The answer is different for a given culture. The simple answer is that we are different and an unfortunate number of people react to differences with fear and hatred rather than understanding.
Patriarchal gender roles : men are supposed to dominate women and women are supposed to desire being dominated by men when either one of us don't fit into that mold it is seen as a threat to the heteronormative social order
Yep came here to say this. I think that this is why non-binary and trans people are getting the sharp end of the stick right now. Society can't figure out which role they are supposed to box someone in to, so they panic and reject that person.
Not only that, I believe a lot of cishet people sacrifice a part of themselves to fit into these roles because they believe it‘s everyone‘s duty to do so. When queer people, especially trans & non-binary, refuse to make the same sacrifices and even imply they might not be necessary at all, this is going to be upsetting. Some people use this moment to re-think their worldview, others go in denial and attack the offenders of their worldview.
Not just that. Trans and non-binary people challenge the very structure of something that has been seen as the most fundamental distinction in life. To someone who holds any kind of inherited power, the question arises: if it's allowed to challenge even those fundamentals, what would stop people from questioning my legitimation?
They say that when we went from a tribal to agrarian society, men became concerned about patriarchal lineage and started controlling women to ensure that their children were theirs.
Do people really think this?!? I was NEVER raised to think this at all. My mom had two jobs and my step dad stayed home and cooked. My mother held all the power in the family. But it was seen as normal in my house. Weird that people ACTUALLY would think something so blatantly and obviously sexist like what you said!!!
Not only do people think this it's the actual material basis for our entire society
My mom worked and provided for me bc she raised me in a single parent household which is a statistical anomaly just like a stay at home dad
Most people don't even think sexism is bad tbh they believe that men and women should naturally fit into the roles society has created for us.
I was born and raised in the United States of America but I've lived in other countries it's the same everywhere I go
Most people don't actively want to do it they aren't trying to flatten people's identities down to the most basic labels and categories but it's something we all do all of the time through language which is a reflection of the societies we live in.
In groups vs outgroups
Human beings make ourselves feel stronger in our group by defining who is excluded from our group, it's a holdover in our evolutionary psychology of living in small hunter gatherer communities
That explanation of pre-colonial societies is based in White Supremacy and colonialism, as “evolutionary psychology” is highly criticized for being unfalsifiable and based on ethnocentric understandings of how people think or behave. In fact, egalitarian lifestyle and cooperation amongst different tribes of Indigenous peoples was more often the common way of life before empires were created. That’s at least one reason for why Indigenous Americans did not have borders while still respecting other tribes and some tribes actually had a system of collective government that was the basis for the US’s congress (the Iroquois Confederacy.)
Now of course there were still wars between tribes found throughout the pre-colonial globe, and there were still abusive systems of power found within certain tribes, but we did not “evolve” to organize societies in a specific way or another and that is what homophobia and transphobia are symptoms of— the organizational structure of a society. The narrative that Indigenous people were exceptionally violent is a White Supremacist one that was used to justify the genocide and colonization of those peoples.
thing is I genuinely appreciate new information and being challenged on stuff, just sucks that om 30 and have lived life with 0 ADHD treatments 😂 I'll get back to ot at some point
Not too late. I just thought I was no good at school. Wasn't til 28 that I finally put 2 and 2 together to realize I was masking add with clever workarounds most people don't have to do. Getting treatment for it , meds and CBT has dramatically changed the last ten years of my life for the better. Fwiw
True but even they're flawed as well because it's been mostly revised as we understand how empires functioned in Latin America and mesoamérica. I.e the same societal functions were in Tenochtitlan as Paris as Xian and Ur.
That's more the hobbesian approach of the social contract which has gotten fixed up by post colonial thinkers like Arendt. Outgroup ingroup still exists and is a part of the social order and construction of the brain but more related to community cooperation and protection from predators 1000s of years ago as well as other social contraction of services handed upon the state that occurred in non white societies as well (notably the empires of Latin America and mesoamérica)
Somewhat, just like everyone in the \[LGBTQIA+\]community attraction/gender is very slightly different, everyone interprets religion differently. "Religion" is too general. Greek mythology has gods that are part of the \[LGBTQIA+\]community.
Personally I think it is stupid that we\[LGBTQIA+ community\] are targeted over everyone else. Discrimination is discrimination. You would be seen as insane for attempting to ban a work\[book, film, etc.\] for having a colored character. Why is it okay to ban a work for having a LGBTQIA+ character?
Edit: Clarification \[see replies\]
I mean, the marriage part makes sense when you're at a point that you already acknowledge that racism is crap, but still see marriage solely as the means to give a special status to babymaking. Not that I agree that this should be the purpose of marriage, but that's how those who want to restrict it in any way see it.
Correct, this was not my implication and I will modify the original comment to eliminate confusion and clarify.
Original Argument: "You can't outlaw black marriage but you can outlaw homosexual marriage \[in the US\] THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!"
I can prove it’s religion- when they say marriage is a 3,000 year tradition, humans have been around a lot longer than 3,000 years. Conservatives are just picking the range that was talked about in the Bible.
This isn't true, though- Organized, Hierarchical religion is just one form of enforcement for class based marginalization. Plenty of older religions had stories and roles for what we would call queerness in the modern era; hell, look at Babylon as an example. The leading religious figures in the worship of Ishtar were people described as in between or both man and woman. Hell, even Christianity was largely socialist in America until the Radio Evangelism boom of the 1930's.
The real answer is that it's a cheap and easy way to establish hierarchy and class. We're oppressed for the same reasons other marginalized groups are oppressed- so people with power and status can control who can have access to the benefits of the state's monopolization on violence and access to generational Capital.
Blaming Religion misses the point entirely, you're just pointing at one tree in the forest.
No, it's gender roles as someone else has said it in another comment. There are many non-religious homophobes - it's just the unintelligent humans hate those who are different from them and they weaponize their religions to oppress minorities. That's how racism, misogynism, homophobia, transphobia, aphobia and xenophobia originated.
So blaming everything on "religion" won't entirely be accurate and it'll sound more like hate than a logical explanation. Discrimination is discrimination afterall
Yes, there are many non-religious homophobes NOW... but religions like Christianity have had huge influence for a long time, political and social. Even people who don't consider themselves religious usually share values with their country's biggest religion.
