Friday, July 21, 2006

Homosexuality, Fear and Hatred

This from CNN.com on the "gay panic" defense. This legal defense goes like this: A discovers that B is homosexual, A kills B, A defends himself by saying that he isn't guilty because he couldn't control his anger at B's sexual orientation. Of course such a defense will only be even vaguely plausible when there has been some close contact between A and B.

So stated, this could just as well be called 'the bigotry defense,' and could just as well be used by racists as homophobes.

While we're at it, let's compare the phrases 'homophobic' with 'gay panic.' They both seem to me to border on the same mistake: confusing hatred with fear. 'Homophobia' isn't a very apt term for the condition I've noted in many people I've known. They don't so much fear homosexuals as hate them. I'll admit that it's sometimes hard to tell hatred from fear, and that the two are often intertwined...but it's hatred and disgust that has predominated in such folks in my experience.

I sometimes conjecture that 'homophobia' was coined in a burst of rhetorical inspiration, to try to dissipate the effect in question by suggesting to those who hate homosexuals that they are just being pansies...that it's fear they are experiencing, not hatred. This would constitute a kind of covert challenge to their manhood, the equivalent of calling them chickens. Real men don't fear gays.

If that's true, then the rhetorical strategy backfired, because anti-homosexual bigotry is now, apparently, being characterized as fear in order to excuse anti-homosexual crimes.

But, as is so often the case, things are more complicated than this. Take the case of Gwen Araujo, briefly discussed in the CNN story. If this is the case I've read about in the past, here's what happened:

Araujo (aka Gwen), a male, decided that he wanted to be--or really was in some sense--a female. So he pretended to be female. He started hanging out with a group of low-life teen thugs and having sex with them--always oral or anal so that they--and remember, these are not the sharpest tools in the shed we're talking about here--wouldn't get suspicious. Finally they figured out what was going on, and brutally murdered Araujo.

Now: what the teen thugs did was without a doubt vicious and wrong. Nothing that follows should be construed as an attempt to deny that.

However, what Araujo did was wrong, too. People's sexual orientation is important to them--as Araujo should have known better than anyone else. Araujo tricked the teen thugs into doing something to which they never would have consented if they had been fully informed. He tricked them into doing something that they considered disgusting and, perhaps, morally wrong--something that might very well plague them for the rest of their lives.

Now, I don't share this view about homosexuality. I'm not homosexual, but I don't see the big deal. Nevertheless, if somebody tricked me into doing it, it's more likely than not that I would punch their lights out. Not because it's wrong or disgusting, but because that's a choice that I get to make, and nobody gets to make it for me. Again: there is no justification for killing Araujo, but he was in no way blameless in this matter.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that Mr. Araujo had intentionally picked out some very bad people to consort with. He had to know that a bad end was a real and relevant possibility. This kind of violence sickens us all, but I have to say that my sympathy for victims is mitigated when they have intentionally picked out violent people to associate with, expecially when it is precisely the violent nature of these people that attracted the victim in the first place. I think it's sick to get a sexual charge out of violence, and people who do get such a charge, and who seek out violent people to have sex with are playing with fire. Consequently, they bear partial responsibility for violence that is inflicted on them.

Insert snappy conclusion here. I got nothin'.

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't have a snappy conclusion for you, but I think you're a little too quick or too cautious here.

You rightly say that a "gay panic" style defense could just as easily be used by a racist. But I don't think that obviously shows that it's a bad defense. There's a question here that I don't think the law is very clear about.

It's essentially a provocation defense, so we're really talking about mitigation. And with provocation, there are two questions we could ask--how provoked and out of control was the person? or how provoked should the person have been?

There are, I think, pretty good reasons to like both questions, but they'll often lead to diffferent answers. If being out of control is a good defense, i.e., if acting out of passion rather than reason is a legitimate mitigating factor, then we ought to ask how ought of control the person was. But that will mean that homophobes, and racists, might really be more provoked by certain things, and so be more out of control than they otherwise would be. And that should be relevant if what's important is how in control of your actions you are.

