I’ve heard the argument before that it’s tied up in misogyny, homophobic men are, consciously or otherwise, thinking basically “I’m afraid gay men will treat me the way I treat women”

Hence all the anti-gay jokes like “backs against the wall lads” (note how the straight men are often imagining themselves as the bottom) - implication being, “I don’t respect consent therefore what if the gay man who’s more of a threat to me physically doesn’t either”

No idea how accurate this is but it certainly rings true for some behaviours

No one is afraid of the gays. (Well, no one who isn’t mentally ill.) They are afraid of some locus of power, which, despite what some pundits claim about the force of the ‘woke mob,’ gay people do not have significant power. Some person or group of people have power in their life, and those boys are willing to sacrifice other peoples’ happiness, safety, and sometimes even lives, so they can virtue signal to the powers that be. "See? I’m attacking the scapegoat too, so I must be a good guy. I’m certainly not hiding a thousand secret sins that might make me an outcast. How could I be? That’d be hypocritical because then I’d be evil like him. So I’m attacking him. See? This proves I’m good.’

I actually think it’s hyper-competitive bullshit.

For simple, stupid men especially, they see everything as a status contest, and for that worldview to work there must be clear ways to measure who is doing better than someone else, so they know where to rank with others.

But that system breaks down if you don’t value the same things they do the same WAY they do. This is also why these same people have the same visceral aversion to things like small cars, simple foods, etc, etc. “I can’t make you feel like I’m better than you with my truck if you don’t want a truck. There’s something wrong with you.”

This also explains why they look up to and lick the boots of people higher on the social ladder by their strict measure of what that means. It also explains why they view partners as prizes and not people.

And anyone who steps outside their ranking system is an anomaly that might, God forbid, make them have to reexamine some aspect of their value system, and that won’t fly.

I’ll do my best. I can vaguely remember some of the words that came out of my mouth when I was around 13-18 years old. Most of which were slurs rather than deep thoughts.

The slurs were more to do with what was typical/acceptable talk at the time (late 90s-early 2000s) in combination with teenage boys love nothing more than being assholes to each other (typically to my straight friends) because they think it’s funny.

Some of my “deeper thoughts”, for as well as a teenager can articulate, were to do with not understanding and frankly not actually trying to understand any other perspective. I believe I was simply trying to boost myself by stepping on others. I don’t think there was ever a point in which I hated gay people, but I do remember saying how I thought it was disgusting (gay sexual acts)and I had opinions on gay couples raising children even though I had no evidence to support those opinions.

I don’t think any of it ever scared me, none of what I said was out of fear. I was never worried about liking it, as some other comments suggested. Instead, It was an easy way to safely feel superior to cope with my lengthy list of insecurities.

As my brain began to mature, my thoughts quickly changed.

So… Immaturity, insecurity, ignorance.

Nowadays… regret. Sorry everyone.

The “I find it fucking disgusting, bro!” fraction probably isn’t here. Or if they are, they are probably smart enough not to walk into this wood chipper.

There is a strong correlation between shame people feel for having tried it before or for not being able to admit to themselves that they feel this way and then how loud they get. Pair that with religiosity or just a very conservative environment and upbringing and you get the aforementioned bros. It’s more about how they feel, how insecure they are, than about anything physically off-putting. And as somebody who once reacted poorly to being hit on by a lovely Aussie, I think it’s also the somewhat unexpected element of it. We are pattern recognisers. Heterosexual is the majority. We can easily get freaked out by something that’s different. And a lot of the LGBTQ+ folks are still not living their romance in public (if there is some and they also want to) because they avoid wood chippers society has an unfortunately abundant supply of for them.

Well, you’re gonna have trouble finding many men here that are genuinely “afraid” if homosexuality. Those that exist are unlikely to respond because it’s painting a giant target on themselves.

So, you’ll likely have to settle for second and third hand answers.

With that caveat in mind, I grew up in the south where the kind of homophobia that isn’t necessarily bigotry (though it usually is) sometimes gets discussed if you approach people right.

The general answers I ever got amounted to social approbation. They’re not so much scared of gay people, or gay acts, and almost universally not of “turning gay”. It’s that they have this idea that behind anything other than anti gay gets them tarred and feathered with the same brush.

Yeah, the other reasons exist, but it really does come down to being scared of sharing the same fate as gay people if they don’t object enough. And it is an actual fear, rather than hatred, it just shares the same external trappings. And, for most of the people that have that fear, they would rather share the label of bigot than the label of gay.

But make no mistake, it isn’t common. The kind of yelling-at-the-screen shit is just as performative, but it’s the flip side of the fear. Those assholes believe that they seem more manly by doing so. It’s territorial pissing and chest thumping.

It’s one of the reasons I dislike phobia being the suffix for forms of bigotry. While phobos, and thus phobia has relation to rejection of things, it’s a misnomer to say that most bigots are really acting out of fear. Which is dangerous, possibly even more dangerous than regular hate. But also not as dangerous as blind hatred paired with dehumanization of a target. The mental processes involved in bigotry are far more insidious than simple ignorance and fear of the unfamiliar.

Which is tangential, but I think worth examining.

I suspect it is somewhat similar of women looking at each other and judging each other about "giving out free milk. Biggest slut shamers are women, tho men are right after them lol.

So from a purely guessing point of view:

Place in society, and perceived safety of norm enforcement and the fact, that historically being gay was (almost/mostly) a death sentence.

Raising yourself up by hating someone else “at least I am not XYZ” or “it would suck to be XYZ I’m so much better” is an easy copium.

And distraction also: if you hate someone else, you won’t have time to hate yourself.

i doubt you’ll get a meaningful response from those you’re asking. this platform, lemmy, is in particular not going to expose your question to people like you described. ask it on the big platforms, you’ll get a much wider range and within that, an insanely wide range of bs. but as is obvious, it’s cultural and educational

Older kids taught us to point out people that were different. Often with slurs. Not everyone grew out of it.

They are afraid of liking it.

I think you should probably ask a person like that(someone who you can ask)?

Other than that, maybe religion and doubt against what they consider as ‘not-normal’?

This is the wrong question. You don’t know about sociology’s reason and it makes sense you would ask this. I’m not going to explain further than wrong question and figure out sociology’s answer because anything LGBTQ is a rabbit hole.