Is Homophobia Eternal?

Which is to say, I am not quite persuaded by the notion that homophobia is something we can predict will always be around. For today, I am merely entertaining it. The notion that there will always be homophobia was put forward by Andrew Doyle - "Homophobia finds a way". 

I should say, I am also not a big fan of faux-"phobias" that I shall specify I mean that etymologically phobia probably just means "fear" regardless of whether it is rational or irrational, by convention specifically a 19th-20th century psychology convention "phobias" tended to describe irrational fears - hydrophobia, agoraphobia, arachnaphobia etc. to which there probably are fair analogues in homophobia, islamaphobia etc. but the distinction can be lost, for example, in describing someone who is irrationally afraid of spiders in the same way as someone who is irrationally afraid of homosexuals; continuing the example, people who are irrationally afraid of spiders may refuse to conduct a conversation in the same room as a house spider until someone else has removed it and people who are irrationally afraid of homosexuality might beat up a male with earrings regardless of his sexual orientation.

I think there was historic utility in the faux-phobia (in the sense of analogies) of homophobia, but because the analogy was false, the term is now, given the legal status of same-sex couples in most of the G7 nations, particularly the Anglo-sphere and Europe, causing as many breakdowns of useful discourse as it used to construct useful discourse. (I also suspect that "homophobic" was perhaps specifically targeted at people with "macho" concepts to specifically needle them with the contradiction between perceiving themselves as masculine and tough, but afraid of effeminate men.)

Lastly in my pre-ramble, I'd say that as I'm entertaining the idea that homophobia is a phenomena that can fluctuate but not progress toward resolution, I am certainly rationalizing toward that conclusion. Because of that, I'm not necessarily going to accept the conclusion.

Premise: Reproduction is Important

I'm not sure what is technically possible these days. Whatever the case, I feel it is at the quarter-mark of the 21st century, still the case that most people alive, and certainly most of the people that ever existed are the product of human reproduction.

As such I would expect this situation to be riding on some quite profound psychological reflection that reproduction is important. People tend to get preoccupied with it, give attention to it, ruminate and fantasize about it, and furthermore do so for things that could lead to reproduction without reproduction itself being the end they are conscious of.

To put it crudely, I'm saying a teenage boy abusing himself over an image of a woman's tits, does so because of reproduction, but are not necessarily having the conscious experience of thinking "I want to have a baby, a little baby that would breastfeed!" 

Similarly, this premise suggests that there is a reason when a distressed person walks through the door of a clinical psychologist that they will likely be questioned at length and upfront about their mother and father, at least until this recent blip of history. 

I suggest that happens as a result of the import of reproduction, even though across the tree of life we can see it take many forms - fish laying eggs to be fertilized outside the body, insects laying fertilized eggs inside another insects corpse, sharks birthing live young that have already fed on their slow to hatch siblings, birds that push their young out of their nests, birds that lay their eggs in another species nest to have them raised in their place, jellyfish that age forwards and backwards, microbes that reproduce asexually etc. we primates reproduce in a general primate way, as a social species.

I'm dimly aware that there are some scant cultures that might hold beliefs in multiple paternity and what not, beliefs I suspect that do not hold up to the scrutiny of genome sequencing.

Premise: Existential Angst

It takes a triumph of reason over instinct, emotion, to think how few days you spend morning the fact that you cannot name all 16 (in most cases) of your great great grandparents, nor all 32 of your great great great grandparents. Not even the least detail of their names. 

You might have an affinity for a particular indirect relation, some great uncle you share a name with if not named for, yet you probably know Isaac Newton, who had no children at all. I would guess the vast majority of some 5~6 billion conscious adults on the planet know Isaac Newton and have no idea who their ancestor was or what they did that walked the earth at the same time. If Newton doesn't do it for you, there's Da Vinci and Michaelangelo, Joan of Arc, Jesus of Nazereth whom we are not sure even existed. You of course know Adult Hitler's name, but in a few generations, most people descended from the Allies won't know their relations' names that went off to impede the Third Reich and Hirohito's ambitions in the pacific. 

Not everyone wants kids, but some people do, perhaps most at some point think about having kids in a desirous way. Even when they experience enough, perhaps the majority, of children around that they do not particularly like. 

People that have kids worry about their kids. Feel sick to their stomachs if they lose track of them, if they deviate from the routines they are accustomed to. I have even heard it described as an analogy, motherhood to having phantom limb syndrome. People use the term "a part of oneself" to describe all kinds of relationships, and kids are not excluded from the subjects of this expression.

Such that, a way to cope with the dread of leading a trivial, meaningless and forgetable life as a brief flash of illumination between two infinite darknesses in an indifferent universe, is to have kids. Children to survive you as a way to cope with your own mortality.

Even same-sex attracted couples, who despite all the historic messaging and environments that suggested that they did not and could not exist, but awaken in some proximity of puberty to realize that they like the sex which reflects them rather than contrasts them, still desire children as evidenced by the battles hard fought for the right to adopt, to employ surrogates and ongoing research to enable multiple paternity and maternity.

Argument

If it is the case that heterosexual people, among others, but are the subject here, feel anxious about reproducing, having kids. If they lay awake sometimes at night, wondering how old they will be at their child's graduation, or what they would do with the long rest of their lives if they do not spend them rearing children, then it makes sense to me, that parents would also get anxious about their kids reproducing.

