is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal

It's always important in science to do the experiment or study, even if you're pretty sure you already know the answer.
Sometimes, the result will be surprisingly counter-intuitive. And other times, like in this study, it confirms what seems blatantly obvious.
What could it possibly mean when a man who identifies as heterosexual feels threatened by the mere existence of homosexual men? What could it mean???
- And then they’re like "huh… that’s weird“ and discover time travel by accident.
  
  "Turns out all we needed to travel forwards in time is to burn homophobes!"
  
  What are you referring to with time travel? Seems interesting
- And more proof is always useful. Science runs on it.
- And sometimes, just sometimes, studies are framed to find what the experimenter wants them to find.
- I always assumed that homophobia is about a subconscious fear of spreading diseases and stuff, as that's more common in gay people by a lot.
  
  Don't conflate promiscuity with homosexuality. There are plenty of gay people who are monogamous and who are no more likely to spread disease than anybody else. And there are plenty of promiscuous heterosexual people who are spreading diseases.
  Also, you shouldn't apologize for this bigotry by saying it's subconscious. This is learned behavior.

Homophobes: resist those evil urges, don't give it to the gay sex, you can do it just say no...
The rest of us: uh, who's gonna tell them
- If you're scared enough, even wiping your ass is gay.
  
  That's outright disgusting.
  If you need to regularly scratch your anus, go see a doctor.
  Also, even if you do need to scratch your anus, why wouldn't you be able to eat with your hands? SURELY you sanitize them properly RIGHT? RIGHT?!
  
  Has this man never eaten a sandwich? Pizza? French Fries? Tacos? What is this nonsense?
  
  Eating food with your hands is unsanitary?
  
  He really posted about his itchy anus on twitter?
  
  This is fake right. Please tell me this is fake
- Homophobes: "We can't legalize gay marriage! The birth rate would collapse! If men could marry men, then what reasonable man would ever choose to marry a disgusting, weak, woman over a strong, virile, muscular, sweaty, musky, oily, maaaannnnnn..."
  The rest of us: Dude. Bro. Dude.

So interesting thing here: both groups were aroused at heterosexual and lesbian stimuli.
The homophobic ones responded to the homosexual stimuli.
The guys were bi. Sort of explains why they argue "everyone chooses to be gay or straight." Because they have decided they have to.
This also explains the more-frequent-than-i-enjoy conversation about how "no, there really isn't a celebrity I'd go gay for."
- I feel like bisexuality is way more common than what we see. And if anything, I feel like the reason why so many women are more likely bi or willing to experiment vs men is literally just the bullshit stigma against being seen as gay.
  And this may just be my experience, but being bisexual isn't as easy as just choosing one or the other. The problem is that if you repress that much of your sexuality it only grows more... Intense. And sometimes more depraved, which is never a good thing. And I feel like that's why a lot of those men end up getting caught doing "gay" things but it's never just normal stuff. It's always super crazy shit they get caught doing because it's been repressed for so long that they make awful impulse decisions on feelings they've been ignoring for years. Like holding in your anger for 30 years and then going absolutely fucking mental when your coworker takes your parking spot.
  
  I think a lot of these men are bisexual but heteroromantic, thus why suppressing their sexual desires are easier.
  
  I know in my case I was open to relationships with women but dating men was so much easier it just never happened. On the outside it seems I'm hetero because that's all anyone would see.
- “no, there really isn’t a celebrity I’d go gay for.”
  Not even for the story?
  
  The story of being hit on by a celebrity would be plenty enough for me.
- I've long suspected that most people are at a 1 on the Kinsey scale. Plenty of yall are 0s, but I'd guess you're probably the second or third most common group
  
  TIL about the Kinsey scale. It would appear that yeah, I'm definitely a 0 by the description.
  But thinking about it, it makes sense. I've heard people say they "always knew they were gay" and "they were born in the wrong body." And it was things that were just natural.
  That's the only way I can describe it. I'm attracted to women. I've always known that, and no matter how hard I try, it's impossible to imagine non-women to be sexually (and romantically) attractive.
  Like there's just something there that stops it going any further. Like, hell, a woman that visually has a body that can indisputably only be a woman but then talks with a baritone voice it's instant off (there's several comedies where this sort of character is used).
  What's cool though is that if I'm that sure about myself, there is no doubt in my mind that other people know what their attractions are, and there is no reason for anyone to doubt a person's (honest) attractions.