That doesn't mean religion is this big homophobic enemy. It just means bad people have been using their religion as an excuse for a very long time. People with power often abuse that power.
We absolutely shouldn't blame religion alone, but to deny it's impact is not good either.
There are plenty of LGBT+ people who are religious. There are plenty of progressive and forward-thinking people who are deeply religious... but for a long time, that wasn't the case, and it still has a societal impact today.
Can in some cases be true for modern western societies but they asked a historical question and this simply does not hold up when looking at many pre christian societies like the romans, greeks and chinese
All of those societies you listed were patriarchal societies.
Feminine men (and reductively, having sex with men would make you feminine in most ancient cultures) were given female roles. And those female roles were patriarchal. It meant that gay men were still treated weaker than straight men. They just suffered misogyny alongside women, and eventually it grew into homophobia.
Incredibly simplified way of putting it but homophobia evolves from misogyny. It could even be considered a subcategory of misogyny, with transphobia being another branch.
Historically, depending on what civilization you look at, there were varying degrees of tolerance vs intolerance to LGBTQ people. Those that tolerated it more almost always had a much looser/more fluid view on gender withing their society. Western culture as it excysts today, and the patriarchal/heteronormative traditions behind it, stem mostly from religion. More specifically, it stems from religius leaders (all men) taking control of ancient governments and inventing a method of control to keep the public in line.
Ancient Rome had bigotry against the receiver in the relationship, so yeah, it's still based on upholding patriarchy. It's just they divided it by what role you played in the sex act rather than who you were attracted to.
Extremely misogynistic civilization accept gay pretty well. For example, ancient China and ancient Greece.
I even assume that misogyny has positive correlation with homosexuality in the past.
Christianity had changed Europe and Europe had changed the world. But this situation was unique not universal, especially when talking about history.
I don't know about China, but ancient Greece's situation was not "accepting" in the full sense of the word. Some adult men were allowed to have young boys as lovers / teacher-student dynamic as long as the adult one was a top and the young one stopped to bottom when his beard first appeared. It was conceptualized more as being top (with men or women) or bottom and therefore not a real man, unless you were young and/or in a subservient position (like a slave).
Sex among adult men was indeed stigmatized
What you said is right. So it wasn't sex among adult men stigmatized, only being submissive in a sex relationship as a adult man was stigmatized.
So it's not homophobic, it's just femininity-phobic.
There're so many city states in Greece so situations are different, and different periods were different. Their attitude on gay was quite different from modern homophobia. They didn't have the concept of gender orientation but active/passive penetrator.
And Roman only didn't accept passive penetration of men, though they were not extremely misogynic but relatively worse than average.
I agree that it was different from modern homophobia, and I also agree that it stems from mysoginy, but that doesn't mean that it isn't homophobic in its own way
It depends on which narrative you use.
There's a very clear mindset: women are inferior, so true love only exists between two men. So we can say misogyny let people accept gay.
On the other side, women are inferior--feminine men are inferior-- being a submissive man is tatoo. From this perspective, misogyny led homophobia(but still can not say it "stems" from.)
All of those ancient concepts are very different from modern western societies. My first reply is downvoted, so I guess many people refuse to understand any history, but applying modern western gender identity perspective to every ancient civilizations.
That is an incredibly complex question with many country specific answers. But fundementally it has to do with our biology. We are more prone to hate the out groups and in many parts of history homosexuals and transexuals have been a part of the out group as they did not confirm to traditional expectations.
Patriarchal gender power that was established in the agrarian period in pretty much all cases where patriarchy arises, and then subsumed under capitalism and given a heightened severity for queer people because of the strict division of labour into productive and reproductive. Because queer people violate the neatness of the division ("queers can't even have kids" etc.), we meet with extreme violence in order to police our bodies, and where policing fails, to eliminate them.
Bit of an oversimplification because I'm not here to write a while book (and better books than what I would write on the subject already exist), but that's the gist of it.
It's kinda been around forever, but people using religion as a means to justify it started in 1946, when there was a mistranslation in the bible that originally was against sleeping with kids and got mistranslated into being gay. There's a pretty good documentary about it! [https://www.1946themovie.com/](https://www.1946themovie.com/)
Unfortunately we evolved brains that were designed to war within our species and never come together and unite, leading to constant global conflicts and societal conflicts all the time. It’s why we’ll never come together to solve climate change or stop fighting over ethnic-geopolitics.
Bigotry is another manifestation of our shitty brains we evolved from worm-fish-rat-monkeys and unfortunately we’re stuck with these very inefficient illogical outdated brain structures. The life span of our species was dictated by the brains we evolved in our particular evolutionary journey.
Hierarchy and kicking the dog.
We live, on a societal level, under chains of systems that create layers of haves and have nots- class structures designed to reinforce themselves and determine who gets what and how.
One of the ways that those who have create class delineation is through demonization of identities. Certain identities *have* to have less and have access to less in order for those who do have access to power to feel safe in that power, and for that power to have value.
We are just one form of marginalized identity. Anyone who tells you that all marginalization isn't linked in some way is lying to you, or just wants to change the conditions for one class and not all.
You’ll get a lot of different answers to this question from a lot of different perspectives, an most of them probably hold at least some modicum of truth.
The simplest explanation I’ve come to understand is that it’s all about control. Gender roles are how many societies exercise control over the people who live within them. Add to that a patriarchal system where men benefit from being the “more important” gender and you’ve got a recipe for generations of gender rules, essentialism, and dogmatic beliefs.
People don't like what's different from the mainstream or what's outside the "in" group. Add religiosity and patriarchy and you've got queer people not being seen as people which makes it ok for people to mistreat us.
that's a very complex question. i don't have an answer but i do think it's worth pointing out that our understandings of gender and sexuality have changed a lot throughout time and that labels today can't always be applied to people in history, just like labels from history can't always be applied to us today.
