Symbolic Order & Social Order
As a matter of logic, this established symbolic order, which increases the effects of physical and verbal violence, also allows the injunctions of the sexual norm to exercise their most material effects without even having to be set out as explicit orders. One has to take seriously, for example, the concordant testimonies of those who committed homophobic crimes, who affirmed that they sincerely believed they were doing something good on behalf of the “homeland” or “morality,” and did not understand what was wrong with their actions. If they continued to affirm it, it is because they correctly perceived that behind the guilty ambiguities of official declarations and the entanglement of signals which the society broadcasts, there exists a form of social suppression, and even encouragement, for their acts of hate.
How can one not see, in particular, that violence of individuals is rooted in the violence of law or, more indirectly, in normative anthropological theories and in certain psychoanalytical readings which ratify the inequality of rights? The violence of the state, which can be judicial, symbolic, or itself physical (through incarceration, torture, execution), survives in democratic societies in the form of discriminatory legal dispositions which continue to curb political struggles against homophobic violence. To cite only one example, it remains rather difficult, if not contradictory, to demand public action against everyday homophobia from a state that continues to approve an inequality of rights between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Could we imagine an “Anti-Semitism Act” whereby the state prohibits Jewish couples to marry or adopt children?
Open violence is, in some way, the “application decrees” of symbolic and judicial laws. It can often function as informal disciplinary actions or a call to order because this order is already present and observable on a daily basis, not only in consciousness but also in structures of the heterosexist world, which imposes them and imposes itself on homosexual persons (“No one is supposed to ignore symbolic order”). Even if they manage to partially free themselves from it subjectively, it would suffice to raise our eyes without hiding our faces in order to observe the denial of the facts. Thus, to contest these social rules or laws brings about the immediate accusation of denying them like we deny brutal reality and, at best, being described as a politically correct hypocrite who runs away from the evidence and pretends to not recognize natural hierarchies or, at worst, as a mentally ill individual deserting the “real” world and substituting it with the delirium of one’s illusory escapes.
In other words, symbolic order could not “naturalize,” with as much success, the sexual divisions and hierarchies instituted by history if it were not based on an “objective” social world made of real
discriminations
and real inequities. For the homophobic vision of the world (which, as all dominating visions, tends to magically reverse the logic of its own effects), the subordinate position of gays and lesbians in the “order of things,” of detectable visibilities and identities (a position that remains unknown as a product of domination), functions as an “objective” confirmation of their “just” downgrading in the order of senses, symbols, and dignities (“Homosexuals hide, so they must be ashamed of something!”). Further, the combined orchestration of homophobic reactions feeds the well-founded illusion (“well-founded” in the sense that it helps produce what it declares) of the transcendence and universality of social judgments that they contain and which, when they are not disarmed by counter-discourses and counter-practices, can function as real verdicts. Thus the most visible and scandalous forms of homophobic violence are nothing but the singular visible part of the heterosexist iceberg.
But this invisible violence of the sexual norm is also suffered, in one sense, by the same ones who are its main agents: aggression against homosexuals, “queens,” and “abnormals” is a means to emphasize the distance (physical and symbolic) from the other by forgetting and detracting from the distance from oneself (“Be a man”). Thus by assaulting his victim, the violent homophobe is unloading the weight of the continuous struggle against failures of masculinity. In this way, homophobic violence is inscribed within a socio-psychic economy of sexist and heterosexist domination, and one cannot separate it from its incomprehensible character unless one understands that those who exact it feel not only authorized to commit it, but also viscerally attacked by their victim in return, whose very existence threatens to reveal their own vulnerability— the aggressors became the dominants dominated by their own domination. Hence, those who commit homophobic crimes are not simple puppets of the socio-sexual order: rather, they are the interested interpreters of its hierarchies.
Finally, there is without a doubt something such as a “law of conservation” of accumulated violence: there always remains the risk that the homosexual victim will turn the violence he experiences against his peers, even against himself, in self-destructive behaviors which can go as far as
suicide
. However, the political counter-violence of individual and collective resistance movements is often interpreted as “aggressive” or “hysterical” by the condescending dominant group (here, heterosexuals) which feels ill at ease in its own “normality.”
