The Dictionary of Homophobia (72 page)

But this concept of marginalization in which victims engage in the same kind of behavior as they are subject to raises an essential point: even if homosexuals do not exact the same level of violence against heterosexuals in return, heterosexuals can still feel that they are victims of heterophobic demonstrations, which only increases their own resentment of homosexuals. Real or imagined, heterophobia is the result of a situation of inverse marginalization: to be refused entry at a gay bar, to be rejected by the uniformity of codes of the “gay milieu,” or to see in a highbrow production or a political agenda signs of
communitarianism
. Homosexuality, as shown in debates surrounding Lesbian and Gay Pride or the
PaCS
(Pacte civil de solidarité; Civil solidarity pact) proposal in France, has been denounced as a threat again and again. Even if homosexuals do not respond in ways that are actually heterophobic, their response is sometimes violent, particularly in light of the cultural and political development of gay history. But regardless, heterophobia can never have the same impact as homophobia, as homophobics can act against homosexuals without having their own psychological or sexual identity questioned. In examining the heterophobic behavior of homosexuals, one would obviously see its pathological origins in their very sexuality; their heterophobia would be construed as reactive and the result of an unhealthy sexual identity.

It is this irreducible asymmetry that is the essential point of our reflective thinking on the subject: one can see in the notion of heterophobia, besides psychological questions or legal considerations, an intellectual interest before all else. The hypothesis of heterophobia has value only if it leads to the following question: Is it possible to radically question homophobia without thinking of the equal possibility of heterophobia, even if theoretical? Homophobia relies in great part, in fact, on a sense of impunity, of sexual legitimacy, manifested in the fact that the homophobe does not even think of the possibility that the violence might be mutual. It is violence itself, both physical and symbolic, that leaves no place for the victim to respond in kind; it is a one-way stigmatization, as if homosexuality were a handicap, a disability.

Lesbian and Gay Pride sometimes provokes the confrontational reaction of a “Hetero Pride.” By contrast, being subjected to homophobia does not naturally provoke heterophobia in response. We have to applaud this if it signals the rejection by homosexuals of the idea that violence begets violence. But this is unlikely, and if heterophobia exists, it is better that it is talked about rather than left unspoken. Such a notion, currently not recognized in any legal way, is at present purely psychological and speculative, but at its core is a response to the very notion of homophobia: a way of legitimizing oneself. It is not possible to examine homophobic violence without examining the homophobe’s sense of impunity, based on the idea that heterosexuality is the “normal sexuality” not be questioned by the “tendency” or “behavior” of those who love others of the same gender.
—Jean-Louis Jeannelle

Brizon, Hervé.
La Vie rêvée de sainte Tapiole
. Paris: Balland, 2000.

Franzini, Louis R., and Stephen M. White. “Hetero-negativism? The Attitudes of Gay Men and Lesbians Toward Heterosexuals,”
Journal of Homosexuality
37, no. 1 (1999).

Krokidas, John.
Shame No More
. Short film, 1999.

“Le Miracle de l’hétérophobie,”
Bang Bang,
no. 7 (2002).

Rémès, Erik.
http://ericremes.free.fr/textes/humeurs/humeur%201.html
(accessed January 8, 2008).

Wittig, Monique.
Les Guérillères
. Paris: Minuit, 1969. [Published in the US as
Guérillères
. Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2007].

—Biphobia; Communitarianism; Criminal; Gayphobia; Ghetto; Heterosexism; Lesbophobia; Shame; Symbolic Order; Tolerance; Transphobia; Violence.

HETEROSEXISM

Although the word heterosexism has only recently begun to appear in modern dictionaries, the concept itself is nothing new. It is clearly suggested in the writings of André
Gide
, as well as in the “Straight Mind” that writer and feminist theorist Monique Wittig talked about. It also appeared in the use of slogans such as “heterocops” or “heterrorists” used by early gay liberation activists; the word heterosexism itself was sometimes evoked in this period, but in a very limited way.

