Are Rabid Homophobes afraid they might actually enjoy it?

[Philosoraptor]

Are they secretly attracted to the same sex, but so revulsed by their own set of sins and rules that their brains go into hyper overdrive?

[meegbear]

1. Maybe, I've experienced one ...

I have a group of straight friends who know I'm gay. A younger brother of one of my friends, early 20s, started hanging out with us. Learning that I was gay, he would make anti-gay remarks, commented to friends how he "wouldn't want to be alone with me" and doing the "faggot" cough. I just gave up and stopped hanging out with them. A bit later, I talked with my friends, told them why I wasn't there and they talked to him and he said he'd stop.

At first he was uncomfortable around me, afraid of saying something that would offend me etc. Then one day, a bunch of us were having a Sunday BBQ and he shows us coming from another party and feeling good. At one point, he's looking at the Sunday sales papers and says "Did you ever try to check out the guys in the underwear ads"? Then he starts talking about sometimes he'd rent a straight porn movie based on what the size of the men of the cover were. Over time, he wanted to see my books, porn movies (he became a fan of Al Parker, a well hung 1970-80s star) and while he never came out, we all kind of assumed he's thought about it.

Haven't seen him for a few years - he's had other life issues he's had to deal with. But he was/is the classic stereotype homophobe.

[NorthernSpy]

2. some of the ARE enjoying it RIGHT NOW

Never underestimate the human tendency to preach one standard for other people, while practicing something very different in ones own life. There are homophobes who've gotten nicked for soliciting male prostitutes or having sex with boys, just as there are law-and-order demagogues who've ended up in jail for corruption.


http://www.armchairsubversive.com/

[Wickerman]

3. Reaction Formation

Homophobia is the classic example.

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/definitions/reactionformation.html

REACTION-FORMATION : The blocking of desire by its opposite. "Reaction-formation" is the term Freud uses to describe the mechanism whereby the ego reacts to the impulses of the id by creating an antithetical formation that blocks repressed cathexes. For example, someone who feels homosexual desire might repress that desire by turning it into hatred for all homosexuals

[DeaconBlues]

4. psychological experiment by Baron in the late nineties

supposedly straight participants who scored highest on measures of homophobia were more likely to become aroused by gay pornography. Definitely something to think about.