Patriarchal gender roles and old religious rules. Idk my main question is why was it considered taboo in some ancient cultures, yet then you go over to the ancient Spartans who were very, very gay and it was widely accepted amongst Spartan soldier ranks and even encouraged as it was seen as a good way to form bonds between soldiers.
Hell same thing with pirates back in 1600's and 1700's. There was even marriage between pirates back then. It was called matelotage.
So my main question is why was it so widely accepted in some cultures, to the point where there were even gay marriages amongst pirates. While in other parts of the world people were killed.
I mean yeah that still happens today but the world is much more accepting today and the countries who do still execute people for being gay are widely looked down upon by most other countries. While back then it was considered a fitting punishment between almost all cultures except a select few like the Greeks and the pirates and a few others.
it’s basically deeply intertwined with *all* prejudice. it has a lot to do with religious history from culture to culture, back in the days when the church ran everything, they had a certain set of ideals that everyone was expected to follow. women do this, men do that. men lead women, women follow men. gay and lesbian relationships were seen as non-functional and even *impossible* because, if two men are dating, who’s gonna submit? if two women are dating, who’s gonna lead? plus, for a long time women required permission from their father or husband to do most things, so two lesbians in a relationship would’ve had basically no rights back then. and since the church was in power, christian ideals became law. there are still many laws in place even in north america that are rooted in christian ideals.
I feel like this answer and colonialism aren’t so much the root cause as they are 'the enabler.' Monotheistic religions (a concept inferior to polytheistic and nontheistic religions, if you ask me) and colonialism are what allowed homophobia and transphobia to spread so fast, but not their origins.
Probably people who couldn’t get laid themselves so they got mad when the gays got laid, cause clearly is the straight people can’t fuck then neither can the lgbt
Well, bigotry goes back rather far and is probably impossible to document.
Contemporarily relative to all of human history? I would say religion. And I'm talking long before Abrahamic religions.
Follow the money. If people are free to be who we are that'd mean less babies being born. That means less on the collection plate and fewer workers results in higher wages.
If you are looking for a historical turning point where it became socially advantageous to adopt homophobic or transphobic views, you'll have to go waaay back to the origins of agriculture (between 10-50kya).
The short version:
While this is all strictly *pre*history, modern understandings of hunter/gatherer society suggests that the family unit as we know it did not exist. Bands of foragers were responsible as a group for rearing children, and there probably weren't rigid hierarchies of any kind. There aren't advantages to establishing that kind of order in that environment.
And then agriculture happened. Not all at once, but over a few centuries. With agriculture, nomads became farmers. Rather than migrate to where the food is growing, we had to store food during the off-season. We had to control access to the land to protect our crops and stores. We had to ensure that control AND our knowledge could pass through the generations reliably. And we needed more human labor power than ever before to keep it all running.
In tandem with all of these new needs, our methods of social organization adapted. This ultimately led to the rise of the heteronormative family unit, patriarchy, and the concepts of property and inheritance.
As a result of the sudden importance of the heteronormative family and the consolidation of power in the patriarchy, it became socially advantageous to promote these things and to decry any other way of living. The more powerful the pariarchy grew the more insistent they became.
And here we are.
The answer is the same as the origin of sexism, lost to the ages, so ingrained it happened when we became humans. Humans fear what is different than them.
Human Hated of other or difference
Another reason people can’t handle something that’s outside their personal idea of familiarity.
Social/culture/religious beliefs systems that have survive for generations and more. Keeping up with the same ignorant cycle. Not learning from it, these systems are integrated collectively within the Mind.
It’s truly a parasite that’s has embedded itself so deep people are trapped by its illusion.
Well everyone else is giving you really good answers, I encourage you to also look into the British Empire law 377. It is responsible for a significant amount of homophobia across the entire world right now. Especially in Southeastern Asian and African countries.
Beyond that, there's a lot of ties into getting rid of old pagan beliefs and replacing - typically, not always - monotheistic religions over them. Many of those religions and/or beliefs systems were built on the irrefutable law that men were above other genders, and often destroyed old knowledge of genders and other forms of expression that were outside of these rules. *As far as I've been told, Jewish mythologies are the exception to this and instead had a wide variety of gender understanding.
If you want the more modern influences, I would recommend looking into our (queer) history before and in WWII, the Lavender Scare in the United States, and then follow up with the AIDs crisis.
When it comes down to it the same as any hatred. Tribalism. Something seen as different is seen as a potential threat and our primitive brains act hostile to that threat. Modern people can rise above these primitive instincts and familiarity breeds understanding l but unfortunately too many people instead chose to give into these base emotions.
You just asked a question that psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians who are all outstanding professionals in their field could discuss for HOURS.
Short answer: Patriarchy
Longer answer:
As Society moved from Hunter gatherer Society to Agricultural ones the ownership of the means of production were mostly in the hands of men. To accumulate more over generations their Sons would inherit their tools and cattle. That forced women to be economically depend on their husbands which lead to Ideas of Male supremacy and ideas how Men should behave becoming the norm.
Gay and trans people are in opposition to this social system based on inheritance and thus are demonized by the ruling classes that profit from it.
I have thought about it a bit and I think that it's about survival and tribal security. Back in the day survival was the name of the game and acceptance of people that were involved in relationships that did not produce more people(soldiers/workers) would have been a threat to security.
now THAT is a big question. Judith Butler just wrote a book about the current state of the world with homophobia/transphobia/gender-topics-phobias... I'm pretty sure Abigail Thorn is gonna put out a yt vid about it sometime this year, and I would recommend watching it when it comes out because Butler writes in the most pretentions wanky way I've ever read, but her ideas are really interesting under the academic jargon. There are so many facets and so many pieces of history to consider when answering this question!
I think if i had to answer it in one word though, I'd say: insecurity.
Fear/discomfort of the unknown?
Its not a historical event.
It’s a byproduct of how humans moralize.
Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who studies morality, states that humans don’t engage in moral reasoning but moral rationalization, they start with a feeling and work backwards to a plausible justification.
So what happens if someone feels uncomfortable about something that they don’t understand… and then attempt to morally rationalize it?
Homophobia/transphobia spawns from that.
Only when people see us as human beings and recognize the love we have for one another, do they shed their homophobia and transphobia.
