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Joseph Monaco
Matthew Lovett
Intro. To Fem. Theory
26 April, 2018
An Attack on Heterosexuality
It was a crisp, autumn morning in Clarksdale Mississippi. Frank was walking home from
school with his girlfriend Sally. They were going steady and already exchanged promise rings.
Frank was going off to college next fall and Sally was going to stay home to learn how to cook
and clean from her mother. They were the perfect, all American couple. That was until the
homosexuals attacked. Pride flags flew from the post in the town square. RuPaul’s Drag Race
was playing instead of the usual Sunday night football game. The local Hooters was filled with
go-go boys. Britney Spears could be heard playing in all directions. Worst of all, Frank no longer
wanted to be with Sally. Instead, he wanted to be with gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy! This is
what Shirley Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church warned us about… or is it? Homophobia is
not a rational fear. It is not the same as arachnophobia, or a fear of heights. It’s a fear of a loss of
power, and is rooted in sexism.
Many people do not know the difference between homophobia and heterosexism because
the two terms are often used interchangeably. Patrick D. Hopkins offers an explanation on how
the two terms differ from one another in Gender Treachery: Homophobia, Masculinity, and
Threatened Identities. Heterosexism is a political term. It creates a connection to sexism and
racism and is used to refer to the political advantages given to heterosexuals and not afforded to
homosexuals. Homophobia has an underlying meaning to it that cannot be labeled as simply
heterosexism. The word homophobia itself implies that there is an underlying fear of
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homosexuals, and that this fear could be equated to a rational fear of something else; such as
arachnophobia.
This fear is not rational though, as Hopkins explains after describing a hate crime in
Texas, “The blood pooling up on the ground beneath that dying body is evidence for something
more than the protection of heterosexual privilege. It is evidence for a radical kind of evil,”
(Hopkins, 99). Heterosexism: privileging heterosexuality, is the precursor for homophobia. The
question that needs to be answered is “where does homophobia come from?” How does the
protection of privilege turn into an intense hatred directed towards a group of people?
The first answer to the question of where homophobia stems from is the Repression
Hypothesis. Many people are familiar with this hypothesis as it is often played out in movies and
tv shows as the reason behind a homophobic character’s actions. Hopkins explains the repression
