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The concept of homophobia: A psychosocial perspective
Article in Sexologies · April 2016
DOI: 10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.002
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Christèle Fraïssé
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Alberto Hurtado University
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The concept of homophobia:
A psychosocial perspective夽
C. Fraïssé a,∗, J. Barrientos b
a
EA1285, UFR lettres et sciences humaines, centre de recherche en psychologie, cognition et
communication, université Bretagne occidentale, 20, rue Duquesne, CS93837, 29238 Brest cedex 3, France
b
Escuela de Psicología, Universidad Católica del Norte, Avenida Angamos, 0610 Antofagasta, Chile
KEYWORDS
Homophobia;
Heterosexism;
Psychosocial
approach
Summary The purpose of this article is to consider the concept of homophobia from a psychosocial perspective. After a brief history of the emergence of the concept of homophobia
and other concepts that have emerged over time to clarify the idea, we will discuss what these
concepts provide in terms of framing and defining the phenomenon, and the questions this
framing and defining raise, in turn, about this concept. The various ways of measuring homophobia will also be examined, in order to identify the limitations of these tests and what they
teach us about the phenomenon of homophobia. Using these as starting points, we will try to
redefine homophobia as a complex system that brings together several concepts (heterosexism,
sexual prejudice, heteronormativity, sexism and male dominance). This system-based definition of homophobia will lead to a more nuanced understanding of various situations involving
discrimination, inequality and violence, and will uncover violent situations that remain hidden
by the current understanding of homophobia.
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.
Since the 1970s, when psychology researchers began to work
on homophobia rather than homosexuality, this concept has
spread in the French and international literature (Fraïssé,
DOI of original article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.001.
夽 La version en français de cet article, publiée dans l’édition
imprimée de la revue, est également disponible en ligne :
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.001.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: fraisse@univ-brest.fr (C. Fraïssé),
jbarrien@ucn.cl (J. Barrientos).
2011; Barrientos, 2015). Nevertheless, the most common
definition of homophobia — ‘‘an attitude of hostility toward
male or female homosexuals’’ (Borillo, 2001, p. 3), indicates that this concept is relatively restricted and tends
to individualise the process of discrimination and rejection. This is why the term has gradually become more
qualified. A distinction has developed between general and
specific homophobia (Welzer-Lang, 1994), between families of phobias of different target groups: lesbophobia,
gayphobia, biphobia and transphobia (Chamberland and
Lebreton, 2012), and between homophobia and sexual prejudice (Herek, 1984). Finally, the concept of heterosexism
(Neisen, 1990; Herek, 1990) will be proposed as a way of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.002
1158-1360/© 2016 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.
Please cite this article in press as: Fraïssé C, Barrientos J. The concept of homophobia: A psychosocial perspective.
Sexologies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.002
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describing the more collective aspect of this type of discrimination. Researchers have assumed that the concept of
homophobia would vanish, as it seemed so inappropriate to
the direction research was taking.
The fact that the concept of homophobia has become so
widespread therefore raises questions, and it seems useful
to us to re-examine the psychosocial perspective (Moscovici,
1984), in other words considering that any relationship
between an individual and a social object is mediated by
an alter.
In the beginning there was homophobia
Weinberg’s 1972 book, at the same time as the article by
Smith (1971), popularised the term homophobia and gradually overturned the approach of most psychologists, who
still approached homosexuality as a mental illness. In his
preface, Weinberg sets out his position, which is that homophobia, rather than homosexuality, is the diseased state.
However, since 1972, the idea of fear has given way to hostility and aversion towards homosexuals, as can be seen in
the definition given in the introduction.
There have been two main criticisms of this usage of
the concept (Barrientos and Cárdenas, 2013). The first is
of the pathological connotation of the suffix ‘‘phobia’’. The
second is of its individualising dimension (Chamberland and
Lebreton, 2012), which makes it difficult to discern the collective aspects of such discrimination.
In the 1990s, with the purpose of responding to these two
criticisms, various authors suggested other concepts.
Many concepts: just one phenomenon?
According to Welzer-Lang (1994), homophobia can be considered to involve two phenomena that are not necessarily
linked to sexual orientation; in his view, homophobia governs the relationship between men and women, by saving
the state of masculinity from all feminisation. Assuming
these two categories are kept entirely separate from one
another and, moreover, are hierarchical with the masculine being the superior category, the concept of homophobia
maintains this separateness and hierarchy. Homophobia is
thus closely linked with sexism and male dominance. For
this reason, he proposes specific homophobia, the familiar
type, which relates to sexual orientation with ordinary hostility in the form of verbal and physical aggression. He also
proposes general homophobia, which emerges in contexts
that are independent of sexual orientation but that feature gender transgression. Individuals who present a gender
identity that is not consistent with their apparent biological sex would under this definition be victims of general
homophobia. Homophobia is therefore primarily a masculine
phenomenon, as it is ‘‘the key, for men, to achieving dominance over women, by structuring relationships between
men in the image of relationships between men and women’’
(Welzer-Lang, 1994, p. 62).