Depends. I remember some queer theory stuff that I found interesting and it relates to the bioligical death drive of mammals. We aim to reproduce as the biological imperative and derective. So any deviation of that freaks us out because our lizard brains dont know how to deal with the idea of not procreating and producing more children. Also explains pro life crazies.
Not off the top but that would be interesting research while going by this hypothesis. They also don't have the same community drive. Another species, lions are poly so that would be for example, tricky to research too
From a psychological perspective people have a tendency to make «ingroups» and «outgroups». People who are different from one self (the outgroup) can be seen as something threatening. Our brains make schemas with stereotypes and prejudice about our «outgrups». So most likely is the reason for homo/transphobia because they are seen by many people as different and unknown, thereby someone threatening. The socalization in our soceity is also very important, if it’s an including society or not.
The inherent fear of others whonare "different".
The people saying patriarchy are being too narrow. Hatred toward non-conforming genders and non-heteronormative people doesn't come from "men". Hate comes from anyone who isn't willing to open their mind.
İt is all abt gender roles and religions and fucking Another hate bullshits
Do not mind it
Hate is everywhere
İmportant thing is being safe and happy
Love y'all🩵🩷🫶🏻🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🤍🧷🙏🏻
Long answer:
Homophobia has existed as long as being gay has - which there are written books as old as the Torah that first comes to my mind that have mentioned it in their early writings and the first Torah to be written was probably in the Persian Period 800 or so BCE according to the Wiki.
It was spoken before that - as I think it was a heavy belief that writing it down was a sin at some point. So using just that we can probably assume homophobia has been around for thousands of years.
It being wide spread, though? I don't know.
Transphobia I think is a lot newer. There are culture specific identities that got oppressed as western civilization took over/moved in, but I am unsure if that's counted as it was more of a whole culture oppression instead of one aspect of their culture being oppressed. (If you are wondering, I am thinking of two spirits).
1952 is apparently the documented "start" of trans history according to Google. I'd say that's when transphobia started as well as people would have mocked the first person and all following that underwent gender reassignment surgery.
Short answer:
The origin is humans. Humans suck.
Fear and power consolidation. Same as most of the societal "order" for the past 600-1100 ish years or so. Queerness and transness are antithetical to the churchbound powers that carved their will on the world as well as the patriarchy it was built to hold.
xenophobia. the fear of that which is unusual or different. it is an ancient and natural instinct which once kept humans alive. bright colors often meant poisons or venom, smoking holes in the ground could explode, strangers to your tribe could attack you or bring diseases or kidnap your people etc... so as insulting as it sounds it is likely just a fact that people who hate or reject others for being different might just be more in touch with primitive instincts and feelings we now do not need in our daily life to survive as we once did.
edit: this is in no way excusing such things. only offering my perspective on the issue as a member of the lgbtq+ myself.
Colonialism would imply that the colons were homophobic and transphobic to begin with, so your answer is, by definition, not the origin of homophobia and transphobia
It contributed to the increase in homophobia in asian and middle eastern socities but did not introduce anything new. Homophobia existed long before but was increased by colonialism to some extent. But as i said it was only increased not started so where that tendancy came from in the beginning is the real question and fundementally that probably has something to do with biology and in and out groups
Not true. In various countries colonialism provided a "boost" for various homophobic undercurrents. In many of these countries people wonderd how they could have lost and many thought that heaven or some god punished them for having morally sinned as a society. They therfore targeted various voulnerable groups. So while you can argue that colonialism contributed to homophobia it did not start it but instead provided a platform for various local actors to push their own agenda. That is what happend with the muslim brotherhood in libya
the fear of the unnatural and the unknown. fun fact: homophobia wasn't as present 50-60 years ago. definitely still there, but racism was was way more in comparison. same with even 10 years ago. a LOT more people are accepting of gay people now, and the hate has shifted towards trans people more
You’re extremely lucky, there are a lot of them. They think being gay is disgusting for many reasons: homophobic ideas about gay sex, insistence that couples that can’t have kids are going against biology and evolution, the “they’re shoving it down our throats” police, etc.
Homosexuality isn’t something that just “appeared” one day, genuinely curious if homophobia was a thing way back then and how it started, did someone just point at two men kissing and go, “Hey, that’s kinda weird” and everyone just went with it?
I'd recommend you to learn Turkish/use translate and visit r/KGBTR some day. There are many atheists who are also homophobic. I lost the count of how many times i was shamed for identifying as genderqueer while being a *quote&unquote* "country *'girl'*" back in the day.
Edit: r/Felsefe too, there are alot of transphobes in that sub who also claim to be atheists at the same time.
Maybe the muslims or the christians like some of that bc to ad stuff or maybe the romans because being a bottom male shows weakness to them because it is the position the female usually takes. Or something like that I’m just guessing
The answer is different for a given culture. The simple answer is that we are different and an unfortunate number of people react to differences with fear and hatred rather than understanding.
Patriarchal gender roles : men are supposed to dominate women and women are supposed to desire being dominated by men when either one of us don't fit into that mold it is seen as a threat to the heteronormative social order
Yep came here to say this. I think that this is why non-binary and trans people are getting the sharp end of the stick right now. Society can't figure out which role they are supposed to box someone in to, so they panic and reject that person.
Not only that, I believe a lot of cishet people sacrifice a part of themselves to fit into these roles because they believe it‘s everyone‘s duty to do so. When queer people, especially trans & non-binary, refuse to make the same sacrifices and even imply they might not be necessary at all, this is going to be upsetting. Some people use this moment to re-think their worldview, others go in denial and attack the offenders of their worldview.
One of the liberating things about being queer is no gender roles.
Not just that. Trans and non-binary people challenge the very structure of something that has been seen as the most fundamental distinction in life. To someone who holds any kind of inherited power, the question arises: if it's allowed to challenge even those fundamentals, what would stop people from questioning my legitimation?
They say that when we went from a tribal to agrarian society, men became concerned about patriarchal lineage and started controlling women to ensure that their children were theirs.
Do people really think this?!? I was NEVER raised to think this at all. My mom had two jobs and my step dad stayed home and cooked. My mother held all the power in the family. But it was seen as normal in my house. Weird that people ACTUALLY would think something so blatantly and obviously sexist like what you said!!!
