#homosexual panic

[sazandorable]

Hello fellow fans, important term usage time!

“Gay panic” is in fact a term long used for a really, really, really not fun thing rooted in homophobia, that is commonly used in legal systems across the world, that is currently still legal in many places (including many parts of the USA). “Homosexual panic” is close to what you actually mean, but also refers to something with a pretty horrifying origin and history rooted in homophobia (that is thankfully no longer recognised nowadays).

I get it, it’s a funny sequence of words and it’s fun to point and go “Hah! Gay!”, but regardless of the level of humour you may find in the whole concept itself, the phrase “gay panic” has (still running) deeply unpleasant history and connotations, and many of us older members of the LGBTQ+ community do a hard grimace upon seeing it. It instantly breaks the funny, and a lot of us are quite unhappy to see its usage spread so freely in fandom to refer to fun “haha he’s having gay feels” moments, not to mention that sometimes it even genuinely leads to ambiguous phrasings that accidentally imply... the exact and very, very unpleasant opposite of what you wanted it to imply.

Possible alternatives:

• Until a few years back a common phrase I saw around for those moments was simply “Oh No, [He’s/She’s/They’re] Hot” (which has the added bonus of not implying a specific orientation so it’s even inclusive!), can we bring that back instead? :3

•  Or just Gay Seal.

[mxryshcllcy]

But a subtler, answering strategy was also called for, complementary to this one, to consolidate control over the bonds of men who were not part of the distinctly homosexual subculture. Not only must homosexual men be unable to ascertain whether they are to be the objects of "random" homophobic violence, but no man must be able to ascertain that he is not (that his bonds are not) homosexual. In this way, a relatively small exertion of physical or legal compulsion potentially rules great reaches of behavior and filiation.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic,” in Between Men

[devoursjohnlock]

It’s just interesting to me that Epistemology of the Closet focuses heavily on Billy Budd (about men who want to murder the object of their unacknowledged desire), The Beast in the Jungle (the monster in the closet), and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (told through the closeted narrator’s fragmented consciousness).

In many ways, S4 of Sherlock really is the Sedgwick season.

[hornedmelonproductions]

As in most horror movies worth their salt, homosexual panic, and the repression of homosexual desires, results in a monstrous return of the repressed, most often ending in murder, mayhem, and dismemberment.

Bruce LaBruce on Eyes Wide Shut

[innmotioninc-blog]

"Homosexual panic" [is] a defense strategy that is commonly used to prevent conviction or to lighten sentencing of gay-bashers[.] Judicially, a "homosexual panic" defense for a person (typically a man) accused of antigay violence implies that his responsibility for the crime was diminished by a pathological psychological condition, perhaps brought on by an unwanted sexual advance from the man whom he then attacked. In addition to the unwarranted assumptions that all gay men may plausibly be accused of making sexual advances to strangers and, worse, that violence, often to the point of homicide, is a legitimate response to any sexual advance whether welcome or not, the "homosexual panic" defense rests on the falsely individualizing and pathologizing assumption that hatred of homosexuals is so private and so atypical a phenomenon in this culture as to be classifiable as an accountability-reducing illness. The widespread acceptance of this defense really seems to show, to the contrary, that hatred of homosexuals is even more public, more typical, hence harder to find any leverage against than hatred of other disadvantaged groups. "Race panic" or "gender panic," for instance, is not accepted as a defense for violence against people of color or against women; as for "heterosexual panic," David Wertheimer, executive director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, remarks, "If every heterosexual woman who had a sexual advance made to her by a male had the right to murder the man, the streets would be littered with the bodies of heterosexual men"

"Epistemology of the Closet" by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, page 19

[commiepinkofag]

The Candlestick Murder Charleston, South Carolina, News and Courier, November 2, 1958

Jack Dobbins, a 30-year-old Charleston chemical company executive was clubbed to death with a heavy brass candlestick, in his home Halloween night 1958.

Charleston Air Force Base, Airman 3rd Class John Joseph Mahon surrendered “upon having read of Dobbins’ death.” He was charged and held without bail. Facing the death penalty at trial, Mahon’s lawyers used a homosexual-panic defense. Despite the conflicting testimony, Mahon received a not guilty verdict after only eight minutes of jury deliberation.

More >

[gegensmith]

In paranoia persecutoria the patient resists an excessive homosexual attachment to a particular individual in such a way that this most deeply loved individual turns into a persecutor against whom the often dangerous aggression of the patient is directed.

Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923, 133)

[artofjournalism]

Gay Panic - enough to justify murder?

A recent study named Queensland as Australia’s most homophobic state, and anti-gay violence is reportedly on the rise. Laws like the “gay panic” defence are a crucial part of legitimising and reinforcing a culture which means that 73% of gay and lesbian Queenslanders are subjected to verbal abuse or physical violence for their sexuality.  

While fierce community opposition has convinced almost all other state governments to abolish similar laws, the outcry has fallen on deaf ears in Queensland. It’s now one of the last states upholding the idea that a person can be panicked enough by gay and lesbian people to justify murder.

A victim of the "Gay Panic" argument was found in Father Paul Kelly's church two years ago, the two men accused were acquitted of murder. This prompted Father Paul Kelly to start a Change.org petition calling on the Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman to end these laws if he is elected.

Sign the petition and stand with Father Kelly and make sure “gay panic” is never an excuse for murder.