This shit is rampant in lib spaces, and it drives me nuts. Every time a chud does or say something anti-queer, I see libs joke about how they must be having secret gay orgies, and when someone points how problematic that is they see nothing wrong with it. And then, whenever one of those privileged chuds turn out to be gay, libs act all smug and feel vindicated by it, using it as evidence for their fucked up repression theory while lacking any understanding of class interests, power dynamics, and how oppression works.

I am in the camp that Kinsey was kind of right in that most people fall on a spectrum somewhere between fully straight and fully gay, but most people treat it like a binary on/off out of convenience to fit into a culture. People who lean on the straight side just happen to be aligned with the hegemonic culture and abandon even the slightest tendency toward gay attraction because it doesn't serve them in the realm of social power. But there are enough documented cases of people in power who consider themselves untouchable and subsequently get found out that it gives the impression they suppress homoerotic/romantic feelings until it is "safe" to express them, often in secret and at the expense of their paramours who they treat like objects. When you are powerful you can afford to treat people like objects.

So on the queer side of things, you see these giant hypocrites using people like you for personal pleasure. On the cis/straight side of things you see the powerful violating norms that on some level you feel are forbidden to you in the lower class, and there's a sense of irony there whether or not you yourself are in the closet. And when these feelings get signalboosted, there's a perversion which occurs where the reasons for calling out hypocrisy are filtered out and all that remains is putting a transgressive act under a magnifying glass. That transgressive act being gay attraction.

Yup, like when there was that period in which people were joking about Trump and Putin being gay and in love. Using sexuality as a pejorative even if it's "ironic bro trust me it's funny" is fucking harmful and cringe as hell and reminds me that the liberal space is filled with brained people

There’s a certain paradox at play here. The argument has long been, sexuality and gender identity are innate, you’re born that way. It’s a useful framing both because it’s an absolute reflection of gender and sexuality on a personal level, but also moves LGBT status into the realm of intrinsic characteristic, similar to ethnicity or national origin.

But people chose what’s more socially conducive over their innate characteristics all the time. A cop can hate what they do for a living all they want, they’re still a cop at the end of the day. So from a social standpoint, the Larry “wide stance” Craig’s of the world are straight. And historically this has been a thing, societies in which people (mostly men) having same-sex intercourse is accepted, or at least a blind eye is turned to it, but they’re still expected to maintain a heteronormative household.

There’s a rough analogy with race here. Much as the personal aspects of race are recognized as separate from the systemic aspects, personal sexuality and social sexual identity are separate. You can’t choose the former but you can choose the latter.

Members of the oppressed group becoming zealous defenders of their own oppression in exchange for a slightly improved position in the hierarchy is a very real phenomenon, and I don't doubt it happens with sexuality/gender-related oppressions too. But, obviously, straight people produce their own chauvinist homophobes too, so being a homophobe is not a great indicator of being gay. So the question becomes, what purpose does the belief that most ardent homophobes are secretly gay serve for the oppressor?

I think the main reason is that extremist homophobes inevitably break social norms, which creates the need for an explanation for their existence. The straight moderates need an answer that is individualistic, because a societal answer would likely involve their tolerance of homophobia and opposition to concrete acts of gay liberation as a main cause. Homophobes being insecure gays is a great explanation for them because in addition to shifting the blame away from them, the praxis that it implies is what they are already doing to maintain the oppression.

i have some vague recollection of studies finding that homophobic school bullies were significantly more likely than the background rate to be gay, but that would've been 90s data or earlier and never should've been applied to adults.

If they do not see themselves as gay, they are not. It is not for you to assign an identity to someone

why not? we do this across time and space when we're reclaiming our history while understanding that other societies had different frameworks. obviously a malicious closet case isn't part of the community, but someone exclusively sexually attracted to their own gender is definitionally gay.

100%

I took that stance when libs were attacking Lindsay Graham, and again when they started joking about the RNC bringing down Grinder.

It’s not the own they think it is. It’s still a demonization of a marginalized group. Even tho malice isn’t intended against the group, it’s still using them as the heel of the joke.