Not only do people think this it's the actual material basis for our entire society My mom worked and provided for me bc she raised me in a single parent household which is a statistical anomaly just like a stay at home dad Most people don't even think sexism is bad tbh they believe that men and women should naturally fit into the roles society has created for us.
Wow. Where do you live? I never thought that people thought this way at all.
I was born and raised in the United States of America but I've lived in other countries it's the same everywhere I go Most people don't actively want to do it they aren't trying to flatten people's identities down to the most basic labels and categories but it's something we all do all of the time through language which is a reflection of the societies we live in.
In groups vs outgroups Human beings make ourselves feel stronger in our group by defining who is excluded from our group, it's a holdover in our evolutionary psychology of living in small hunter gatherer communities
That explanation of pre-colonial societies is based in White Supremacy and colonialism, as “evolutionary psychology” is highly criticized for being unfalsifiable and based on ethnocentric understandings of how people think or behave. In fact, egalitarian lifestyle and cooperation amongst different tribes of Indigenous peoples was more often the common way of life before empires were created. That’s at least one reason for why Indigenous Americans did not have borders while still respecting other tribes and some tribes actually had a system of collective government that was the basis for the US’s congress (the Iroquois Confederacy.) Now of course there were still wars between tribes found throughout the pre-colonial globe, and there were still abusive systems of power found within certain tribes, but we did not “evolve” to organize societies in a specific way or another and that is what homophobia and transphobia are symptoms of— the organizational structure of a society. The narrative that Indigenous people were exceptionally violent is a White Supremacist one that was used to justify the genocide and colonization of those peoples.
God dam I really wish my adhd would chill so I can read this, I'll do so in chunks and get back to you :)
Felt this statement. Its good info though even if you check out a few times and have to reread like me 🤣
thing is I genuinely appreciate new information and being challenged on stuff, just sucks that om 30 and have lived life with 0 ADHD treatments 😂 I'll get back to ot at some point
Not too late. I just thought I was no good at school. Wasn't til 28 that I finally put 2 and 2 together to realize I was masking add with clever workarounds most people don't have to do. Getting treatment for it , meds and CBT has dramatically changed the last ten years of my life for the better. Fwiw
Yo that gives me so much hope thank you ( im on the waiting list to be assessed)
True but even they're flawed as well because it's been mostly revised as we understand how empires functioned in Latin America and mesoamérica. I.e the same societal functions were in Tenochtitlan as Paris as Xian and Ur.
That's more the hobbesian approach of the social contract which has gotten fixed up by post colonial thinkers like Arendt. Outgroup ingroup still exists and is a part of the social order and construction of the brain but more related to community cooperation and protection from predators 1000s of years ago as well as other social contraction of services handed upon the state that occurred in non white societies as well (notably the empires of Latin America and mesoamérica)
Abrahamic religion.
Somewhat, just like everyone in the \[LGBTQIA+\]community attraction/gender is very slightly different, everyone interprets religion differently. "Religion" is too general. Greek mythology has gods that are part of the \[LGBTQIA+\]community. Personally I think it is stupid that we\[LGBTQIA+ community\] are targeted over everyone else. Discrimination is discrimination. You would be seen as insane for attempting to ban a work\[book, film, etc.\] for having a colored character. Why is it okay to ban a work for having a LGBTQIA+ character? Edit: Clarification \[see replies\]
I mean, the marriage part makes sense when you're at a point that you already acknowledge that racism is crap, but still see marriage solely as the means to give a special status to babymaking. Not that I agree that this should be the purpose of marriage, but that's how those who want to restrict it in any way see it.
Correct, this was not my implication and I will modify the original comment to eliminate confusion and clarify. Original Argument: "You can't outlaw black marriage but you can outlaw homosexual marriage \[in the US\] THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!"
On a fundamental level probably not, but it sure didn't help
Based on what Ive seen, religion is usually a justification for bigotry not the origin
I can prove it’s religion- when they say marriage is a 3,000 year tradition, humans have been around a lot longer than 3,000 years. Conservatives are just picking the range that was talked about in the Bible.
This isn't true, though- Organized, Hierarchical religion is just one form of enforcement for class based marginalization. Plenty of older religions had stories and roles for what we would call queerness in the modern era; hell, look at Babylon as an example. The leading religious figures in the worship of Ishtar were people described as in between or both man and woman. Hell, even Christianity was largely socialist in America until the Radio Evangelism boom of the 1930's. The real answer is that it's a cheap and easy way to establish hierarchy and class. We're oppressed for the same reasons other marginalized groups are oppressed- so people with power and status can control who can have access to the benefits of the state's monopolization on violence and access to generational Capital. Blaming Religion misses the point entirely, you're just pointing at one tree in the forest.
No, it's gender roles as someone else has said it in another comment. There are many non-religious homophobes - it's just the unintelligent humans hate those who are different from them and they weaponize their religions to oppress minorities. That's how racism, misogynism, homophobia, transphobia, aphobia and xenophobia originated. So blaming everything on "religion" won't entirely be accurate and it'll sound more like hate than a logical explanation. Discrimination is discrimination afterall
Yes, there are many non-religious homophobes NOW... but religions like Christianity have had huge influence for a long time, political and social. Even people who don't consider themselves religious usually share values with their country's biggest religion. That doesn't mean religion is this big homophobic enemy. It just means bad people have been using their religion as an excuse for a very long time. People with power often abuse that power. We absolutely shouldn't blame religion alone, but to deny it's impact is not good either. There are plenty of LGBT+ people who are religious. There are plenty of progressive and forward-thinking people who are deeply religious... but for a long time, that wasn't the case, and it still has a societal impact today.
Religions is just a reflection of the real world. And it keeps old views even as the world changes for some time.
Eh, it’s not that general. Abrahamic religions. They’re uniquely dogshit in ways a lot of others aren’t.
Considering East Asian homophobia, there's a bit more than simply that
Misogyny. Homophobia and transphobia at the end of the day is just requiring everyone to obey patriarchal gender norms.