But in more recent years, in light of the various struggles for LGBT rights, the word and the concept have achieved greater legitimacy, especially when used in conjunction with terms such as heterocentrism and heteronormativity, which together force us to rethink rhetorical and practical devices of sexual domination.

It is not easy to define something on which little or no consensus exists, especially when its primary function is as a tool for social criticism. In any event, heterosexism can be defined as a vision of the social world that articulates the promotion of heterosexuality to the exclusion of homosexuality. It is based on the teleological illusion according to which man is made for woman and, chiefly, woman for man, an intimate conviction that serves as the necessary model of any human society. From there, attributing to heterosexuality the monopoly of legitimate sexuality, this dramatic social idea has the effect, if not the goal, of proposing in advance an ideological justification of the stigmatization and
discrimination
suffered by homosexuals.

Seen this way, this concept has the merit of distinguishing two realities that are often intertwined. As noted by French sociologist Eric Fassin, “actual usage wobbles between two very different definitions. The first hears the phobia in homophobia, that is, rejection of gays and of homosexuality. We are in the individual range of a psychology. The second sees heterosexism in homophobia: this time it is the inequality of sexualities. The hierarchy between heterosexuality and homosexuality returns to the collective register of ideology.” From there, adds Fassin, “maybe in this case, like the distinction between misogyny and sexism, would it be clearer to distinguish between ‘homophobia’ and ‘heterosexism’ to avoid confusion between psychological and ideological acceptances? For my part, that is what I propose and practice.” Under these conditions, people who claim “I am not homophobic, but …” (etc.), inasmuch as they refuse, for example, equality of rights between gays and heteros on questions such as marriage or adoption, will have to admit that they are at the very least heterosexist.

However, this distinction has the effect of reducing the link between stigmatization (homophobic) and discrimination (heterosexist). Worse, in reducing the semantic specter of the word homophobia, it gives the impression of limiting its necessary critical reach, that which Fassin justly wants to avoid: “In this case, talking about heterosexism rather than homophobia is not any more or less hypocritical or deft at making a euphemism of homophobic
violence
by calling it heterosexist.” In short, the notion of heterosexism could possibly create more problems than it could solve.

Yet, in reality, it is the genesis of heterosexism that allows for the demonstration of its critical potential. Here, two different aspects must be looked at: the individual passage to heterosexuality (psychogenesis) and the collective conversion to heterosexism (sociogenesis). Psychogenesis of heterosexuality remains largely unexplained. If we agree with Freud’s idea of the child’s innate bisexuality, how can we explain the restrictions and limitations that intervene later in life? In respect thereof, one must without doubt grant a large place to social influences, evidently an influential factor in the psychic development of the individual. This is what is demonstrated by the work of anthropologists Clellen Ford and Frank Beach: “Men and women without conscious homosexual tendencies are a product of cultural conditioning along with gays that find heterosexual relations uncomfortable and frustrating. Those two extremes are the result of a distancing from the original intermediary way, where both sexual forms were manifested. In a society such as ours, a great part of the population learns not to react to homosexual stimulations and to avoid them until they cease to be a threat. At the same time, and equally by learning, a certain minority becomes very, not to say exclusively, sensitive to erotic attraction of the same sex.” The psychogenesis of heterosexuality, after all, is greatly dependent on social learning.

We still have to explain, however, how a culturally acquired preference becomes a morally required value. So this sociogenesis of hegemonic heterosexuality constitutes the real heart of the problem. Despite the clarity of the work of LGBT historian Jonathan Ned Katz, especially in
The Invention of Heterosexuality
, the thesis he presents remains almost unthinkable for some. The negative reaction is a clear indication of the power of heterosexism which, as all cumulative ideology, prevents thinking outside the “normal” frame of thought. Of course, it is not for Katz, or for us evidently, to say that sexual relations between men and women are a historically dated invention. On the other hand, the uniqueness and, to be more precise, the symbolic predominance granted to those relations are not invariants or universals of human culture. On the contrary, everything leads to thinking that while the homosexual character, if we believe Foucault, was an invention of the medical community of the nineteenth century, the heterosexual character is a progressive construction whose emergence and evolution can be retraced.