Welzer-Lang suggests extending the concept of homophobia beyond the strictly individual, to include individual
hostility or aversion that arises from societal and ideological factors, and, following Neisen (1990) and Herek
(1990), introduces the concept of heterosexism. This idea
C. Fraïssé, J. Barrientos
complements homophobia, describing a process that is
allied to homophobia but more complex, and just like
sexism, heterosexism is, according to Welzer-Lang, the
expression of a hierarchy of sexualities. The benefit of
the concept of heterosexism is that it reintroduces the
notion of power, which is absent from the term homophobia, and ‘‘provides an opportunity for closer examination of
the connection between anti-homosexual sentiment and sex
role stereotype’’ (Neisen, 1990, p. 25). Herek (1990, p. 316)
defines heterosexism ‘‘as an ideological system that denies,
denigrates, and stigmatizes any non-heterosexual form of
behavior, identity, relationship, or community’’. According
to Herek, there are two forms of heterosexism: one is cultural and relates to a heterosexual bias in lifestyles and
institutions within society; the other is psychological, and
relates to attitudes and behaviour of individuals that are
directed directly at sexual minorities.
The conceptual framework based on this notion of sexual stigma that was developed by Herek (2007, 2009) works
in the same way. Herek (2009) identifies a structural sexual
stigma — heterosexism — which he describes as an ideology
that is translated into institutional practices such that it
disadvantages sexual minorities. There are two processes
at work here. The first relates to the assumption that all
individuals are heterosexual, meaning that sexual minorities are made invisible. The second describes the fact
that when sexual minorities become visible, they are automatically considered to be ‘‘diseased’’ and ‘‘unnatural’’,
which means that explanations are required and these
individuals are problematised. According to Herek (2007),
beyond this cultural and collective dimension, there exists
sexual stigma that is directly experienced and expressed
by individuals, which has three elements: enacted sexual
stigma, consisting of insults, attacks, marginalisation or
rejection of sexual minorities; second, felt sexual stigma,
which leads to behaviour change on the part of individuals seeking to avoid stigmatisation; and internalised sexual
stigma, in which individuals incorporate negative evaluations of sexual minorities into their own value systems. If
these individuals belong to these minority groups, Herek
names this ‘‘self-stigma’’, and if these individuals are heterosexual, this is manifested as sexual prejudice. Herek’s
model takes a unified approach to the various levels, from
intra-individual to ideology, using a psychosocial approach
(Doise, 1982); it maintains the fundamental power dimension of heterosexism and uses a disease-based approach to
the concept of homophobia. By abandoning the distinction
between cultural heterosexism and psychological heterosexism, it arrives at a wording that is consistent with the
concept of heterosexism, which is necessarily structural and
ideological in nature, and which is only individual in its
expression. Finally, heterosexism is built into the process
of heteronormativity, which, as it presupposes that heterosexuality is normal and superior, is part of the way society
works, for both individuals and institutions. This normative
regulation operates in daily life, and also in institutions,
via ‘‘regulatory practices (. . .) that produce and constrain
gender intelligibility’’ (Chambers, 2007, p. 666) permitting
the expression of certain forms of gender and prohibiting
others. Using the sex/gender matrix (Butler, 2006), this process maintains consistency between sex (a male or female
being), gender (being masculine or feminine) and desire
Please cite this article in press as: Fraïssé C, Barrientos J. The concept of homophobia: A psychosocial perspective.
Sexologies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.002
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The concept of homophobia: A psychosocial perspective
(which is necessarily heterosexual) (Bastien Charlebois,
2011).
Bringing these two processes (heterosexism and heteronormativity) together explains why homosexuality is
invisible and excluded in all social spaces, and why it is
stigmatised as a deviant and pathological sexual orientation.
The various statements set out in this brief summary show
that homophobia, as the term is currently used, corresponds
to more than one phenomenon. It refers to phenomena
that are very different in nature, from insults and aggression (inter-individual and position-based interaction), to
the failure to make marriage available to homosexual
people (ideological interaction), and shame and suicide
(intra-individual), all of which takes place within a specific
normative framework. These various phenomena have also
been conceptualised as research into negative attitudes to
homosexuality in social psychology has progressed, and as
the various concepts that have been observed have been
added to the canon. For all these authors, the concern
was not to restrict the identification and analysis of situations that, at various levels, create, legitimise and maintain
inequality, discrimination and violence.
