Sexual Prejudice and Gender: Do Heterosexuals' Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Differ?

Journal of Social Issues, Summer, 2000 by Gregory M. Herek

By contrast, gay liberation had the goal of radically altering society's view of sexuality and gender. It was briefly dominant in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Epstein, 1999). Inspired by New Left politics, the women's movement, and the struggles of racial and ethnic minorities at home and indigenous peoples abroad, gay liberation sought ultimately to free the bisexual potential in everyone and thereby to render obsolete such categories as homosexual and heterosexual (Adam, 1987; Altman, 1971). Around the same time, some segments of the lesbian feminist movement similarly asserted that all women were capable of being lesbians (e.g., Epstein, 1999; Rich, 1980). Although they differed in important ways and were not monolithic ideologies, we can detect in both the gay liberationist and lesbian feminist perspectives the arguments that categories such as homosexual and heterosexual are imposed on individuals by a patriarchal society and that changing society requires (in addition to politic al action) changing oneself to realize one's homosexual potential.

This viewpoint suggests a different theory of sexual prejudice than the gay rights perspective. Rather than reflecting attitudes toward a subordinate, well-defined quasi-ethnic group, sexual prejudice instead is understood to be very much about attitudes toward oneself, specifically toward two distinct but closely related aspects of personal identity. First, sexual prejudice is about attitudes toward one's own sexuality. As Kinsey and his colleagues (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948) recognized more than a half century ago, sexual behavior and experience exist on a heterosexual-homosexual continuum rather than in clear-cut categories. Many heterosexuals have engaged in homosexual behavior or experienced same-sex attractions, just as many gay and lesbian people have had heterosexual experiences. Consequently, mapping one's own experiences onto what is usually perceived as a dichotomous self-label (heterosexual or homosexual, gay or straight) is not always a simple task, and some individuals become confused or uncertain about their sexuality. Because of the stigmatized status of homosexuality, such individuals may experience anxiety at the prospect of being labeled gay or lesbian, which they may externalize in hostility or overt aggression toward gay people (e.g., Herek, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1992).

Within the liberationist framework, sexual prejudice is also about attitudes toward one's own gender identity. For much of the 20th century, homosexuality was regarded as synonymous with gender inversion: Male homosexuals were presumed to be more like women than men, whereas lesbians were presumed to be more like men (e.g., Minton, 1986; Terry, 1999). Vestiges of this viewpoint persist today, with the consequence that being labeled homosexual refers to one's gender as well as one's sexuality. Therefore, expressions of sexual prejudice can demonstrate to others not only that one is heterosexual but also that one measures up to cultural standards associated with one's gender role. In American society, men are particularly likely to experience strong pressures to make such demonstrations, that is, to affirm their heterosexual masculinity by rejecting gay men (Herek, 1986; Kimmel, 1997).