Most of what I learned about LGBTQ came from homophobes. The ones who would not shut up about it.
For example when I didn't know that rainbows were associated with the community. I had friend school over one time. He saw a blanket with a rainbow stripe pattern. He basically had a gay panic meltdown. He was so certain we were a family of closeted gays.
So anyways later on he got a degree from a bible college or something. And he joined an evangelical church. One where they travel around to city streets around preaching from megaphones. Kind of like that Westboro Baptist thing.
In our early 20s he sexually assault me. I found out later from another guy we went to school with that he also forced himself on that guy too.
He's not the only person I've known like this but certainly the most crazy one.
If there's any true to the saying that gays rub their identity in everyone's face. Then it's the homophobe ones. It's got to be a massive projection. It's like they're trying to tell the world but it manifests as some kind of self-hate in denial or something.
- The rubbing it in your face bit always got me. It sounds like something a jealous person would say. Like why do they get to suck dick and I can't!
  
  You have just figured out 40% of GOP insanity right there.
  "How does he get to be a pretty woman when I cant? Well I'll show him!" (the misgendering was intentional and hypothetical to make a point, mods pls)

I really don't like the idea of citing this study. It's always this same one from the 90s, and if it were acurate I expect the results would have been reproduced more. It's also not clear that the results indicate what the paper says. There's other reasons than sexual arousal that could explain the results. It could be they're imagining the scenario and are axious or disgusted by it. There's this paper that indicates homophobia is usually caused by fear or hate.
I don't like the idea of putting the blame for homophobia on closeted queer people. It's seems extremely likely to me that most homophobic people are straight, since most people are straight. Also we should respect other people's own identification instead of trying to force labels on people, even if they're bigots.
- I always felt like that study from the 90s is missing part of the picture. Like, it's less 'closeted gay people' that are the problem, and it's more the people who are closeted because it was beaten into them at a young age that being gay means they deserve the worst of the worst.
  I think you're spot on with fear being the root cause, and we really have done a good job at making people afraid of their own sexuality.
  
  Yeah I prefer to think of it as that the most violent enforcers of homophobia are often queer. Gay people operate the conversion camps, straight people send their kids to them at the behest of a straight preacher. The straight people in this scenario have other things on their mind, homophobia isn't their primary concern, but it is one of their concerns.
- I was hoping someone else articulated this better than me. When I read OP's screenshot, I heard "Your dick got hard when we showed you sex. What are you, gay? You're gay, aren't you?" Which doesn't really follow. Thats just bullying, I think. The scientists were bullying the homophobes lmao.
  And, like, they're probably sometimes correct. I conject homophobia is a mask worn by homos to blend in around homophobes, and then the paper you linked hits me with
  These findings confirm the importance of considering the variability in impulsive processes to understand why some (but not all) men high in homophobia have homosexual interest.
  and wow, this really does confirm my bias! Thank you for sharing
- If you disagree with the science, perhaps you should do your own study?
  
  Nah, nope, nuh-uh, that's not how science works. A person's concerns about the methodology or conclusions of a particular study are not invalid just because they haven't run their own experiments.
  It's pretty easy for even a layperson to question this particular study, for a few reasons:
  The sample sizes are very small
  Some men can get erections/aroused if the wind blows the wrong way, or even for no reason at all - putting porn in front of someone and expecting them not to become aroused is a dubious assumption at best
  Using some external test to determine someone's sexuality, instead of using the person's self-identification, goes against the last 30 years of progress we've made in gender and sexuality studies
  The conclusion of the study may indicate some level of homophobic or anti-homosexual bias
  Don't gatekeep good critical thinking. Good critical thinking is the only thing you ever need to question any scientific study.
  
  Critique and analysis of a study or experiment is the default. It isn't a religion; science thrives on repeat analysis.
  
  Yeah gimme a bunch of money lol
  
  Do you know what peer review means?

