#internalised queerphobia

[sluglover666]

There's this utterly bizzare phenomenon of white queer people saying something queerphobic but slapping 'white' at the beggining of the sentence in an attempt to get away with it. 'White xe/xer tboy Aiden saying..." - you're just being transphobic. Stop pretending you're making some deep racial commentary, you just want to say out of pocket shit about other queer people you don't like and sound vaguely woke while doing it. Except it makes you sound even worse because you're going 'I'm not like THOSE white people, I'm the good one!' while also cheapening genuine criticism of white queer people coming from queer people of colour.

[notabled-noodle]

gotta be honest, sometimes I do still hate myself for being queer. I do still cry over the fact that I can’t force myself to live the life of a woman. I still feel guilty any time I feel attracted to a woman.

I first discovered my queerness when I was eight years old but I am still a work in progress. I am still working my ass off every day to remind myself that there’s nothing wrong with me. and maybe one day I’ll be completely at peace with who I am, and I hope that day comes soon, but at the moment all I can aim for is indifference

[kidrat]

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[apicturewithasmile]

woman in my bi berlin whatsapp group: I think about coming out to my family today. my boyfriend knows it already but should I ask him if he’s okay with me coming out to others. he’s a very private person and still waiting for my “lgbt-phase” to end. me internally: break up with that basterd me externally: it’s your decision when and to whom you wanna come out. he can be as private as he wants, your bisexuality doesn’t say anything about him. the only reason to give him a heads up is so he knows he may have to comfort you tonight if you get negative reactions she: but... can straight people in a relationship be subjected to biphobia? me: of course they can be biphobic me: .... me: oh you mean if he can be a victim of biphobia? she: yes! like “how can you be together with a bisexual?” me: good god! he’s the one who’s supposed to protect you in this situation - not the other way round. either he supports you and your bisexuality or he doesn’t... me internally again: ...break the fuck up with him!

[notabled-noodle]

Re: your post about “I just think that cishet people underestimate how much queer people can be taught to hate themselves.”

It’s interesting you describe that as internalised homophobia because the idea of ‘wanting to make yourself straight over getting rid of queerphobia’ isn’t always that.

I don’t want to speak for your experience and it was internalised homophobia in your situation if you conceptualise it as that. But I feel like knowing you can ‘convince’ yourself you’re straight though the power of immense guilt/shame feels much easier than solving systemic discrimination - it’s not a good thing, but like on a level of ‘which one do I think I can accomplish’ it feels much easier (and probably is). I don’t think acknowledging that in itself is internalised homophobia (like knowing I have the capacity to majorly mess my life up in extremely negative ways doesn’t make me want to do that).

Hopefully that’s okay to send as an ask

I totally get where you're coming from, but... it's not about what's accomplishable, it's about desire. the example I used in the post was about getting handed a button that either erased your own queerness or erased queerphobia. for a long time, I would have taken the button that made me cishet.

I had no desire to rid the world of queerphobia, because I thought that the queerphobes were right. I thought that to be queer was to be disgusting, and that I needed to rid myself of this horrible affliction I'd been cursed with. I watched video upon video of conversion therapy messaging, even though I knew it wouldn't work. despite now being in a situation where 0% of my friends are cishet, I still have thoughts like that sometimes. I still lie awake at night praying that I'll wake up and become "normal". that's definitely internalised homophobia at work.

so. "it would be easier if I was just straight/cis" is not necessarily internalised homophobia/transphobia. however. what is definitely internalised queerphobia is "my queerness is horrible/sinful/disgusting and I need to get rid of it"

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

Hey. I identify as bi and I know I like girls romantically, but thinking about girls in a sexual way makes me uncomfortable. I looked some stuff up and found out that that could be caused by internalized homophobia or it could just mean that i'm not into girls that way. Several of my family members are homophobic and I was exposed to a lot of homophobia when I was younger, so it's not unbelievable to me that I would have issues with internalized homophobia, but I thought that since I've (1/2)

learned more about the LGBT community that that stuff went away. How do I know if I'm dealing with internalized homophobia or if I'm just not into girls that way? And if I am dealing with internalized homophobia, then how do I get rid of it? (2/2)            

To be honest, it totally sounds like you’ve got some internalised queerphobia going on which is no surprise consirdering the upbringing you described and our society generally being pretty heteronormative and queerphobic.

I’ve made this post about getting rid of internalised biphobia and most of those tips also go for other forms of internalised queerphobia.

Something that is especially troublesome for wlw/sapphic women is that there is as good as no accurate representation of wlw relationships/love/sex/affection. We get hypersexualised by straight cis men so much that “lesbian” is a porn category solely for the straight male gaze and it has no correlation to how sex between two women actually is. So tbh it’s no wonder you may a) be getting grossed out by “lesbian porn” and that sorta “representation” and b) don’t know how to think of girls sexually in a comfortable way because you’ve never learned that it’s okay to desire women.

Of course, there’s also still the chance that you’re just romantically attracted to women. I’m not saying you should go out and have sex with a woman now that it makes you uncomfortable but I think you should try and cut yourself some slack. Unlearning internalised queerphobia and learning to accept yourself with all your needs, desires, wishes, dreams is a very very tough task but you’ll get there and it’ll take time.

And if you need any more help or advice, let us know!

Maddie

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

How can it be that sombody has queerphobia and queer at the same time?

Our society is so cisheteronormative and queerphobic that even queer people can internalise those hateful, negative or plain wrong opinions and misconseptions about queer people and the queer community. If you’re socialised to believe that being straight is the default and that queer people are “unnatural” then it can be hard to shake those ideas and it can lead to self-hate and depression and it’s honestly something that makes me extremely sad and only further proves that we need diverse sex ed in schools so that kids of queerphobic parents have other ressources to learn that it’s okay not to be cishet.

Maddie