How can I combat internalized homophobia as a queer person?
So, I think that whenever we're looking at unpacking our internalized societal biases, there are a lot of things that are helpful to different people.
But I think step one is always about developing recognition of when that internalized bigotry is coloring, influencing, or driving your choices, your thoughts, your behaviors.
So, if you have a lot of internalized homophobia, you may notice yourself as a queer person talking about how those other queers are giving us a bad name.
That's your internalized homophobia.
You need to unpack that.
What is it about those queers that you don't like?
Why is that a thing that you think is worth talking about, pointing out any of that?
And I think just noticing more often and earlier on when that bigotry is coming up within you helps you to be able to identify like what are the pieces that you have internalized and how are you applying them to others and to yourself.
I think that the thing about internalized homophobia as a queer person, internalized transphobia, internalized any of these structures of bigotry and oppression is that there is no way to avoid them because our world is steeped in them.
You cannot throw a rock or stream a show on any of the streaming platforms without running into many or all of these “isms”.
They are everywhere.
They are the soup that we are all cooked in.
And as a result, what we have to figure out is how can we notice it when it's happening around us and how can we notice the pieces of it that we have taken into ourselves and instead of reacting to those pieces with like self-shame or anger or trying to like beat ourselves up or get ourselves out of it right now immediately, instead find a piece of like, alright, well ,I didn't put that there, I don't want it there.
How am I going to do something else instead?
If I have internalized homophobia as a queer person and I'm like, oh, those gays are giving us a bad name, how do I instead help myself understand that there's like no wrong way to be queer other than being a Log Cabin Republican?
If you're a Log Cabin Republican that is the wrong way to be queer.
I don't apologize for that stance at all.
I hope you find healing.
So how is it that this is showing up for you?
Why do you have this issue with these people and how they are understanding and expressing their queerness?
And I think that that gives you some good ideas about what are the ideas that you have specifically internalized about what kinds of queerness are or aren't okay and why.
A lot of this often boils down to respectability politics kind of stuff.
It also boils down to often ideas about like what it means to become an adult, what it means to have a relationship, what it means to be a person in this world that is successful or that is meeting societal milestones.
And so, a lot of times when we're unpacking these internalized ideas, we're not just unpacking the bigotry, we're also unpacking kind of our general structure of what it means to be a person and how we're supposed to interact with ourselves, with others and with the world.
And so, I think it's important to look at how are these structures influencing you and what do you need to do to create a system that doesn't support them as strongly anymore.
I think part of it also can be about spending more time in queer space, right?
If you have a lot of internalized homophobia, but you spend a lot more time in queer spaces, some of it unpacks itself on its own.
There are some ways in which exposure to something that runs counter to a bigotry we are presented can very much help us to unlearn that bigotry because we're being surrounded by messages that have one specific slant on this group of people.
Putting in other messages and examples helps our brains to be less extreme in their categorization and then have more cognitive flexibility, which then makes it easier for us to change those thoughts when those bigotry-driven thoughts come up.
So, the example of this that I can give you from research is fat phobia.
So, they have found that having people even just look at like a handful of images of people who are fat that are attractive images helps very deeply in unpacking people's internalized fat phobia, that when all you see are images of thin people presented as attractive or appealing, of course your brain is going to draw the conclusion that those are the only attractive and appealing body types and shapes.
But if you are exposed instead to a wider variety of media, if you are seeing in a positive light images that are shot to be attractive and enticing and sexy and all of these things about other kinds of bodies, then it's much easier for you in your brain to be able to have the flexibility to say, actually, a lot of kinds of bodies are beautiful, maybe even mine.
So, I think that if you have internalized homophobia and you’re queer, spend more time around other queers, right?
Like, do reading on queer theory.
Spend a lot of time in queer spaces.
You can even just go to a queer space and just be there.
You don't even have to interact with people, but just going and being there so that you get to see all of the richness of what it is to be queer as a way to help combat those ideas about what's right or wrong, what kinds of queer are or aren't okay, the different ways that things should look because there's no shoulds here.
Something I say a lot.
So, when I go to a play party, a lot of times I'll look around and be like, “Why is everyone so hot?”
Like, especially queer parties, I don't know if y'all have been to many queer play parties.
Everyone is so hot.
Like, different body shapes and sizes, different amounts of like costuming and makeup, different ways of being in the space.
Everyone is so hot and the reason everyone is so hot is because everyone is in that space as themselves.
If what you want is to feel alive and energized and you want to connect with other people and you want to have closeness and connection and community in your life, the only way to do that is by being yourself, is by just diving deep into being you, whether that's being nerdy or goofy or weird or fat or queer or disabled, like whatever it is.
What prevents us from being close with others, what prevents us from connecting is our shame, and the pieces of ourselves we try to hide or kill in order to be more acceptable.
We try to make ourselves acceptable to get connection and then in that process, we prevent the ability for others to connect to us because the person we're showing them isn't us, it's some person we think they want.
So, I think another helpful tool in combating these internalized “isms” is reminding yourself and recognizing that there's no wrong way to be you, there's no right way to be you.
The only way you can be wrong is if you're trying to be a person you aren't.
And so, living more fully and bravely as you is the best way for you to find people who are your people, for you to find love and acceptance and belonging.
We don't find belonging when we change to belong.
That's something different.
What we find, the only way we can find belonging is by being ourselves because people can't connect to someone who doesn't exist.
And if we're giving them this false front, that's a person who's not real.