IIRC, this hasn't been debunked per se, but it was a very small, very limited study, and doesn't really do a great job of explaining homophobia in a broader population. (I mean, you're talking about 64 people in total; depending on your inclusion criteria, that could be a meaningless sample size.) Penile plethysmography is a proxy for sexual arousal; it's useful in some instances--like predicting whether or not someone will commit more sexual offenses in the future--but isn't even that great in those instances. If I remember correctly, there's strong evidence that disgust is a trait strongly associated with conservatism, and homophobia is a an extreme disgust reaction.
FWIW, I was casually--but quite virulently--homophobic when I was younger. I'd been raised in a very conservative, evangelical religious group, and I believed all the bullshit that I'd heard about gay people. That changed once I lost religion, and actually met people that were gay. That, of course, is only anecdotal evidence, and does assume that I'm neither gay nor bisexual (and I don't believe that I am), but it fits with what I've seen from conservative thought.

Is this why Republican senators keep getting caught kissin' with other men in public restrooms?
- I mean grindr always reports an increase in traffic around the republican conventions.
  
  This sounds like it would be something that's an interesting anecdote and a "GOTCHA". Has there ever been any confirmation of this from Grindr? As amusing of a story it is, it's only really useful information if it's provable.
- The world would be so much better if they stopped being so concerned with what other consenting adults are doing in private.

This seems kind of obvious to me honestly. Like if you weren't worried that you would 'turn gay', why would you give a single shit about what other men do in their bedrooms? It just goes to show how even in our 'enlightened' age that there is still a terrible stigma associated with being gay among certain groups. Ignorance and fear is part of it but religion plays a big part as well.
I have a friend who 'admitted' to me that he was gay as if he were telling me he was a pedo or a murderer. Of course I told him that I dgaf, but it mattered to him. He's a devout Catholic and has been tortured by his sexuality since before I knew him (30 years). He has even enrolled himself into a couple of those 'Pray the Gay Away' camps. It's amazing how willing people are to follow a God who would put them through something like that.
I used to work with a religious guy who started this whole "Homosexuality is a choice" bit. I said "You think you could just choose to be gay?" and to his credit he admitted that he could. He's more honest than a lot of closeted homophobes, usually that question makes them backtrack their position, but he's too devout to realize that homosexuality isn't always a boolean and he didn't have a choice in his sexuality anymore than my friend had.
- my theory is that most homosexuals are bi, specifically because then the idea that they could turn gay is logical
  
  my theory is that most homosexuals are bi
  Guessing you meant "homophobes"

Attraction to women doesn't make people not misogynist.

Funny, but the sample size? Would like to see a larger study (probably would show the same results).
I also wonder if they considered bi individuals in the non-homophobic group.
If these are easily answered by reading the paper, I'll see it now, when I actually read it.
- Bi - the invisible sexual orientation.
  Glad that Lower Decks has a bi protagonist. Its really sad that bisexual people just seem to be completely invisible within the broader culture.
  
  I have not watched it. I love me some star trek, but haven't really gotten into the "new" ones. Mainly because I need to pirate them, and haven't yet.
  It is a good point on bi individuals being somewhat invisible. It seems like most people just assume their orientation by the person they're with, or people they most commonly "go for".

Not sure what is up with this screenshot. Looks like someone erased something from the sides? I dunno, but the quality is not great. Here's a new one:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8772014/