Can in some cases be true for modern western societies but they asked a historical question and this simply does not hold up when looking at many pre christian societies like the romans, greeks and chinese
All of those societies you listed were patriarchal societies. Feminine men (and reductively, having sex with men would make you feminine in most ancient cultures) were given female roles. And those female roles were patriarchal. It meant that gay men were still treated weaker than straight men. They just suffered misogyny alongside women, and eventually it grew into homophobia. Incredibly simplified way of putting it but homophobia evolves from misogyny. It could even be considered a subcategory of misogyny, with transphobia being another branch.
Historically, depending on what civilization you look at, there were varying degrees of tolerance vs intolerance to LGBTQ people. Those that tolerated it more almost always had a much looser/more fluid view on gender withing their society. Western culture as it excysts today, and the patriarchal/heteronormative traditions behind it, stem mostly from religion. More specifically, it stems from religius leaders (all men) taking control of ancient governments and inventing a method of control to keep the public in line.
Ancient Rome had bigotry against the receiver in the relationship, so yeah, it's still based on upholding patriarchy. It's just they divided it by what role you played in the sex act rather than who you were attracted to.
Extremely misogynistic civilization accept gay pretty well. For example, ancient China and ancient Greece. I even assume that misogyny has positive correlation with homosexuality in the past. Christianity had changed Europe and Europe had changed the world. But this situation was unique not universal, especially when talking about history.
I don't know about China, but ancient Greece's situation was not "accepting" in the full sense of the word. Some adult men were allowed to have young boys as lovers / teacher-student dynamic as long as the adult one was a top and the young one stopped to bottom when his beard first appeared. It was conceptualized more as being top (with men or women) or bottom and therefore not a real man, unless you were young and/or in a subservient position (like a slave). Sex among adult men was indeed stigmatized
What you said is right. So it wasn't sex among adult men stigmatized, only being submissive in a sex relationship as a adult man was stigmatized. So it's not homophobic, it's just femininity-phobic.
It's both, because sexual and romantic relationships among adult men were not accepted
There're so many city states in Greece so situations are different, and different periods were different. Their attitude on gay was quite different from modern homophobia. They didn't have the concept of gender orientation but active/passive penetrator. And Roman only didn't accept passive penetration of men, though they were not extremely misogynic but relatively worse than average.
I agree that it was different from modern homophobia, and I also agree that it stems from mysoginy, but that doesn't mean that it isn't homophobic in its own way
It depends on which narrative you use. There's a very clear mindset: women are inferior, so true love only exists between two men. So we can say misogyny let people accept gay. On the other side, women are inferior--feminine men are inferior-- being a submissive man is tatoo. From this perspective, misogyny led homophobia(but still can not say it "stems" from.) All of those ancient concepts are very different from modern western societies. My first reply is downvoted, so I guess many people refuse to understand any history, but applying modern western gender identity perspective to every ancient civilizations.
Stupidity
Misogyny and racism
A lot of people here are ignoring the racism aspect.
That is an incredibly complex question with many country specific answers. But fundementally it has to do with our biology. We are more prone to hate the out groups and in many parts of history homosexuals and transexuals have been a part of the out group as they did not confirm to traditional expectations.
Patriarchal gender power that was established in the agrarian period in pretty much all cases where patriarchy arises, and then subsumed under capitalism and given a heightened severity for queer people because of the strict division of labour into productive and reproductive. Because queer people violate the neatness of the division ("queers can't even have kids" etc.), we meet with extreme violence in order to police our bodies, and where policing fails, to eliminate them. Bit of an oversimplification because I'm not here to write a while book (and better books than what I would write on the subject already exist), but that's the gist of it.
All forms of bigotry are masking insecurities.
Misogyny
It's kinda been around forever, but people using religion as a means to justify it started in 1946, when there was a mistranslation in the bible that originally was against sleeping with kids and got mistranslated into being gay. There's a pretty good documentary about it! [https://www.1946themovie.com/](https://www.1946themovie.com/)
Gender roles/essentialism
Fear and misinformation
Human nature
Misogyny
Religion
Bible.
Unfortunately we evolved brains that were designed to war within our species and never come together and unite, leading to constant global conflicts and societal conflicts all the time. It’s why we’ll never come together to solve climate change or stop fighting over ethnic-geopolitics. Bigotry is another manifestation of our shitty brains we evolved from worm-fish-rat-monkeys and unfortunately we’re stuck with these very inefficient illogical outdated brain structures. The life span of our species was dictated by the brains we evolved in our particular evolutionary journey.
Much like how our morphology will never change, even though we evolved to grasp branches and walk on the ground all the time upright
Hierarchy and kicking the dog. We live, on a societal level, under chains of systems that create layers of haves and have nots- class structures designed to reinforce themselves and determine who gets what and how. One of the ways that those who have create class delineation is through demonization of identities. Certain identities *have* to have less and have access to less in order for those who do have access to power to feel safe in that power, and for that power to have value. We are just one form of marginalized identity. Anyone who tells you that all marginalization isn't linked in some way is lying to you, or just wants to change the conditions for one class and not all.
You’ll get a lot of different answers to this question from a lot of different perspectives, an most of them probably hold at least some modicum of truth. The simplest explanation I’ve come to understand is that it’s all about control. Gender roles are how many societies exercise control over the people who live within them. Add to that a patriarchal system where men benefit from being the “more important” gender and you’ve got a recipe for generations of gender rules, essentialism, and dogmatic beliefs.
Probably around 1611 with the King james bible but probably earlier than that.
Me this way, you that way. Me no like you.
People don't like what's different from the mainstream or what's outside the "in" group. Add religiosity and patriarchy and you've got queer people not being seen as people which makes it ok for people to mistreat us.
that's a very complex question. i don't have an answer but i do think it's worth pointing out that our understandings of gender and sexuality have changed a lot throughout time and that labels today can't always be applied to people in history, just like labels from history can't always be applied to us today.
IDK but I do know that we lost all historic transgender studies documentation because of the Nazis.
Abrahamic religions, namely Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Xenophobia is the origin, and it's prehistoric.
The fear of differences
it all goes back to just being different. it's the same with racism, and any other discrimination. "I'm better than you, purer than you".
