Posts Tagged ‘homophobia’
[LINK] “Ugandan gay activists denied visas to World Pride conference”
I’m sharing Nicholas Keung’s Toronto Star article from the 16th of this month because, although it describes a situation since resolved satisfactorily, it also reveals a certain hypocrisy on the part of the Canadian government. How is it proper to condemn the human rights situation in a particular country and then make it difficult for people directly affected by this situation to claim refugee status, especially when the government has encouraged people to claim refugee status on this ground in the past?
Canadian officials have granted visitor visas to some of the Ugandan gay activists who had been denied a chance to attend the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Toronto.
The immigration minister’s office said the visa applicants were asked to resubmit new applications with substantiated documentation.
Half of the 10 Ugandan activists received visas in the past week, and conference organizers hope the rest will get their travel documents in time for the two-day international conference, which begins next Wednesday.
[. . .]
Ottawa’s flip-flop followed a Star story about the Ugandan delegates being rejected for visas over concerns that they would stay here to seek asylum.
The rejection drew public outrage because of Uganda’s recently passed anti-gay legislation, among the harshest in the world. Canada has joined many other countries in condemning the new law.
Calling it a serious setback for human rights, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird vowed when it was passed to “continue efforts to decriminalize homosexuality and combat violence against people on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
The delegates were denied entry for a variety of reasons: lack of travel history, family ties in Canada and in Uganda, and insufficient funds for the trip (though the conference is sponsoring travel for some of them).
[BRIEF NOTE] On not being homophobic by saying all homophobes are homosexual
The news that Cardinal O’Brien of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, he who has made a name for himself in the United Kingdom and the wider world for a variety of anti-gay statements, has himself resigned his position after being accusations he of undue sexual conduct with four different men became public, resdonates. The man seems to have been a hypocrite, condemning a class of behaviours and a certain identity that he himself indulged in–and, worse, may have engaged in a certain amount of coercion of subordinates.
O’Brien seems to have been a hypocrite. Generalizing from his case to all homophobes and all homophobia–assuming that it’s all a matter of sexual repression–does not follow. That’s the subjects post of “Homophobes Are All Secretly Gay”. (Not.) Wonkman points out that claiming that a homophobe is secretly gay plays into traditional anti-gay stereotypes.
You just told us that a homophobe is secretly a broken, twisted piece of work: that his conduct and personality are defined by urges he’s working extremely hard to suppress; that he lashes out violently and publicly in order to help keep his broken sanity together; that he cannot possibly be a complete human being; that he is, fundamentally, an extremely sad and disturbed person; and that all of this is because he is secretly gay.
In short, he’s a wild-eyed freak.
You have no reason to think that he’s secretly gay. No study has ever concluded that a majority of homophobes (let alone all of them) are secretly gay. Sure, studies like this are constantly reported in the popular press, but the findings are always exaggerated and most of the studies reported in the popular press weren’t even looking into this phenomenon to begin with.
There is a weak scientific basis upon which to conclude that some homophobes experience some degree of latent homosexual attraction, but this degree is not necessarily higher than large numbers of people who live as perfectly contented, well-adjusted heterosexuals. (Having some small degree of same-sex attraction [that one time you kissed a guy in college; noticing that your personal trainer has nice abs which, in the back of your mind, you’d kind of like to rub; etc.] doesn’t make you gay.)
What we’re left with, then, is you digging up a particularly nasty and hoary stereotype in order to discredit someone who you dislike.
[. . .]
Can you avoid invoking homophobic stereotypes in order to make your case? Can you stop using “gay” as an insult, and can you rise above this sort of schoolyard namecalling (“OH YEAH? WELL YOU SECRETLY LIKE COCK!”) to make your points?
Coverage of the scientific research has frequently been nuanced, portrayed well last April in Scientific American.
Homophobes should consider a little self-reflection, suggests a new study finding those individuals who are most hostile toward gays and hold strong anti-gay views may themselves have same-sex desires, albeit undercover ones.