It is thus an entire social and symbolic machinery which confers its strength to the varied forms of homophobic violence, from the most flagrant and odious brutalities to subtler forms, which deny their own violence, oppose all attempts at contestation through the rhetoric of common sense and nature, and are backed by social order and its main, so-called evidence. This leads to a fear among some gays and lesbians that attempts to contain homophobic violence are focused on the effects without attacking the causes. But if it is true, as mentioned by Didier Eribon, that it is always difficult to “criminalize common sense,” one must not forget that, in spite of its unremitting logic, each time it was decided to attack its real roots, “common sense” never proved itself to be completely unchanged, nor absolutely invincible.
—Sébastien Chauvin
Amnesty International.
Identité sexuelle et persécutions
. EFAI, 2001.
Berrill, Kevin, and Gregory Herek, eds.
Hate Crimes: Confronting Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men
. London: Sage, 1992.
Bourdieu, Pierre.
Méditations pascaliennes
. Paris: Le Seuil, 1997. [Published in the US as
Pascalian Meditations
. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000.]
Cecco, John de, ed.
Bashers, Baiters and Bigots: Homophobia in American Society
. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 1985.
Comstock, Gary David.
Violence against Lesbians and Gay Men
. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1991.
Delor, François.
Homosexualité, ordre symbolique, injure et discrimination: Impasses et destins des expériences érotiques minoritaires dans l’espace social et politique
. Brussels: Labor, 2003.
Eribon, Didier. “Ce que l’injure me dit. Quelques remarques sur le racisme et la discrimination.” In
Papiers d’identité, interventions sur la question gay
. Paris: Fayard, 2000.
Herek, Gregory. “Psychological Heterosexism and Anti-Gay Violence: The Social Psychology of Bigotry and Bashing.” In
Hate Crimes: Confronting Violence against Lesbians and Gay Men
. London: Sage, 1992.
Kantor, Martin.
Homophobia: Description, Development and Dynamics of Gay Bashing
. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.
Mason, Gail, and Stephen Tomsen, eds.
Homophobic Violence
. Sydney: Hawkins Press, 1997.
SOS homophobie.
Rapport 2002 sur l’homophobie
[2002 report on homophobia].
—Biphobia; Criminalization; Deportation; Gayphobia; Gulag; Heterosexism; Insult; Lesbophobia; Police; Rhetoric; Shame; Shepard, Matthew; Suicide; Symbolic Order; Transphobia; Vocabulary.
VOCABULARY
Examining the words of homophobia requires a linguistic understanding of the gay phenomenon. Do the words used to express the homosexual reality stem from a logic that is representative of the world, or of rejection? The term “homosexual” echoes a simplistic behavioral dimension of the individual; some have preferred “homosensual,” which they believed was more positive and less limited to the sexual dimension. Of the latter, enough cannot be said, since despite the sexual revolution of the 1970s, homosexuality remains largely taboo at the level of language—that is, outside of intimate or schoolyard conversations. The rhetoric and debate on the integration of the sexual dimension in democratic society are still particularly lacking. Thus, homosexuality is reduced to the congruent portion of the language of representation, that is to say, to silence. One will note that the terms “heterosexual” and “heterosexuality” only appear after, and as foils to, the terms “homosexual” and “homosexuality.”The consideration
a priori
of the evidence might not impose denomination. Everyone is straight, aren’t they? Why then the need to talk about it?
When examined closely, language has for centuries been expressing a standard that could be qualified as
heterosexist
. The world continues to be seen through the prism of the “normal” man, who is heterosexual, and who perpetuates his social dominance by language. For many, the words of homosexuality are then the words of homophobia. This is the risk that affects, in the social dynamic, all designations of human groups, which proceed by classification on the basis of normative criteria, the source of all prejudice and
discrimination
. As Didier Eribon explained, the homosexual is born from
insult
; it is by insult that he integrates this part of his socio-psychological identity. These insults, like many expressions of aggressiveness, doubtlessly results from anguish; specifically, feelings of a man who is afraid of failing in his social role as a man because he may be experiencing homosexual libido. Heteromale society denounces the incurred risk, the homosexual, as well as his role and behavior that are so contemptible in its heteronormal environment. The male must be powerful and dominating, and in order to achieve this he must stigmatize the passive and effeminate homosexual, who is weak and dominated. It is thus, first and foremost, this image of the homosexual that language will reflect.
