(Indeed, I was going to mention religion, but I forgot to. OTOH, I think I’ve met at least one otherwise quite contrarian person who was homophobic.)
It also seems likely to me that homophobia is a fitness advantage for men in the presence of bisexual / homosexual men.
How so? By encouraging other men to pursue heterosexual relationships, I would increase the demand of straight women and the supply of straight men, which (so long as I’m a straight man myself and the supply of straight women isn’t much larger than that of straight men) doesn’t sound (from a selfish point of view) like a good thing.
[The first time I wrote this paragraph it pattern-matched sexism because it talked about women as a commodity, so I’ve edited it so that it talks about both women and men as commodity, so if anything it now pattern-matches extreme cynicism; and I’m OK with that.]
There’s also some evidence that, of men who claim to be straight, increased stated distaste for homosexuals is associated with increased sexual arousal by men,
I’ve heard that cliché, but I had assumed that it was (at least in part) something someone made up to take the piss out of homophobes. Any links?
I mean in the “revulsion to same sex attraction” sense, not the “opposed to gay rights” sense. If a man is receptive to the sexual interest of other men, that makes him less likely to have a relationship with a woman, and thus less likely to have children, and thus is a fitness penalty, and so a revulsion that protects against that seems like a fitness advantage.
(Indeed, I was going to mention religion, but I forgot to. OTOH, I think I’ve met at least one otherwise quite contrarian person who was homophobic.)
How so? By encouraging other men to pursue heterosexual relationships, I would increase the demand of straight women and the supply of straight men, which (so long as I’m a straight man myself and the supply of straight women isn’t much larger than that of straight men) doesn’t sound (from a selfish point of view) like a good thing.
[The first time I wrote this paragraph it pattern-matched sexism because it talked about women as a commodity, so I’ve edited it so that it talks about both women and men as commodity, so if anything it now pattern-matches extreme cynicism; and I’m OK with that.]
I’ve heard that cliché, but I had assumed that it was (at least in part) something someone made up to take the piss out of homophobes. Any links?
I mean in the “revulsion to same sex attraction” sense, not the “opposed to gay rights” sense. If a man is receptive to the sexual interest of other men, that makes him less likely to have a relationship with a woman, and thus less likely to have children, and thus is a fitness penalty, and so a revulsion that protects against that seems like a fitness advantage.
Here’s one.
I was thinking about straight men who dislike gay men whether or not they have been hit on by them.
Thanks for the link.
(Anyway… Is someone downvoting this entire subthread?)