Shades of Homophobia: A Framework for Analyzing Negative Attitudes Toward Homosexuality

ABSTRACT

The term homophobia is widely used to describe negative attitudes toward homosexuality. As with some concepts in the social sciences, different researchers apply the term to widely different forms of discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Existing research provides some general classifications of different spheres in which homophobia operate, but these typologies are too broad to serve as frameworks for in-depth analyses of discourses and manifestations of homophobia. This article reviews different conceptualizations associated with the term homophobia in academic literature and synthesizes these diverse positions into a comprehensive framework—a taxonomy of homophobia—that can facilitate analysis of homophobia in a given context and enhance comparisons between contexts. The proposed homophobia framework postulates that negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians can manifest in seven distinct, yet interrelated shades, namely radical, prohibitionist, denialist, avoidance, morbidity, tepid, and veiled.

KEYWORDS:

• Homophobia
• homosexuality
• typology
• attitudes
• prejudice
• integrative review

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by the PhD Start-Up Scholarship of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (G3S) of the University of Basel. I am also grateful to Professor Manfred Max Bergman and Professor Emmanuel Yenshu Vubo for their guidance in this work.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.