Thesis: Review of Related Literature
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES
Related Literature
Literature related to this study includes excerpts from articles on homophobic oppression and persecution, on the development in the tolerance of homosexuals, as well as excerpts from an essay on persistent homophobia in the Philppines.
Oppression and Persecution of Homosexuals
In The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Movement, Alan Seinfield pointed out homosexual oppression by a homophobic European state that spanned almost a century. His examples ranges from the 1885 Labouchere amendment which criminalized same-sex activity, to the 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde accused of “gross indecency with another male person”, and the UK Thatcherite Section 28 legislation of 1988, forbidding municipalities to spend public money in ways that may ‘promote homosexuality.’[1]
As for homophobic persecution, historical records show that during World War II, Holocaust leaders sought the extermination of homosexuals. Paragraph 175 was sought to be enforced, that homosexuals in concentration camps were castrated by court order.[2] Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia recounts the Nazi persecution of gay men as “motivated by Adolf Hitler’s fanatical belief in the superiority and ‘racial purity’ of the Germans who he believed to be part of the ‘Aryan race.’ As Henrich Himmler, the chief of the SS (Schutzstaffel, or ‘protective guard,’ the Nazi police force in charge of enforcing racial-purity policies), stated in a 1936 speech, the Nazis saw homosexuality as ‘a sympton of racial degeneracy destructive to our race.’”[3]
Development of Societal Tolerance of Homosexuals
The abovementioned homophobic attempts attest to the inhumane homophobia behind the oppression and persecution of gay men. This oppressive “fear of the homosexual” was challenged in 1969, when the Stonewall Riots occurred.
These series of riots became an important turning point in the fight for gay rights, as the events transpired, as follows:
A significant body of homosexuals, for the first time, resisted discriminatory police arrests. The first night of rioting began on Friday, June 27, 1969 not long after 1:20 a.m., when police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. ‘Stonewall,’ as the raids are often referred to, is considered a turning point for the modern gay rights movement worldwide.[4]
After Stonewall, homosexuals around the globe battled the violation of their rights. This development in homosexual liberation resulted in the legal criminalizing of discrimination in the workplace. In the Philippines, legislative measures were taken against oppressive employers to protect homosexual employees in the workplace. Icon Magazine relates the following:
The Quezon City council approved recently an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in employment. This is the first anti-discrimination legislation in the country pertaining to sexual orientation that has been approved by a local government unit.[5]
Homophobia in Heterosexist and Patriarchal Oppression
As seen in the aforementioned developments, it suffices to say that modern society is becoming more tolerant with homosexuals. Although this foments popular assumption of their acceptance in society, such assumption is still challenged by less of a physical but, rather, an ideological oppression.
In his book “Philippine Gay Culture: The Last Thirty Years: Binabae to Bakla Silahis to MSM,” the homophobic blaming of AIDS on homosexuality was pointed out by J. Neil Garcia:
Homophobic discrimination has joined forces with, and found legitimation in, the initial identification of AIDS with male homosexuality. AIDS, the so-called “gay plague,” has admittedly diminished the ranks of gays literally.
The abovementioned quote testifies to the homophobia still prevalent in the country, despite the lessened physical oppressions like imprisonment (when same-sex activity was illegal) and castration (during the Nazi persecution).
Related Studies
Studies in the United States have demonstrated the interest in gay oppression.
On Gay Stereotypes
Gay stereotyping had also been studied. A study by Peter Renn dealt with the stereotype “that gay men’s speech differs from that of heterosexual men.”[6] In Speech, Male Sexual Orientation, And Childhood Gender Nonconformity, Renn mentions:
Many people believe that they can determine a person’s sexual orientation based solely on the way that he speaks.
This assumption is abundant in pop culture, as one scholar mentioned:
A dependable wellspring of this caricature [of gay men] is popular culture, which seemingly never tires of the lisping fag, whose roller coaster intonation and high pitched shrieks mark him as an object of comedy or contempt”[7]A handful of studies investigating this issue have found that judgments of sexual orientation, based only on speech samples, are in fact usually accurate. (Travis, 1981; Gaudio, 1994; Linville, 1998)[8]
In Speech, Male Sexual Orientation, And Childhood Gender Nonconformity, Renn provides basis on the popular assumption of the stereotype of a gay man’s speech:
A handful of studies investigating this issue have found that judgments of sexual orientation, based only on speech samples, are in fact usually accurate (Travis, 1981; Gaudio, 1994; Linville, 1998)....