We must note that lesbianism, while it does not escape rejection or insult, does not have the same place in the lexical field of homophobia. As women generally have little control over their own lexical creation, it is male power that invented the homophobic vocabulary. As a result, lesbians are poorly represented:
gouine, goudou, gousse, lesbiche,
and
camionneuse,
in French and “butch” or “dyke” in English. The insult toward lesbians aims to stigmatize those who, by their abnormal practices, refuse male sexual domination.
Homophobia is not only manifested in words but also by language attitudes that go from silence to the hijacking of words in order to subvert their meanings. It is based on these attitudes that we will classify terms that denigrate, which express hatred of the “other” while simultaneously denouncing heterosexist ignorance and stupidity.
Negation
The first manifestation of homophobia in language is marked by the absence of words, by silence, all underlined by the taboo of homosexuality. The world is, by default, heterosexual. The absence of positive or even neutral discourse, of identification models, in relation to a heterosexual majority that states its exploits, leads young gays and lesbians to isolation, even depression; add to this the plethora of insults thrown at random (“fag,” “lezzie,” “queer”) in schoolyards. The
suicide
rate among gay youth is much higher than among heterosexual youth. This silence kills. The role that discourse can play in order to diffuse this trend has not been rigorously investigated. Despite public debates on equal rights, despite talk shows, or films and television series with openly gay or lesbian characters, homosexuality remains stigmatized, even if the evolution is resolutely positive, at least in the West.
Words to Express It
There are several ways to express homophobia, each one common to the general process of insult: the numerous adjectives based on stereotypically constructed traits: “passive,” “effeminate,” “soft,” (poof, queen, queer), “mannish” (truck driver); the metaphoric-metonymic process which reduces everything to a unidimensional character (e.g., feminization, behavior); the use of turns of phrase which take the form of
kind of + name
(which creates a belittling subcategory) or “dirty”/“little”/ “big”
+ name
, which are always insulting; the string that lists a series of denominations (“queer son of an X”); or rhetorical qualifications (“I have a very good gay friend, but …”) that attempt to be gay-friendly when in fact they are a defensive mechanism to protect against the presumption of homophobia.
Neutral terms for homosexuality such as “gay” and “lesbian” (in English),
schwuler, homosexueller
(in German, where “homo” is deprecating), are not always sheltered from being used as insults, depending on expressions that preceded them or their corresponding terms in foreign languages. In what follows, we will try to classify vocabulary as a function of the attitude or trait stressed in the denomination. What appears each time is the attempt to decategorize, to declassify the homosexual from his identity and dignity, in order to re-categorize him based on traits considered negative and subsequently reject him because of his otherness.
One of the first attitudes of rejection, even unconsciously, consists in misrepresenting the object of the insult by neutralizing him, depersonalizing him, describing him as “that”: “He or she is like that, but it doesn’t bother me; better that than a broken leg.” The insult is certainly not voluntary, but the term reveals the unease in view of what some call the “third sex.”
The most flagrant misrepresentation in terms of homophobia is the feminization of the gay male to the point that, for many, it is the image of the effeminate passive that comes to mind when one thinks of a gay man. The homosexual male, all categories included, is reduced to “queen,” “queer,” and “aunt” (metaphors used to imply a form of kinship; in the time of Balzac, for example, the French equivalent of “brats,” “cousins,” and “aunts” was used depending on age) and its variants “aunty,” “fairy,” “sissy,” and “faggot” (the latter term, a seal of infamy by which criminals or people of little virtue were marked as a faggot, in reference to the pyre). The French
pédale
stems from pederast, with a possible play on the position of the cyclist on his seat. This always-deprecating feminization refers to the homosexual in passive terms. No gay couple is safe from the question: “Which one plays the woman?” These feminizing characterizations are not unique to English; they are common in French as well as German (
tunte
or
schwuchtel,
roughly “aunt” and “aunty”) and Spanish (
maricón
or
marica
for “fag” or “fairy”;
marica
means primarily “magpie,” which could refer to nightgown; we also find this trait in the slender, effeminate gay
mariposa,
which initially means “butterfly”).