To do this, one would have to consider Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont’s
L’Amour et l’Occident
, published in English as
Love in the Western World
; perhaps it is time we had a book on heterosexuality in the western world, in which we would find the sudden appearance, around the twelfth century, of a new concept of sex and gender linked to established court ethics. It is at this time, still more than in the first centuries of Christianity’s beginnings, that heterosexism and homophobia made their first joint appearance. Following this, one would clearly note a resurgence of heterosexist feeling in the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, specifically in the new court and fashionable parlor society of the Early Modern Age. Finally, another rise occurred around the end of the eighteenth century, from which we have not completely recovered. In a significant manner, it is to those three respective eras that these great myths of heterosexual culture belong: Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet and, to a lesser extent, Paul and Virginia, the eponymous characters of the 1787 French novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de St-Pierre.

It is, however, not sufficient to explain how this mythology of heterosexual amorous passion was constructed as a cultural absolute. We would be hard pressed to find examples of this in past eras, even the idea of which, to the Ancient, would have seemed highly unlikely; one would still have to demonstrate at the same time the systematic erasing of homosexual desire in this same culture: it is this
censorship
, through rereading and rewriting enterprises, to which all Christian society tied itself. This general sexual reform, which affected authors in Antiquity (e.g.,
Sappho
, Anacreon, Pindar, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Martial, and Petronius), was equally applied to modern authors such as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and even Walt Whitman, in order to mask as much as possible the gay eroticism suggested in their works. Under these conditions, the representation of same-sex relations proved to be very difficult, and most of the time impossible, unless it conformed to social “
tolerance
” standards by presenting images that were either euphemistic or caricatures—in other words, in keeping with the dominant vision of homosexuality in the West.

That said, the social costs and effects of this ideology cannot be underestimated. In the heterosexist culture that grew out of the bourgeois society of the nineteenth century, traditional thoughts on marriage and parenting marginalized not only homosexuals, but also those who were not part of heterosexual couples: the “bachelor,” the “old maid,” and any others who give the impression of not ratifying the ideal of “the couple“ or symbolically approving social order by seeming to foment social protest and “biological” disorder.

Inside this normative frame, however, daily life is not any more comfortable. Self-imposed constraints often transform collective agents of the social pressure into individual victims who come to regret their life choices, made in good part to satisfy social requisites for which they understand, generally too late, that they sacrificed youth, happiness, and liberty. Nevertheless, the cause of this everyday dissatisfaction and psychological misery that are the lot of many apparently “conforming” heterosexuals is often not identified, while symbolic violence, in the sense defined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu of the heterosexist system, is completely invisible and detrimental to the very same people whom it intended to benefit.

In this way, heterosexism appears like gender police, intended to call back to social order individuals of all kinds, whatever their sexual orientations, whether or not they are inside the defined frame. It would, however, be surprising that an ideology, so heavy and so onerous, could perpetuate itself in a mechanical way if persons did not see, rightly or wrongly, some benefits in it. Beyond purely pro-natalist interests, which were never threatened in diverse societies that made a more legitimate place for homosexual relations, heterosexism seems to guarantee the man who consents to it the mastering of the social world under the condition that he agrees to prove at a very young age, and all through his life, that he is neither a baby, a girl, nor finally a “gay.” And for the woman, this heterosexual culture, where she apparently holds a psychologically valorizing position, as she sees herself being desired, courted, adulated, all while being completely enclosed, controlled, and dominated, seems to promise a marvelous happiness with Prince Charming and, at least the anticipation of a peaceful and reassuring
family
life in a society where complementarity of sexes would agree with equality of chances.