In 1972, psychologist George Weinberg published the book ““Society and the Healthy Homosexual”whose first chapter expressed the following statement:
“I would never consider a patient healthy unless he had overcome his prejudice against homosexuality. Even if he is heterosexual, his repugnance toward homosexuality is certainly harmful to himself.”
In his work, Weinberg first introduced the term homophobia to refer to those heterosexual individuals whose behavior denotes a deep aversion towards homosexuals, an aversion that, according to Weinberg, places its origin in an intense fear of being in close contact with homosexual men and women, as well as irrational fear, hatred and intolerance towards them .
Homosexuality was considered a mental health disorder until 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association permanently removed it from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The American Psychological Association (APA) supported this movement two years later, in 1975, when it also ruled out homosexuality as a mental disorder and publicly recognized that this does not imply any impairment in judgment, reliability, or overall social and vocational abilities.
Additionally, the APA emphasized that mental health professionals should take the lead in destigmatizing mental illness associated with homosexual orientation.
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Despite these and other adjustments in the main health and human rights organizations worldwide, the implementation of public policies and protection and equality laws and sexual education and values programs, homophobia continues to be one of the main causes of suicide due to harassment and hate crimes in the world.
“HOMOSEXUALITY does not imply any impediment in judgment, reliability or social and vocational abilities in general”
According to what was published by the United Nations in May 2015, hate crimes due to homophobia represent 20.8% of those committed in the United States, the second most common motive after racial discrimination (which represents 48.5%). and even a more frequent reason than religious discrimination (which is estimated at 17.4%).
According to UN figures:
- Between 2008 and 2014, 1,612 transgender people were murdered in 62 countries (an average of one homicide every two days).
- The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also reported 594 hate crimes against people from the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in the 25 member countries of the Organization of American States between January 2013 and March 2013. 2014.
- In Brazil, homophobia and transphobia led to the murder of 310 people in 2012.
- In the United States, 18 cases of fatal hate crimes and 2,001 incidents of anti-LGBT violence occurred in 2013.
Decoding homophobia: what do the studies say?
Research carried out by study centers in the United States and Europe has extracted the following valuable data for a better understanding of the causes that motivate hatred towards homosexual men and women.
- According to a study published by the scientific journal homophobia could be a self-reflective prejudice motivated by an upbringing under authoritarian parental figures where autonomy is not promoted, especially if homophobia already constitutes an established prejudice among the parents.
- By growing up in an environment where children’s autonomy is frustrated, they deprive themselves of internally exploring values and identities that they perceive as unacceptable, instead adopting a defensive behavior of reactive formation (which consists of masking a motive or emotion by passing it off as their own). opposite).
- One suggests that homophobia is more pronounced in those people who are consciously unaware of the attraction they themselves experience towards people of the same sex, a suppression that is accentuated by growing up in an environment of authoritarianism and stigma.
- A study carried out in Italy indicates that attitudes linked to homophobia could be related to high levels of psychoticism (hostility, impulsivity, aggressiveness and low empathy). This does not mean that homophobic people are psychotic, since psychoticism is discussed as a personality trait and not a category of mental disorders, but it does suggest that homophobia is related to poor mental health compared to people They are not homophobic.
- The research also detected a link between high levels of immature defense mechanisms (projection, introjection, passive-aggressive behavior…) in some people and their high propensity for homophobia, as well as cultural induction factors for homophobia, including: religion, machismo, hypermasculinity and misogyny.
“The study opens a new avenue of research where the real disease is homophobia”explains Emmanuele Jannini, endocrinologist and sexologist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and part of the research team.
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