A sex worker friend told me that he had some homophobic (male) clients who didn't seem to be gay, but frequented male sex workers. This confused me, but he explained that it seems to be part of a convoluted humiliation kink thing, rather than attraction.
For example, I know a subby guy whose domme makes him kiss her feet. She does this because he finds feet gross, and thus ordering him thus is a humiliating and submissive act that he ultimately finds hot. This association has become strong enough that even outside of the specific context of scenes with his domme, he finds the prospect of footplay arousing, whilst simultaneously still being grossed out by feet. He finds the paradoxical vibes of this hilarious, and indeed, reports that it's one of the things he finds fulfilling about kink play.
In the case of homophobic straight men who have gay sex, it's far more psychosexually complex. However, one plausible angle of it is that some men may actually just want to be pegged, but conservative attitudes may mean that being fucked by a woman with a strap-on is perceived as more taboo and transgressive than being fucked by another man.
Another bizarre example my friend relayed to me was an instance of a man who engaged in gay sex as a form of self-harm that was felt to be deserved due to being insufficiently masculine. In this scenario, the homophobic client was topping. The guy apparently seemed to believe in a sort of "conservation of masculinity" in penetrative sex. For example, let's say that any act of penetrative sex (anal or vaginal, it matters not) contains a total of 10 arbitrary units of masculinity. In this guy's ideal of How Sex Should Be, the penetrative partner would contain all 10 units of masculinity, and his partner, with 0 units of masculinity, would be the mostly womanly woman to ever woman. However, this dude was pretty insecure in his masculinity, and he would probably rate himself as having only 6 units of masculinity. This is sufficient for him to feel comfortable being the one who penetrates his partner, but by the principle of conservation of masculinity, this would mean that "balanced" sex would involve a partner with 4 units of masculinity.
I don't intend to kink shame anyone, but frankly I find this bizarre, because it sounds like this guy is genuinely quite disgusted by having sex with another man (and likely not attracted to men either), but feels even more disgusted by the prospect of feeling insufficiently masculine and having sex with a woman. It's like the gay sex is a punishment for not attaining the impossible ideal of hegemonic masculinity. I asked my friend if it wasn't more likely that the dude is just gay and has a heckton of internalised homophobia to work through, but he was pretty sure of his assessment. I'm told that the job involves a surprising amount of "I'm not a therapist, but I'm the closest thing you have to one, so let's talk".
- Boy am I glad I'm asexual for all practical purposes. This sounds frankly exhausting.
- I think for that last paragraph it's a thing where sex and processing emotions are equally taboo to a lot of men who are as fucked up as you described. Except sex and even utilizing a sex worker's services fit within a script they have the mental space to comprehend. You sneak off, have sex, pay, shut up about it. Whereas asking a friend if they can help you process some stuff over a beer or going to therapy are public in the sense that they aren't hidden. They're awkward, they involve potential accountability and may demand change. They're hard and seeing a sex worker in such a way is cathartic and exciting in all the ways that telling a friend you're worried you aren't masculine enough isn't.
  But also yeah, sexuality does also seem to just be where misc mental issues wind up dumped. I'm certainly not one to judge about any of that shit. I just suspect some people only go to sex to deal with it instead of also working to become mentally healthy. Like you can still be freaky once you are, in fact you often get better at it.

1996 sub 100 participants
Data quality is shit, and should be discarded.
That aside, I feel bad for my extremely closested buddy. We went to a rather homophobic highschool, and a mildly homophobic college, and he always tried too hard for ladies for how dedicated he was to his certain type of looks.

So everyone who calls me the F word wants to fuck me? Gross.
- they mad cuz they cant

How did they measure "penile circumference" over time? Is there a guy standing next to them with a tape measure?
- Elastic ring that can measure how much it streched.
  
  Makes sense. Albeit I find the idea of someone holding a tape measure more funny.
- really hot male lab assitant measures it closely
  
  installing a glory hole in the lab for double-blind studies
- Probably some sort of pressure cuff that they measured changes in air pressure, or something similar?
- It’s basically the same thing as a ring fit adventure, a strain gauge, though research ones are far more sensitive
  These things are used in really sketchy therapy like conversion therapy. They were also used in pedophilia treatment in the 90s which was basically conversion therapy to track outcomes, basically exactly as what’s written here (though they wouldn’t present actual illegal material, just risqué material like pictures of kids at the beach or something). Penile plethysmography is the area and it’s still practiced in some places, though it’s pretty controversial because they’re evaluating sex offenders for risk of recidivism and viability of release which is always inherently controversial and other more obvious reasons
  
  It is also controversial because sexual arousal is far from the only reason men have erections.
  This study is an example, there's an alternate interpretation that affirms homophobia is actually the result of repressed sexuality, in general. Thus any sexual stimuli would be arousing. Thus causing an erection, regardless of the gender displayed, and irrespective of the person's sexual orientation.
  This tracks with the fact that almost all homophobes are politically conservative, tend to be highly religious, or are very young and immature. They all coincide with environments prone to sexual repression.
  The other variation is that anger also causes arousing.
  This study was too small to control for those kind of factors.
- That's what I was wondering for quite some time for developing a recreationa..... aaaaah medical device using an esp32 that can control other hardware over Bluetooth. A sttetch sensor or pressure cuff might work, but it might be nicer not to have it work like a blood pressure measurement machine.

35 people makes it a useless study.
- it was 64 people. edit: and also, even 29 or something like this is a lot, assuming that they are selected kind of randomly and not all belong to the same social group etc. If only 3 showed a reaction like described, sure. We need more data. but with a hitrate of 100%, what do you expect to happen if you 10x the number?
- I agree

Uuh that's a very difficult thing.
It's like wearing agressive perfume full of hormomes. It might cause somebody to get an erection but it's still hella uncomfortable and annoying. Not really consensual and i see why it pisses people off.
- TIL people get erections from perfume.
  
