yonmei

Unaccompanied Sonata is autobiographical. Everything he says about gay people is what someone made him believe about himself. So infuriating and so, so sad.

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You could be right.

Mind you, people always claim that homophobes are really closety self-hating gays, and I really doubt that it's true even as often as people say.

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The theory about Card and Unaccompanied Sonata is not original to me, but I don't remember who I got it from. Whoever it was quoted Card writing about homosexual sex as something that of course any guy would be tempted by; but for the good of society it's necessary to make guys give up the short term pleasure of really exciting sex with each other for the long term happiness of marriage to a woman and raising a family.

I agree that that's a minority of homophobes, although that kind may have a disproportionate amount of energy and attention to devote to homophobia. I think most homophobes are frightened and disgusted by the idea of another man looking at them the way they look at women.

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Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright. Jr., and Bethany Lohr, "Is Homophobia Associated with Homosexual Arousal?" Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 105 (1996), No. 3., pp. 440-445.

Abstract: The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

On the other hand, maybe he's just an asshole.

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I hate the practice of telling other people what their sexual orientation "really" is, so I'm not going to do it to Card... no matter what the provocation.

(His essay on how gay marriage is wrecking civilisation includes the claim that people "become gay" because they were molested as children - which is, I found via Box Turtle Bulletin, one of the routine lies of the "ex-gay" movement, and probably the single lie that causes most pain to parents of LGBT people. Even so: we only know he's homophobic.)

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