However, approaching homophobia in this way raises
questions about how to measure the phenomenon.
Measuring homophobia
From the 1970s, research into homophobia moved towards
measuring attitudes towards homosexuality or towards gay
and lesbian people.
Tracing attitudes: homophobia as an attitude
Homophobia can be measured using several methods. Herek
(1984) proposed the concept of ‘‘sexual prejudice’’, which
describes negative attitudes towards homosexuality. He thus
linked hostility towards homosexuality with a large body of
theoretical work on prejudice. This redefinition of homophobia as a sexual prejudice enables us to go beyond the original
idea behind the term homophobia, which is that attitudes
and behaviour that are hostile to homosexual people primarily arise from fear and are treated as a disease. These
are the tests that are most commonly used, in the form of
self-evaluation measures, as seen, for example, in the scale
created by Herek in the mid-1980s, the Attitudes towards
Lesbians and Gay men (ATLG) Scale. This type of measure
requires those surveyed to state to what extent they agree
with a series of statements about homosexuality, and sometimes bisexuality, about individuals from sexual minorities.
They may also require that those surveyed declare how comfortable they were with contact with homosexual people or
gay and/or lesbian people in various social situations. However, individuals are now less willing to express negative
attitudes openly, as a general norm of tolerance has developed in Western societies (Meertens and Pettigrew, 1997;
Saucier et al., 2005). For this reason, researchers have created ‘‘modern’’ prejudice scales, in which the items are less
overtly negative than those used in previous measures.
Similarly, implicit testing methods have been developed.
For instance, there are physiological tests such as facial
electromyography (Vanman et al., 1997), measurement of
xxx.e3
heart rate acceleration and MRI measurement of amygdala
activation (Olson and Fazio, 2003). Reaction time measurement has also been used, as in the Implicit Association Test
(IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998) and the Go/No go Association
Task (GNAT, Nosek and Banaji, 2001), which test the strength
of associations between concepts.
These implicit tests complement explicit self-evaluation
tests, and refine our understanding of the mechanisms
involved, and enable the creation of different ways of engaging with the general public on this subject.
A final comment: regardless of whether tests are implicit
or explicit, they will be construed differently depending
on the operational definition of homosexuality that the
researchers use.
What should we measure? Homophobia, gayphobia,
lesbophobia?
The content of the statements in the tests relate to a variety
of phenomena that are rooted in a particular historical and
political reality. They may, for example, examine the institutional aspects of homophobia, moral or religious aspects,
deviance or pathology, or daily life. The content thus varies
over the years, focusing on certain aspects in the light of
the issues that are prominent at the time.
Measures of homophobia therefore depend on how homosexuality and homophobia are seen in society and by the
researchers at the time the test is devised. In particular,
this content will be designed to look at either homosexuality in general, or at individuals of different sexualities:
homosexual women or men.
The first type of scale only measures attitudes towards
homosexuality in general. However, continuing the work of
Herek (1984), from the mid-1980s, researchers (Morrison and
Morrison, 2003; Raja and Stokes, 1998) gradually incorporated the difference between homosexual men and women
into their work, in order to measure sexual prejudice.
In the light of this, two approaches to these scales arose
in parallel, which affected the way in which the items were
developed and how the phenomenon of homophobia itself
was described.
The first approach considered homosexual people to be
a quasi-ethnic minority group (Herek, 2002), which led to
items that measured attitudes towards homosexuality and
homosexual people in general. In the light of this, respondents were not meant to draw a distinction between gay
and lesbian people, as they were understood to share the
same experience: that of occupying a minority position. The
perceived hierarchy here is of heterosexuality and homosexuality. According to this approach, sexual prejudice or
homophobia are measured as general concepts, which in
principle is gender-neutral; this fails to address the discrimination that is linked to lesbianism and bisexuality.
In addition, the situation of individuals presenting nonconforming gender, trans* people, transgender people and
intersex people are made invisible by this concept. Thinking of and testing homophobia as a form of sexual prejudice
would therefore appear to be a sexist concept (Chamberland
and Lebreton, 2012).
A second approach considers the issue using a system
of beliefs about sexual roles that distinguishes between
Please cite this article in press as: Fraïssé C, Barrientos J. The concept of homophobia: A psychosocial perspective.