The prejudice of homophobia may also stem from authoritarian parents, particularly those with homophobic views as well, the researchers added.
“This study shows that if you are feeling that kind of visceral reaction to an out-group, ask yourself, ‘Why?'” co-author Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said in a statement. “Those intense emotions should serve as a call to self-reflection.”
The research, published in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reveals the nuances of prejudices like homophobia, which can ultimately have dire consequences.
“Sometimes people are threatened by gays and lesbians because they are fearing their own impulses, in a sense they ‘doth protest too much,'” Ryan told LiveScience. “In addition, it appears that sometimes those who would oppress others have been oppressed themselves, and we can have some compassion for them too, they may be unaccepting of others because they cannot be accepting of themselves.”
Ryan cautioned, however, that this link is only one source of anti-gay sentiments.
“May.” “Sometimes.” “Only one source.” None of these adjectives refer to certainties. If you go to the paper in question, there you’ll find those adjectives and others like “some.”
One thing that the accusation that homophobes are closeted allows, incidentally, is a vindication of heterosexuals as not beign homophobic or implicated in homophobic norms. If homophobes is just a gay thing, what do heterosexuals have to do with it all? The accusation can be a convenient way to excuse heterosexuals from having to change anything about themselves.
[URBAN NOTE] “Rob Ford Should Participate in Pride. Period.”
I agree with most everything Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan wrote..
Every political leader has can’t-miss events, occasions whose significance are such that they simply must show up. Sometimes, they do it reluctantly. Sometimes, they do it out of obligation. Perhaps some politicians who go to Pride do so only because they feel they must. Perhaps some of them are homophobic and hate every minute.
They should—and yes, this is a controversial position to stake out—show up anyway, and be supportive when they do.
The only way we make progress, collectively, is by normalizing certain attitudes and holding others unacceptable.
It is unacceptable for Toronto to have a mayor who either is or acts—and these are not the same thing—homophobic. But we have to start with the visible signs of action. We do not know what is in Rob Ford’s heart. His feelings about the queer communities in Toronto may be simple or complex, fully known to him or largely subconscious. (“I think the mayor is shy. I think the mayor is insecure,” councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam told NOW today, and it’s certainly a plausible theory.) We are not the thought police and we cannot, nor do we want to, monitor his mind. But we cannot tolerate this kind of action.
And it is an action. Ford isn’t skipping the parade this year, he didn’t skip all of Pride last year, out of forgetfulness or busyness or getting the dates wrong in his calendar. Large numbers of people, including many of his council colleagues, invited him to attend. Columnists asked him to attend. No doubt many of his advisers pointed out the political backlash he would risk by staying home. This did not just slip his mind. It was a decision, and it was indefensible.
Go to the Torontoist site and read the debate. It’s noteworthy that the distinction Dotan makes between feeling something and acting as if one feels something–in this case, homophobia by intent or by accident–is controversial. I disagree with this criticism, inasmuch as first principles are actually pretty critical in resolving many situations and their outcomes.
[LINK] “Atwood drops Dubai”
A festival in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, dedicated to celebrating “the world of books in all its infinite variety” will be doing its celebrating without Margaret Atwood as a result of what Atwood calls a “censorship fracas.”
The Canadian author (and vice-president of International PEN) confirmed yesterday in an e-mail that she is turning down her invitation to participate in the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature, set to start Feb. 26 in Dubai, after organizers declined to let British journalist and author Geraldine Bedell launch her latest novel there.
Bedell’s book, The Gulf Between Us, published by Penguin Group (U.K.), reportedly contains “a minor character” who is both a sheik and gay with an English boyfriend. In a letter to Bedell published on the weekend, festival director Isobel Abulhoul also said the book’s setting against the backdrop of the Iraq war “could be a minefield for us.”
In a statement of “clarification” yesterday, Abulhoul said her decision to ban The Gulf Between Us was based on having lived in Dubai for 40 years and knowing what kinds of writing “would appeal to the book-reading community in the Middle East.” Atwood, one of 66 authors invited to Dubai, was scheduled for an appearance on Feb. 28.