Internal Homophobia

It's when someone is brought up in a homophobic atmosphere, and they absorb the attitudes. It usually refers to self hatred in LGBT people, who have taken in the hateful rubbish of homophobes. It's closely linked to internalised misogyny, as homophobia usually comes from sexism (gay men lowering themselves to the level of women, lesbian women getting above their place by not being with men)

 

I guess I have slight internal homophobia if that's the case. My conscious, rational brain tells me homo relationships are great, and most of the time I'm excited to see them. But occasionally it still strikes me as weird when I see gay couples, in a sort of "does not compute" sort of way. I think that's all of society though; it's just not frequent enough yet to be accepted as fully commonplace.

 

Internalised misogyny is basically having this deep-set feeling that men are superior to women. Even if someone doesn't consciously think that he's superior to a woman, for example, he might be uncomfortable about a woman having a position of power over him. So if someone has that going on, they might also feel deep down that being gay is inferior, because it could be seen as though gay men are taking on a more feminine role and giving up power, or that lesbians are trying to act like men and try to have more power than they should.

 

They might think "well, maybe I like guys, but I'm not gay, I'm not like all those other gay guys who all act like girls". Or "I'm normal, I act like a guy, it's all those super gay guys that make other people think I'm not normal."

 

Sort of. If you think that feminine gay guys are bad, or that they cause straight people to be homophobic, or that they need to man up, or that they're all bitchy and stupid, or that they don't deserve respect, I'd say that's internalised homophobia. If you just think "I'm different to these guys, but that's okay, they're not bad people and it's cool for them to be the way they want to be", that's a more mature perspective.

 

My mother somehow fits your post. She hated men but her actions were those more of a man. She did the car repairs and was extremely masculine but always wore a flowered dress. She was the fighter if someone tried to take something from us and was always taking on my father.

My feeling at this point was she wanted the respect she believed men got and this came out as a hatred of men. I keep picturing her buying me playboy books when I was nine just to be able to get me to come to her to get more. She had a need to hurt me sexually but at nine I only used them to get the older kids to come over and hang out.