And if for example, a parent has some reason to fear a doctor's office where they are informed their child will die of some incurable condition, and to a lesser extent finding their children will suffer from some condition that will diminish their chances of finding a mate, or some condition that renders them incapable of having children and perhaps even adopting children given the care they themselves will require, and if in those ultra-rare incidents where a father discovers he is not the father of the children he has been raising for years where upon the discovery of the facts about his mate and his children he spends any time at all feeling any negative affect at all before concluding "this changes nothing" then

It logically extends that parents in some number will experience a dread that their child is same sex attracted. It is just one generation removed from their concerns that they would not have children. I am easily persuaded that there is some undercurrent in all our lives, perhaps only salient for brief moments as bereavement is processed when people utter things like "it really puts it all in perspective" that people to some extent view having a child who doesn't then have their child is in some ways a waste.

I am inclined to think, simply, that them's be the breaks. I think, there is always going to be, a case at least to be made, that their will be some homophobia emanating as an existential dread from the vicinity of parents. The logical conclusion of Steve 38, and Tracy 34 deciding to marry simply because they both feel they are running out of time, having one child who doesn't conform to a gender stereotype long before they have the barest sexual thoughts but even so when their child is 6 Steve is 44 bald and fat, Tracy 40 and though they will have a full and enriching experience of parenthood, now they are preoccupied with the fear that they will never experience grandparenthood.

And so, just as I can't exclude my "bros" who upon becoming fathers of daughters impressed upon me their own discomfort with daughters and femininity perhaps because they had not realized how chauvinistic or misogynistic their own attitudes had always been, and it is of sudden import that sex not define interests, preferences, abilities and aptitudes, I can't exclude the possibility of parents who suspecting their investment in immortality might mature into homosexuality, start opening their mind to the possibility that sexual orientation might be in a parent's control.

Would that I could make the point that even though technological and legal progress may have made the getting of children by same-sex couples a non-obstacle, there is a fairly straightforward meaningful difference between the ease with which a heterosexual mating between teenagers might result in a child, versus a long and expensive process results in a child for same-sex couples and couples that struggle to conceive.

As such, much as your dog, has no fucking idea how society works, and they will find a toy poodle a more immediate threat that needs barking at than a drug addict with a screwdriver trying to break into cars in the same street. People possess reason, but are not that often possessed by it. As such, even if having a gay or lesbian child might actually, statistically predict they are more likely to produce a child than maybe having a straight child, this may not be understood and parents seek for something they understand, something more akin to their own experience.

So, having said all that - and I do not think it an exhaustive case, I'm not for example particularly interested in all the homophobic people who for example - hate themselves or have inflexible ideas of gender roles etc. That might produce the effect of homophobia being present in society without any connection to existential angst over genetic reproduction.

I conclude that if there is demand for solutions to same-sex attraction, just as if there is demand for snake oil, the market will find efficient and sophisticated ways to provide snake oil, subsequently if there is a predictable eternal demand for conversion therapy there will be a predictable eternal supply of conversion therapies.

The last thing that I would add, is emphasis on sophisticated ways to provide conversion therapies, because it is too easy to imagine a future where in Alabama or Mississippi or somewhere in the minds of a western anglo audience, there are church camps for praying the gay away. Given that same-sex attraction and orientation seems to crop up mostly unpredictably* the world over (I do not believe that Iran is free from the phenomena of homosexuality) the market will find conversion therapies that are palatable to someone whose self-conceit is that they are secular, progressive and liberal, but cannot overcome their fear that their offspring will go through life debilitated by same-sex attraction and simply wish, life was more straight forward for them.

Doyle's Argument Afterthought

Andrew Doyle, argues a position, that I doubt is in totality, that medically transitioning children (puberty blockers etc) is a new form of conversion therapy and a new form of homophobia. 

I simply do not have any access to any parents participating in such a process to form a non-speculative opinion. I'm not even sure if it's legal in my jurisdiction.

My impression is he also allows that other things are going on too, like social contagion among teenage girls perhaps.

So the idea that in some cases, transitioning minors is being employed as a conversion therapy seems plausible to me, and compatible with my prediction that there will always be some degree of homophobia inextricably linked to the same emotional centre that makes many people anxious about having children before it is "too late."

It comes to that dog-like lack of understanding as to what the fuck is going on. That one could feel the anxiety that their child might grow up to be same-sex attracted and irrationally hope for a diagnosis of gender disphoria initiating transition processes that can result in sterilisation.

Much as, say black parents of a black child don't have to worry about putting their foot in their mouth racially (if not culturally) when their child brings home a black partner, vs bringing home an asian partner, I can imagine parents that are more comfortable with the idea that they were mistaken in thinking their boy a girl, or their girl a boy, than navigating a dinner conversation with their boy's boy or their girl's girl. (and irrationally not accounting for the prospect that after transitioning their child, they may still bring home a same-gender partner). 

That's really just speculation, and having spoken to thousands of members of the Australian general public, as similar as they are to each other, I must testify there is not much of the general public I actually understand. 

The conclusion is plausible to me, that there always has been and always will be some form of homophobia fluctuating in localized contexts between peaks and troughs. We are certainly in a bizarre climate where Douglas Murray and Dave Rubin can make up half the panel at a US conservative convention, but the same two gay men could inspire picketing and protests from LGBTQIA+ activists.

To me it is plausible simply because if straight people feel anxious about having children, it stands to reason they will feel anxious, provided the opportunity about having grandchildren. For me, while not all parents need react to their child coming out badly or destructively, wishing nobody they knew or cared about had to deal with it, is likely to lead to behaviours and attitudes we could meaningfully label homophobic.

I don't condone homophobia, I predict though, it will keep happening.