual relationships, invoke either a “nature” or a “symbolism” of the difference between the sexes—are also not shared by homophobes and non-homophobes alike. To put it differently, simply criticizing male domination or the inequalities between men and women is not enough to evade homophobia. The way in which the relationships between the sexes are analyzed reveals that this is a concept underlying gender difference: this is the base on which there is a certain hostility toward relationships that can develop between the same kind of human beings. It is only by uprooting this base that we can hope for a culture in which there is no need to struggle against homophobia, as it will have simply disappeared.

Deconstructing “Gender Differences”
In closing, we ask the question then of how to identify any clues that foreshadow such a culture to come. Let us propose the identification of a few such clues, though their interpretation is obviously subjective.

In the purely philosophical realm, any criticism of the concept of identity stems from this kind of movement. But it is the work of Gilles Deleuze that constitutes the most energetic undertaking of the destruction of essentialist ontological categories and the identities they assign. Sexuation, too, is not left out of this insidious process of undermining. Like any other form of dual opposition setting the intangible limits of identity, the way in which every individual is trapped by the choice between “male” or “female” is broken up in favor of the concept of “becoming a minority,” which implies not only two but multiple genders. This reformulation must first employ a new concept of unconscious, an anti-Oedipal unconscious that disassociates sexuality from the family, placing the libido in relation to an “outside” and “showing how our loves are derived from universal history, and not from Mommy and Daddy.”