Sexologies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2016.02.002
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masculine and feminine, and the different sociological positions occupied by men and women, particularly in terms
of male dominance. Using this approach, homosexuality
is considered as a violation of sexual roles, and thus gay
and lesbian people are not seen as perpetrating the same
transgressions. Respondents can therefore express different
attitudes to one or other category. In this approach, the
relevant hierarchy involves men and women.
Finally, regardless of the approach used, the question
stems from the distinction between two essentialist categories: homosexual and heterosexual, or man and woman.
The use of categories entails setting in stone the processes
that are being described, and also making invisible those
individuals who do not conform, such as lesbians, transgender people, intersex people and bisexual people.
Reflecting on complexity and change: the
homophobic system
Understanding homophobia generally starts from categories
of sex or sexual orientation. Such an approach tends to
provide a static, fixed representation of the process of
homophobia, in that every individual is assigned to one and
one category alone, in a binary or indeed unitary process; in
other words, this approach considers just one dimension of
the process (Baschetta, 2009).
In terms of sex, for example, an individual can only be
a man or a woman, with the gender characteristics associated with their sex. This assignment takes no account of
transgender or intersex people, or anyone else who presents
a non-conforming gender identity. Similarly, sexual orientation involves the opposition between heterosexual and
homosexual, implying that sexuality must fall into one of
these two categories. Sexuality is thus confined to a specific
type of practice, and no attention is paid to the diversity
of individuals’ sexual practices (Bozon, 2013), or to the
dynamic nature of identity, where the way in which individuals see themselves over time can change. In addition,
those who fall into neither of these two categories vanish,
in favour of ‘‘a universalising interpretation of the subject’s
formation, which has the effect of erasing subordinate subjects’’ (Baschetta, 2009, p. 3).
It can be seen that this dominant approach to understanding homophobia neglects dominance effects, and does
not truly give an account of the dynamic nature of human
action. For example, for Tomsen (2009), sexual prejudice is
not a static and fixed phenomenon; rather, it is fluid and shifting, depending on the situation at hand. In his research into
homophobic violence, Tomsen (2006) suggests that attackers’ motivations primarily concern the protection of their
masculine identity, rather than an irrational or pathological fear of homosexual people. Such violence is permitted
because of a conception of the other which is based on an
assumption of natural supremacy of some identities over
others, which produces and reproduces a ‘‘natural’’ order
in which non-heterosexual sexualities occupy a subordinate position (Mason, 2001). This heterosexist conception
is reminiscent of interiorised sexual stigma (Herek, 2007).
However, this concept, which considers homophobia to be
sexual prejudice or self-stigma, takes a somewhat static
view of the process, as it is confined by categorisation, while
C. Fraïssé, J. Barrientos
Mason (2001) presents this as a dynamic concept. Heterosexism, using this explanation, is just as rife within sexual
minorities as among heterosexual people, and affects everyone’s lives.
Resorting to categorisation or binary or unitary
approaches (Baschetta, 2009) obscures in part society’s heterosexist and heteronormative way of working,
while it ought to reveal this in full. This is because it
conceals a whole facet of society behind the idea of a
universal man or woman.
For this reason, it seems useful to consider homophobia as a complex system, in which heterosexism, sexual
prejudice, heteronormativity, sexism and male dominance
interact with one another. The idea of the homophobic system, as it part of a psychosocial approach will, in our view,
promote a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding
of the discrimination, inequality and violence that are experienced by some citizens, but which also affect the whole of
society. This idea will also uncover violent situations, which
have hitherto been invisible.
Conclusion
This article acts as an invitation to develop psychosocial
research into what we have called the ‘‘homophobic system’’, and to recognise and incorporate, as researchers
and/or practitioners, the historical character of categorisations that have been produced by the field of psychology.
We should not forget or deny the sociohistorical dimension
of category creation, regardless of whether these categories are pathological. Nor should we forget or deny the
effects of being assigned to such categories; if we remember and acknowledge this, all practitioners and researchers
can position themselves as participants and can inform their
professional practice. Furthermore, this positioning reminds
psychologists that they take part in and function as part
of this ‘‘homophobic system’’, which should lead them to
reflect upon their practice, when caring for patients and
when doing research.
We also suggest that such reflective processes should be
combined with a system of ‘‘ethics of consideration for consequences’’ (Piron, 1996), which positions a researcher who
takes responsibility for what he/she writes, both in terms of
the content and of the effects on others.
For psychologists, considered and ethical positioning
should make it easier to identify the ‘‘homophobic system’’
of which they are a part in their various interactions, in order
to avoid pitfalls such as the assumption of heterosexuality,
and the failure to understand the wish that LGBTI people
have to be recognised, which is linked to their subordinate
position (for examples, see Bastien Charlebois, 2011).
Disclosure of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interest.
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