. . .Thus, the notion that gay men speak differently than heterosexual men has received some empirical support, although stereotypes may distort and exaggerate this difference.
However, Renn’s study proved, the stereotype of the “gay way” of speaking as another misconception. “Sounding gay” didn’t necessarily define a sexual orientation, as the study mentioned:
While there are certainly volitional expressions of homosexuality (i.e. rainbow stickers on cars), “sounding gay” is different in that it appears to be a mostly involuntary phenomenon that cuts across virtually all social situations. This may be particularly important during times such as adolescence, when harassment of gay youth is high. To the extent that this mediates factors such as self-esteem, future studies should examine depression in gay men as a function of …aspects of voice…
Finally, it must be stressed that in any trait showing a difference between gay and heterosexual males (or between lesbian and heterosexual women), there is always substantial variability within each of those groups. It would be inappropriate, for example, to assume that all gay men sound gay, as popular stereotypes would seem to suggest.
On Heterosexism
In The Social Context of Hate Crimes: Notes on Cultural Heterosexis, Gregory M. Herek provided a definition for heterosexism. It is “an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any non-heterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship or community.”[9]
Nathan Grant Smith and Kathleen Ingram elaborated on the abovementioned definition on heterosexism in Workplace Heterosexism and Adjustment among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals: The Role of Unsupportive Social Interactions:
This bias toward heterosexuality translates into privilege for individuals who fall within the heterosexual norm and a lack of privilege for individuals who are outside the norm.
More subtle examples of heterosexist behavior include asking a person why he or she is not yet married (thereby assuming that a person is heterosexual_ or failing to recognize the legitimacy of same-sex relationships. [10]
On Minority Stress
When it comes to more prolific positions in business, straight men occupy these more than gay men do, making the gay population in the workplace a minority, inducing minority stress. Virginia Brooks coined and defined the term minority stress as “a state intervening between the sequential antecedent stressors of culturally sanctioned, categorically ascribed inferior status, resultant prejudice and discrimination, the impact of these forces on the cognitive structure of the individual, and consequent readjustment or adaptational failure.”[11]
Nathan Grant Smith and Kathleen Ingram further expounded on minority stress of homosexuals in the workplace:
Minority stress refers to the anxiety of belonging to a marginalized and oppressed minority group.[12]
Minority stress has three separate components. The first is internalized homophobia, relating to the perverse views of homosexuality that have been internalized by homosexuals. Secondly, perceived stigma refers to the expectation of being unfairly treatment because of sexual orientation . Thirdly, prejudice events, or the “behavioral manifestation of heterosexism,” is the term applied to discriminatory, biased, or violent actions of others toward a homosexual. These actions vary in degree which would range from physical or verbal attacks and more subtle or indirect offenses like being left out of social gatherings and being arranged on dates with the opposite sex.[13]
This is why homosexuals are more comfortable in less stable jobs like stand-up comic, entertainer, and other jobs not dominated by heterosexuals like being dance instructors or DI’s and beauticians.
[1] Alan Seinfield, The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Movement, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 8-9.
[2] Paragraph 175, (known formally as §175 StGB; also known as Section 175 in English, a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994 ) which made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality, is found in “Paragraph 175,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, [access 20 March 2006], available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph_175.
[3] Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson, “Nazi Persecution,” Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1998), 412.
[4] “History of Gay Community,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, [access 20 March 2006], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Gay_Community
[5] “In the news,” Icon 1, no. 1 (2004): 20.
[6] Peter Renn, Speech, Male Sexual Orientation, And Childhood Gender Nonconformity (University of Texas, 2003)[cited 11 March 2006]. Available from http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy158H/PrevHonors/Z111/project.htm.
[7] Don Kurick, “Gay and Lesbian Language,” Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (October 2000): 260, 243-85.
[8] Ibid., Renn.
[9] Gregory Herek, “The Social Context of Hate Crimes: Notes on Cultural Heterosexism,” Hate crimes: Confronting Violence Against Lesbian and Gay Men (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992): 89.
[10] Nathan Grant Smith and Kathleen Ingram, “Workplace Heterosexism and Adjustment among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals: The Role of Unsupportive Social Interactions,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 51 (2004): 57.
[11] Virginia R. Brooks. Minority Stress and Lesbian Women. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1985), 84.
[12] Smith and Ingram, 57.
[13] Smith and Ingram, 58.