Kai Myers

9/10/12

Professor Soyoung Park

Women's Studies

Homophobia and its Relation to Feminism

      Feminism, according to most, including prominent writer and blogger, Jessica Valenti, has more to do with the desire for equality among all people. Based on the influences of the third wave of feminism, this idea is considered to be a more modern day approach, as the earlier movements tended to focus on white, upperclass, heterosexual females. Thankfully, feminism today considers all types of people, specifically, all types of women from all walks of life as essential parts of the movement (gender deviants, lesbians, those in third world countries and so on). It is crucial that the topic of homophobia is discussed when it has such close ties to the dispute of true equality.

      Suzanne Pharr, in her article Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, goes to say that homophobia and the emphasis on its counter part, heterosexism, is another method of keeping the systems of power, the imbalance of status between men and women, in check. "Homophobia works effectively as a weapon of sexism because it is joined with a powerful arm, heterosexism. Heterosexism creates the climate for homophobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual and its display of power and privilege as the norm" (Pharr, 87). Most of what this is all boils down to scare tactics and the urge to conform as to not stand out or be under pressure from society. 

      These scare tactics have flaws, however. In homophobia, they create stereotypes. For example, not all lesbians may like to work on cars, only wear flannel, and have short hair. People are more complex than that; no one can accurately label someone else by using a word that already has meaning behind it. Really, there shouldn't be a race to label everyone anyhow, but, hey, modern society does not work that way. Everyone is obsessed with labels and how they fit into them.

      Homophobia creates labels with negative connotations; the people of this nation are buying into them. Slurs such as "gay", "faggot", and "lesbian" are used as insults and not as markers of identification. So how does feminism come play with all of this?

      "...We know that so long as the word lesbian can strike fear in any woman's heart, then work on behalf of women can be stopped; the only successful work against sexism must include work against homophobia" (Pharr, 91). So, in order for feminism to be successful, the removal of homophobia must also be included. It is as much an issue as the differences in the wage-gap between men and women.