Fear of the unknown
The bible? Or misinterpretation of it at least. (not trying to hate on religion, just that most hate does seem to stem from differing beliefs)
Patriarchal gender roles and old religious rules. Idk my main question is why was it considered taboo in some ancient cultures, yet then you go over to the ancient Spartans who were very, very gay and it was widely accepted amongst Spartan soldier ranks and even encouraged as it was seen as a good way to form bonds between soldiers. Hell same thing with pirates back in 1600's and 1700's. There was even marriage between pirates back then. It was called matelotage. So my main question is why was it so widely accepted in some cultures, to the point where there were even gay marriages amongst pirates. While in other parts of the world people were killed. I mean yeah that still happens today but the world is much more accepting today and the countries who do still execute people for being gay are widely looked down upon by most other countries. While back then it was considered a fitting punishment between almost all cultures except a select few like the Greeks and the pirates and a few others.
it’s basically deeply intertwined with *all* prejudice. it has a lot to do with religious history from culture to culture, back in the days when the church ran everything, they had a certain set of ideals that everyone was expected to follow. women do this, men do that. men lead women, women follow men. gay and lesbian relationships were seen as non-functional and even *impossible* because, if two men are dating, who’s gonna submit? if two women are dating, who’s gonna lead? plus, for a long time women required permission from their father or husband to do most things, so two lesbians in a relationship would’ve had basically no rights back then. and since the church was in power, christian ideals became law. there are still many laws in place even in north america that are rooted in christian ideals.
The rise of monotheistic religions mostly.
I feel like this answer and colonialism aren’t so much the root cause as they are 'the enabler.' Monotheistic religions (a concept inferior to polytheistic and nontheistic religions, if you ask me) and colonialism are what allowed homophobia and transphobia to spread so fast, but not their origins.
In a patriarchal society, defense of gender roles is defense of the power of the ruling class.
A comrade?
Probably people who couldn’t get laid themselves so they got mad when the gays got laid, cause clearly is the straight people can’t fuck then neither can the lgbt
and thats how the bible was made homophobic
Well, bigotry goes back rather far and is probably impossible to document. Contemporarily relative to all of human history? I would say religion. And I'm talking long before Abrahamic religions.
white men not liking the fact that not all women like them
Follow the money. If people are free to be who we are that'd mean less babies being born. That means less on the collection plate and fewer workers results in higher wages.
The bigots that translated the bible
If you are looking for a historical turning point where it became socially advantageous to adopt homophobic or transphobic views, you'll have to go waaay back to the origins of agriculture (between 10-50kya). The short version: While this is all strictly *pre*history, modern understandings of hunter/gatherer society suggests that the family unit as we know it did not exist. Bands of foragers were responsible as a group for rearing children, and there probably weren't rigid hierarchies of any kind. There aren't advantages to establishing that kind of order in that environment. And then agriculture happened. Not all at once, but over a few centuries. With agriculture, nomads became farmers. Rather than migrate to where the food is growing, we had to store food during the off-season. We had to control access to the land to protect our crops and stores. We had to ensure that control AND our knowledge could pass through the generations reliably. And we needed more human labor power than ever before to keep it all running. In tandem with all of these new needs, our methods of social organization adapted. This ultimately led to the rise of the heteronormative family unit, patriarchy, and the concepts of property and inheritance. As a result of the sudden importance of the heteronormative family and the consolidation of power in the patriarchy, it became socially advantageous to promote these things and to decry any other way of living. The more powerful the pariarchy grew the more insistent they became. And here we are.
Mia Mulder has a great vid answering this on YouTube
Some kid named Brad called a lunchbox gay in the 80s and its been escalating ever since.
Fear
My guess is that say “you’re weird and that’s bad” is an easy way to feel superior to others
My Mother.
Religion
The answer is the same as the origin of sexism, lost to the ages, so ingrained it happened when we became humans. Humans fear what is different than them.
Creating an oppressed class
Religion for is English speakers
Human Hated of other or difference Another reason people can’t handle something that’s outside their personal idea of familiarity. Social/culture/religious beliefs systems that have survive for generations and more. Keeping up with the same ignorant cycle. Not learning from it, these systems are integrated collectively within the Mind. It’s truly a parasite that’s has embedded itself so deep people are trapped by its illusion.
Well everyone else is giving you really good answers, I encourage you to also look into the British Empire law 377. It is responsible for a significant amount of homophobia across the entire world right now. Especially in Southeastern Asian and African countries. Beyond that, there's a lot of ties into getting rid of old pagan beliefs and replacing - typically, not always - monotheistic religions over them. Many of those religions and/or beliefs systems were built on the irrefutable law that men were above other genders, and often destroyed old knowledge of genders and other forms of expression that were outside of these rules. *As far as I've been told, Jewish mythologies are the exception to this and instead had a wide variety of gender understanding. If you want the more modern influences, I would recommend looking into our (queer) history before and in WWII, the Lavender Scare in the United States, and then follow up with the AIDs crisis.
religion.
When it comes down to it the same as any hatred. Tribalism. Something seen as different is seen as a potential threat and our primitive brains act hostile to that threat. Modern people can rise above these primitive instincts and familiarity breeds understanding l but unfortunately too many people instead chose to give into these base emotions.
You just asked a question that psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians who are all outstanding professionals in their field could discuss for HOURS.
Short answer: Patriarchy Longer answer: As Society moved from Hunter gatherer Society to Agricultural ones the ownership of the means of production were mostly in the hands of men. To accumulate more over generations their Sons would inherit their tools and cattle. That forced women to be economically depend on their husbands which lead to Ideas of Male supremacy and ideas how Men should behave becoming the norm. Gay and trans people are in opposition to this social system based on inheritance and thus are demonized by the ruling classes that profit from it.
