Do you know any homophobic people?

1210m5g wrote: »

She was working as self employed for an individual for just a few weeks so i presume (i could be wrong) it would be a bit more difficult for her to follow it up.

Either way she doesn't want to, she just said she's going to learn from it and keep it secret in future, makes me sad that people have to do that.

If Mrs Homophobe is wealthy enough to have a PA, she probably has quite a status to maintain, so perhaps a spot of gossip about the incident could be an effective score-settling? Therapeutic too.

All of my friends know one

Only joking, but yes I know a few.

I'm not proud of this - but I am homophobic. I don't know if it's just how I was raised or what....but I have nightmares where the cast of 'Queer Eye For The Straight Guy' hold me down and make fun of my clothes.

After they throw out all my clothes, they end up painting my walls, and redecorating my living room.

Also, clowns scare the hell out of me. If the clown was gay, I'd still be scared, so I think that counts.

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I know a few. Some are young and would be well educated and others would be of an older generation.
Do you know any homophobic people?

I'm not sure their education or their age has much to do with anything, or maybe that's your point? I know plenty, right across the social spectrum, and many more I'd care not to have any dealings with, as Candie describes below.

At least if I'm aware of their homophobic tendencies, I can choose whether I want to engage with them or not, but it's the sneaky bastard closet homophobic people that really get the brunt of my anger, because not only are they ignorant, but they were able to hide their ignorance under the radar, and then I'm more angry at myself that I didn't pick up on it.

Candie wrote: »

I know one older man who's pretty vociferous about his feelings. He insists it's a choice, but he was outraged when I asked him when he chose to be straight.

I know a few closet homophobes, they say all the right things in public but roll their eyes and wrinkle their noses in private.

I was out for drinks one night with a young couple, well educated, social justice warrior types (at least I'll admit to my prejudices, they give me a pain in my face! ), giving it welly with the anti-homophobic rhetoric, and I happened to mention that in my youth I'd played a bit of same-sex tonsil tennis...

The FACES! :pac: It really was that wrinkled nose, withdraw with revulsion, "You can't possibly be as "liberal" as us type look. I can look back on it now and laugh at the way they reacted in unison with each other, identical faces, but at the time I was certainly thinking "perhaps one has shared too much"

Perhaps I was better off to stick with the older generation who have a much greater understanding of homophobia having struggled to keep up the pretence of being heterosexual all their lives that they had gotten to a point where they resigned themselves to isolation and loneliness because they assumed society would never accept that they couldn't help who they were attracted to, they couldn't even accept it themselves, in much the same way I suppose as many of the younger generation nowadays assume the elder generation don't understand homosexuality.

They may not understand it, but that sure as hell doesn't mean they don't know what it is to be afraid to be themselves. I find far too often in these types of discussions that the younger generation talk about the older generation "dying off", and what they fail to realize is that many of the older generation would never want young people to go through the same thing they went through, and in fact that many of them support LGBT rights rather than oppose them.

floggg wrote: »

In a serious, there are very few of those though. More often us just an extroverted personality which fits the usual gay stereotypes.

Unfortunately as these guys don't really fit the usual character type for young men these age, people just assume they are putting it on.

And unfortunately people tend to dislike people or things which stand out as different from their expected so they ascribe some ill motive like attention seeking where there is none. They are just being themselves, and perhaps not giving a **** if people would prefer they didn't.

I wouldn't call that homophobia on the part of the people judging them - more a case of lacking empathy or understanding of different personalities.

Ascribing an ill motive? I wonder if a focus group of 'homophobes' were interviewed and asked exactly what it is that they dislike about homosexuals , where the 'extroverted ' issue would feature? And also, i wonder why it is that the extroverted personalities always seem to be males...women are rarely as blatant if displaying the fact that they're gay-they just get on with it.

1210m5g wrote: »

Seeing how this topic popped up i thought i'd share this story, my best friend got sacked from her job yesterday for being bisexual, she had been working as a PA for the last few weeks and was getting on great until yesterday when the woman she was working for started asking her about her partner. As soon as her employer realised she was in a relationship with a woman she said she would have to let her go as "it would be like having a man woking as my PA"

That's completely illegal.
The boss is both homophobic and sexist!
The Equal Status Act would kick in and she should get onto the Equality Authority.

I've known a few people who've been let go for being pregnant too. Some employers are clueless about legalities of stuff like this.

Did this happen in Ireland ?

I have never had any trouble with homophobes, but maybe that's because I'm a girl who is with a girl? Sometimes men stare or smile or so if we kiss, mostly people just seem curious rather than homophobic.

I have only come across one homophobe that I'm aware of, and that's my next door neighbour. He never says or does anything to us but I am friends with his daughters so I know that he makes comments about myself and my partner and that he doesn't approve of homosexuality.

However, he does seem grumpy but he's like that with everyone so I never would have known if they hadn't told me. On the whole, I think most people are not homophobic, but there might be occasional ones like the neighbour who don't openly admit it to me so I don't know. I really don't care what they think, as long as they keep it to themselves.

When the neighbour found out that we were going to have a civil partnership, his response was 'for ****sake', so I very kindly called over to their house to give them some wedding cake the other day. I was going to give it to his daughter because it was also her birthday but he answered the door so I smiled sweetly and handed him the wedding cake, he looked uncomfortable and said thank you

After all of this 'gay cake controversy' I'm even more amused now.