Sigmund Freud
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So, is there a 'gay uncanny,' and might it be used to map out the
inside of the minds of straight men who resort to aggravated assault
and homicide against gay men who make passes at them? Freud has some
useful observations to make here. The 'uncanny' also refers to
something withdrawn from the perception of others- secretive, hidden
or...closeted? Suddenly, a straight male discovers that his friend or
drinking partner is a hitherto 'unsuspected' gay man or man who has sex
with men, which leads the 'scared' straight man to fear gay sex as
something that "looks" like straight sex, but isn't.
Homophobes and fundamentalist Christians are usually scared of us
because according to them, we "look like" them, but "aren't", so they
try to violently repudiate us through violent boundary demarcation,
through transforming us into dissolute, sexually aggressive and
'menacing' monstrosities, which 'excuses' homophobic discrimination,
gaybashing and social exclusion. It may also explain the elements of
aggravated assault in antigay homicides, because we're "not like them."
Needless to say, these particular straight men also have fairly rigid
ideas that relate to "permissible" male and female gender roles, so
they also fear "being made a woman."
Freud refers to the above as the "doppelganger" effect. LGBT folk
are seen as 'insidious' within the fundamentalist mindset, because we
'look' just like them but 'aren't.' Furthermore, this 'duplication' is
'imperfect,' which leads violent straight male homophobes to entertain
further boundary anxieties. If 'they' look like me, might 'I' not be
'one of them?' Hence, some resort to violence to destroy the uncanny
gay doppelganger who resembles-them-but-is-not-them.
Vision also plays a role in the exploration of the uncanny.
Homophobic straight men fear the gay eroticising gaze, because it
sexualises their bodies and 'turns them into women', whereas it's
perfectly okay for the straight male gaze to eroticise women even when
those women don't want to be the mere object of that gaze. To be the
object of someone else's gaze is to be 'powerless' and 'like a woman,'
so the gay gaze must be violently disrupted. (Similarly, misogynist
versions of the provocation defence exist when women break free from
this prescriptive framing as an object).
What do we do about this? There's nothing immutable or permanent
or desirable about the above. I am describing the foetid inside of a
homophobic male mind, which is a violent and psychopathological mire.
Homophobic violence is motivated by psychopathology, but
psychopathology itself doesn't excuse the perpetrators of violence,
otherwise we wouldn't imprison people who commit crimes partly due to
antisocial personality disorder. In any case, public policy should not
accept a phantasmagoria as the basis for excusing and condoning acts of
homophobic violence in the context of the provocation defence.
Recommended: Sigmund Freud: The Uncanny