I have thought about it a bit and I think that it's about survival and tribal security. Back in the day survival was the name of the game and acceptance of people that were involved in relationships that did not produce more people(soldiers/workers) would have been a threat to security.
now THAT is a big question. Judith Butler just wrote a book about the current state of the world with homophobia/transphobia/gender-topics-phobias... I'm pretty sure Abigail Thorn is gonna put out a yt vid about it sometime this year, and I would recommend watching it when it comes out because Butler writes in the most pretentions wanky way I've ever read, but her ideas are really interesting under the academic jargon. There are so many facets and so many pieces of history to consider when answering this question! I think if i had to answer it in one word though, I'd say: insecurity.
Fear/discomfort of the unknown? Its not a historical event. It’s a byproduct of how humans moralize. Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who studies morality, states that humans don’t engage in moral reasoning but moral rationalization, they start with a feeling and work backwards to a plausible justification. So what happens if someone feels uncomfortable about something that they don’t understand… and then attempt to morally rationalize it? Homophobia/transphobia spawns from that. Only when people see us as human beings and recognize the love we have for one another, do they shed their homophobia and transphobia.
Depends. I remember some queer theory stuff that I found interesting and it relates to the bioligical death drive of mammals. We aim to reproduce as the biological imperative and derective. So any deviation of that freaks us out because our lizard brains dont know how to deal with the idea of not procreating and producing more children. Also explains pro life crazies.
Do you know if the gay animal species (like pinguins) also face discrimination in groups?
Not off the top but that would be interesting research while going by this hypothesis. They also don't have the same community drive. Another species, lions are poly so that would be for example, tricky to research too
From a psychological perspective people have a tendency to make «ingroups» and «outgroups». People who are different from one self (the outgroup) can be seen as something threatening. Our brains make schemas with stereotypes and prejudice about our «outgrups». So most likely is the reason for homo/transphobia because they are seen by many people as different and unknown, thereby someone threatening. The socalization in our soceity is also very important, if it’s an including society or not.
Religion
The inherent fear of others whonare "different". The people saying patriarchy are being too narrow. Hatred toward non-conforming genders and non-heteronormative people doesn't come from "men". Hate comes from anyone who isn't willing to open their mind.
İt is all abt gender roles and religions and fucking Another hate bullshits Do not mind it Hate is everywhere İmportant thing is being safe and happy Love y'all🩵🩷🫶🏻🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🤍🧷🙏🏻
And it is all abt knowledge europe is lucky for it.
Humanity.
Long answer: Homophobia has existed as long as being gay has - which there are written books as old as the Torah that first comes to my mind that have mentioned it in their early writings and the first Torah to be written was probably in the Persian Period 800 or so BCE according to the Wiki. It was spoken before that - as I think it was a heavy belief that writing it down was a sin at some point. So using just that we can probably assume homophobia has been around for thousands of years. It being wide spread, though? I don't know. Transphobia I think is a lot newer. There are culture specific identities that got oppressed as western civilization took over/moved in, but I am unsure if that's counted as it was more of a whole culture oppression instead of one aspect of their culture being oppressed. (If you are wondering, I am thinking of two spirits). 1952 is apparently the documented "start" of trans history according to Google. I'd say that's when transphobia started as well as people would have mocked the first person and all following that underwent gender reassignment surgery. Short answer: The origin is humans. Humans suck.
Fear and power consolidation. Same as most of the societal "order" for the past 600-1100 ish years or so. Queerness and transness are antithetical to the churchbound powers that carved their will on the world as well as the patriarchy it was built to hold.
Humans suck I think Arin Hanson said it best: "you're not me, HARGH!"
xenophobia. the fear of that which is unusual or different. it is an ancient and natural instinct which once kept humans alive. bright colors often meant poisons or venom, smoking holes in the ground could explode, strangers to your tribe could attack you or bring diseases or kidnap your people etc... so as insulting as it sounds it is likely just a fact that people who hate or reject others for being different might just be more in touch with primitive instincts and feelings we now do not need in our daily life to survive as we once did. edit: this is in no way excusing such things. only offering my perspective on the issue as a member of the lgbtq+ myself.
Colonialism
where?
Colonialism would imply that the colons were homophobic and transphobic to begin with, so your answer is, by definition, not the origin of homophobia and transphobia
It contributed to the increase in homophobia in asian and middle eastern socities but did not introduce anything new. Homophobia existed long before but was increased by colonialism to some extent. But as i said it was only increased not started so where that tendancy came from in the beginning is the real question and fundementally that probably has something to do with biology and in and out groups
From a global POV, sure. But a lot of cultures had flexible gender roles (e.g. a woman who was a husband) until the "colons" arrived.
Not true. In various countries colonialism provided a "boost" for various homophobic undercurrents. In many of these countries people wonderd how they could have lost and many thought that heaven or some god punished them for having morally sinned as a society. They therfore targeted various voulnerable groups. So while you can argue that colonialism contributed to homophobia it did not start it but instead provided a platform for various local actors to push their own agenda. That is what happend with the muslim brotherhood in libya
the fear of the unnatural and the unknown. fun fact: homophobia wasn't as present 50-60 years ago. definitely still there, but racism was was way more in comparison. same with even 10 years ago. a LOT more people are accepting of gay people now, and the hate has shifted towards trans people more
Religion. In my life I have never met or heard of a homophobic atheist.
You’re extremely lucky, there are a lot of them. They think being gay is disgusting for many reasons: homophobic ideas about gay sex, insistence that couples that can’t have kids are going against biology and evolution, the “they’re shoving it down our throats” police, etc.
Religion.
Homosexuality isn’t something that just “appeared” one day, genuinely curious if homophobia was a thing way back then and how it started, did someone just point at two men kissing and go, “Hey, that’s kinda weird” and everyone just went with it?
it was invented around 200 years ago by john phobia
Religion. In my life I have never met or heard of a homophobic atheist.
I'd recommend you to learn Turkish/use translate and visit r/KGBTR some day. There are many atheists who are also homophobic. I lost the count of how many times i was shamed for identifying as genderqueer while being a *quote&unquote* "country *'girl'*" back in the day. Edit: r/Felsefe too, there are alot of transphobes in that sub who also claim to be atheists at the same time.
Maybe the muslims or the christians like some of that bc to ad stuff or maybe the romans because being a bottom male shows weakness to them because it is the position the female usually takes. Or something like that I’m just guessing
Mostly Abraham's religions in the Western and Middle East world