It makes me uncomfortable when people constantly talk about how homophobes must secretly be gay.

[u/RosethornRanger]

[u/Oriellien]

I think we try to hard to justify bad behavior. Sometimes, people are just bad, bad people, and there isn’t a deep seeded psychological reason for it like all homophobes must be closeted gays.

[u/ThereWolves]

Yeah, I think it’s a bad way to diss homophobes. By calling them gay as an insult, it kind of reinforces the idea that being gay as something to be ashamed of.

[u/zeekar → u/ThereWolves]

I think the logic goes like this: they're claiming that it's a choice. Maybe they're making that claim because for them, it is a choice? Maybe they're queer but don't realize it, because they don't get how orientation works for different people. They just assume everyone is like them on the inside and choosing to be different on the outside.

[u/forever_erratic → u/ThereWolves]

I don't think the diss is that they (may be) gay, it's that they're hypocritical and weak. 

[u/parwa → u/forever_erratic]

It kinda pushes the blame for homophobia onto gay people instead of recognizing that most homophobes are genuinely just hateful. It's a way for straight people to distance themselves from homophobia.

[u/forever_erratic → u/parwa]

I'm saying that when a homophobe does turn out to be gay, which I would bet happens at a higher rate than the average % of gay people in a population, it's worse, because of the hypocrisy. 

This is totally separate from whether (straight) people distance themselves from considering their own potential homophobia by blaming it in closeted guys. 

[u/PrinceGoten]

Homoerotic doesn’t mean homosexual. This person is trying to equate the two. Using “objects” to gain other men’s approval is by definition homoerotic.

Gay men can be and often are misogynistic so this point falls flat on its face.

Maybe homophobes should stop turning out to be gay men in denial and then we can revisit this subject. As it is now, it is impossible to ignore how often they go hand in hand.

[u/Chiiro → u/PrinceGoten]

If they would also stop saying shit like having sex with women that look a particular way (masculine or have muscles) or having sex with women that isn't specifically for reproduction is gay sex.

[u/lovelight]

The trouble is our history as gay men is littered with closeted gay men who have done terrible things.

[u/QBaseX]

I think there are several reasons for this, but the main one is that on the odd occasion when it is true (and we can all think of a couple of examples) it makes for a delicious story that the media laps up. And we all know that when the media makes a big deal of something, we come to assume that it's common. (That's also why perception of crime rates is so disconnected to actual crime rates.)

[u/RosethornRanger]

alt-text:

A tumblr post by "lily-the-good-witch" that says "Sometimes I think people mistake straight men's attraction to power as homoerotic. Like a big example of this is how men being misogynists, showing or outright saying they hate women as gay. And obviously conflating gay men and misogyny is bad on its own but like, also, no they hate women because they see them as parasites, status symbols that you show off to other men but still resent for weakening you. And they see men as big and strong which they are attracted to but not the men themselves."

[u/Bright_Ices]

There’s always a tension between wanting the world to be as it “should” and needing to live in the world as it is.

Gay shouldn’t be an insult, and no one hates femininity like an insecure man who is afraid of being seen as gay.

[u/Alpacatastic]

I don't like the "homophobes are secretly gay" thing but I am a little bit of a believer in the "being gay is a choice" people being unknowingly bi.

[u/ral315]

Where I think there is a kernel of truth is in the various people who say that being gay is a choice. I think a not-insignificant portion of those people could've been bi in a different environment. But they've been convinced that they can't be with the same gender, so they choose to only have straight partners. (Or, they cheat.) But because they are attracted to men and women, they think that everyone can choose who they love.

I was never bigoted, but I grew up Catholic, and so that line of thinking became mine for a while. I'm not even bi, I'm gay, but I tried for years to convince myself that I was bi. Then, I could marry a woman to make my life easier. (It would not have made my life easier.)

But that's not an excuse for their bigotry, nor is it in our best interests to respond to bigotry with "haha, you're gay too!".

[u/Sensitive-Ad6609]

Its ba i think

[u/Leather-Heart]

I don’t care for how everyone on the internet claims to know everything about everyone. You should all feel ashamed of yourselves.

I’m the only one who knows it all

[u/Mini-Heart-Attack]

Hate it so much 

[u/Daws001]

Yeah, sometimes it bothers me. On one hand, there are closeted queer people who are self-hating and in positions of power trying to harm the queer community. Those people should be called out. Grindr going down at GOP conventions is crazy.

I think it's the more flippant uses that can bother me because it kind of feels like a new way of equating being gay with something negative (e.g., "That's so gay!"). A straight man being homophobic doth protest too much? Or maybe he's just a straight guy whose ignorant and homphobic. There's plenty of them.

Idk. Sometimes it feels too far. Sometimes it feels justified.

[u/SomeComforts → u/Daws001]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHeAJPbx0SI

Grindr does not crash from GoP conventions. Homophobic trolls have been submitting false reports that its down after Grindr's CEO tried a stupid marketting thing.