{"id":60176,"date":"2014-12-28T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T18:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=60176"},"modified":"2017-09-17T17:23:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T22:23:17","slug":"a-little-theory-of-homophobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/12\/28\/a-little-theory-of-homophobia\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little Theory of Homophobia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2\"<\/a>Heterosexuality in the U.S. is gendered: women are expected to attract, men are supposed to be attracted. \u00a0Men want, women want to be wanted. \u00a0Metaphorically, this is a predator\/prey type relationship. \u00a0Women are subject to the hunt whether they like it or not, so men’s attention can be pleasing, annoying, or frightening. \u00a0It all depends.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, women know what it feels like to be prey. \u00a0Not all men make us feel this way, of course, but some certainly do. \u00a0The leering guy on the street, the heavy hitter in the bar, the frotteurist on the subway, the molesting uncle, the aggressive fraternity brother, etc. \u00a0It doesn’t matter if we’re interested in men or not, interested in that guy or not, there are men that — with their eyes, mouths, hands, and more — apparently can’t help but get their “sexual energy slime”<\/a> all over us.<\/p>\n

So what’s homophobia? \u00a0Sometimes I think it’s the moment that men feel what it’s like to be prey. \u00a0See, women are used to it. \u00a0It’s a familiar feeling we have to modulate all the time. \u00a0We’re used to constantly judging whether it means danger or not. \u00a0But when it happens to men for the first time, I bet it’s shocking as all hell. \u00a0It’s like they’ve been treated like a human being their whole life and then, POW, they’re a piece of ass and nothing more. \u00a0It must feel just crazy bad.<\/p>\n

Of course, all that’s happened is that they’ve been demoted in the food chain. \u00a0No longer the predator, they’re the prey. \u00a0The dynamic between two men is the same as the one between men and women, except now they know what it feels like to be slimed. Just like this<\/a>\u00a0comic by Andy Singer.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Mike Hrostoski<\/a> for the awesome phrase. Cross-posted at Slate<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heterosexuality in the U.S. is gendered: women are expected to attract, men are supposed to be attracted. \u00a0Men want, women want to be wanted. \u00a0Metaphorically, this is a predator\/prey type relationship. \u00a0Women are subject to the hunt whether they like it or not, so men’s attention can be pleasing, annoying, or frightening. \u00a0It all depends. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":60179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,868,120,54],"class_list":["post-60176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-power","tag-sex","tag-sexual-orientation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/112.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60176"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71687,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60176\/revisions\/71687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}