But we also want to say that the person shouldn't have been so provoked by a gay person, or a black person. So maybe we use a "reasonable man" standard. But that seems dangerous to me. The racist who catches his wife in bed with a black man probably is more provoked than if it was a white guy, and so is more out of control. Of course he shouldn't be a racist. But being a racist isn't being a murderer, and I don't think we ought be punishing people for who they are. We ought to punish what they do. And the person, even the racist, who is legitimately out of control seems guilty of a lesser crime than the person who calculates and plans to kill someone. (I don't recall the name of the case, but there is an actual case of a husband shooting his wife's black lover and the judge cited the victim's race and the husband's racism as mitigating factors.)

I suspect part of the issue is that people don't buy that the racists and homophobes are really out of control. And people worry that allowing such a defense will, in some sense, open the flood gates. But if they really are out of control, I'm not sure it's a terrible defense, at least theoretically if not practically.

9:12 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Wow, really excellent analysis, rg. I'm glad I posted this because this comment was really valuable.

9:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now: what the [Hezbollah] thugs did was without a doubt vicious and wrong. Nothing that follows should be construed as an attempt to deny that.

However, what [Israel] did was wrong, too.


Metaphor has tight limits, but in any case why is this easier to understand in its original form?

(Waiting for this rejoinder: "That's different. Israel is not gay!")

1:01 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Not sure I'm following you, LL...

1:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Israelis are not the wanton killers here. Hizbollah are. Put the moral responsibility where it belongs.

Emphasis added for those unfamiliar with moral imperatives beyond black and white. The world's a complicated place. Just because you're criticizing Araujo doesn't mean you're letting the punks off the hook. Similarly, Israel vs. Hezbollah.

9:11 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Got it. Agreed.

11:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Araujo's defense, as far as sie was concerned, sie really was female (just one with a physical deformity of sorts), so having sex with males would not constitute as homosexual sex to hir.

("Sie" and "hir" are gender-neutral pronouns that replace s/he and her/him and are often used to refer to transsexuals.)

Also, before one can apply for a sex change operation, a lot of steps need to be gone through. One involves living as the sex one wishes to become in every way for a year or two. That's not to say that you can't tell those around you that you are a transsexual, but they will undoubtably treat you differently if they know, which defeats the purpose of living as your preferred sex.

While I agree that is not right to deceive someone, I can also understand why Araujo chose not to tell hir sexual partners that sie was physically male. Transsexuals face an enormous amount of discrimination - from both the straight and (sadly) the gay community. Even if the person they've just come out to is merely a platonic friend, not a sexual partner, it's not uncommon for the person to get physically violent when they find out.

(I'm not trying to absolve Araujo of blame, fyi. I'm just trying to add some more information for people to consider.)

And I admit, the whole "boys will be boys" attitude that gets a lot of gay-bashers (not to mention rapists) off the hook tends to irritate me. It's as if we're telling heterosexual males that they don't need to have any control over their emotions or their reactions.

On the term "homophobia", I can't remember how the term originated, but I think it only dates back to the 1970s or so. I think it was coined without any real knowledge of what the definition of "phobia" really is. People probably just liked how it sounded and it caught on.

I tend to prefer the term "heterocentric" to refer to anti-GLBT people. If I'm remembering my root words properly, it means that a person thinks that heterosexuality is inherantly better than/more natural/superior to homosexuality.

However, I'll admidt that old habits are hard to break. I'm so used to hearing "homophobia" (and using it doesn't require an explanation, unlike "heterocentric") that I still use it myself.

4:28 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Thanks for the interesting and judicious points, PS.

We do need a new term for those folks, though. I usually stick with the generic 'bigot' for the whole lot of 'em, but I'd like to think of something more specifically insulting.

3:13 PM  

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