  People will spend a lot of money if a marketer lies to them enough. It should be noted that scientists don’t recognize any human-arousal pheromones. Only shady websites that wanna sell you overpriced perfume.
  
  yeah it actually did happen to me irl some years ago when we were on a field trip and a girl who had already flirted with me for the past two days suddenly wore a perfume and i think it was that that made it really difficult for me to stay clear-minded. could have also been the flirting though, i'm not sure actually.
  
  Right here. Maybe not full blown blue steel, but I get chubby if a woman's smell hits me right.
  
  Yeah, that's really weird. I've never heard of this. But I guess if you just make an association in you brain, then it can be a turn on.
- Aight thats really fair

Based study

I've always assumed this (and assumed that other people assumed this), because if you talk to homophobes they'll eventually say something like "it's a choice!" because it's a choice for them. It's not a choice for me because gay porn doesn't turn me on -- and if it did I wouldn't care anyway because that's how I was raised. But it DOES turns them on, AND they were raised in an environment where this is THE WORST THING EVER, so it upsets them and they get all irrational and punchy (lesson learned: DO NOT discuss this theory with a homophobe.)
TLDR; IMHO Homophobes who think orientation is a choice are closeted gays because logic.
It would be nice to see a better study. Interesting if one hasn't been done in all this time...

Waitwaitwait... The homophobic men displaying arousal: Yeah, sure, of course.
But NONE of the non-homophobic men got even a little ruffled? That's the real surprise here.
- Well, they did specifically look for heterosexual non-homophobic men. Apparently, every one they got was honest about their sexuality, both to the researchers as to themselves.
  
  "Two dudes fuckin', cool. Not my thing, but it looks like they're having a good time and that's awesome."
  
  well it certainly tracks with the idea that there's no reason to hate homosexuality unless you hate yourself

I think the more complete question is: Is sexual repression common among conservatives the root of their infantile lashing out against LGBTQ+?

I could also imagine that the causality is (partly) the other way around. Demonizing homosexuality makes it a taboo for them and taboos are the base for all kinds of fetishes.
- Wouldn't say so, you still kinda need gay tendencies to find a kink in your taboo that is himusexuality itself.
  
  I'm not a scientist, so I'm just guessing here. But looking at popular search terms on porn sites, you'll find a lot of taboo stuff like (step-)mom, (step-)sis, poop, BDSM, gang bangs etc. But just because people find it interesting in porn, I wouldn't argue that they necessarily want to act accordingly in real life, bang their relatives etc.
  Some time back I also read an article somewhere (sorry no source) that taboos in porn can get somehow addictive in a way that you're permanently looking for harder taboos.
  But as said, I have no clue if that applies here or if there's scientific evidence for/against this hypothesis.
- Erection doesn't always mean sexual arousal, so it might be anger or they were extremely religious guys that don't watch porn or have sex for anything but recreation and so on.

As someone that used to be homophobic in highschool, I can confirm this is the case. My dad is super homophobic yet all of his kids, including myself, are at least bisexual.
- To my knowledge there is no hard evidence for sexuality being primarily genetical?
  
  There is evidence. See the fraternal birth order effect for just one example:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation
  And scientists have created lesbian mice:
  https://bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2156-11-62
  (Side note: it's hilarious they shorthanded the enzymes to FucM)
  
  It depends on how you're looking at homosexuality; are you looking at it as sexual attraction, or as behaviour? If you're talking about behaviour, then a lot of that is certainly environmental, e.g., if you're raise a non-permissive location, you're much, much less likely to engage in homosexual behaviour. But if you're talking about sexual attraction, then it seems very unlikely that it could be anything other than primarily genetic.
  I think that the fact that there's a difference between how people act, versus how people feel, is what confuses so many people about being straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, etc., and why conservatives feel like there's a 'gay agenda' to make kids gay (or trans) when a permissive society allows more people to act freely on the way that they feel.
  
  Yeah, I think you are right and I couldn't find anything. I just find it highly suspicious that my dad is hardcore homophobic when more than half of his immediate family is gay or bisexual. Like, even his brother is gay.

Shit, you could go through the political news and find more than 35.

Typical of these evil, woke scientists to try to make good upstanding citizens gay with their evil sciencing. Good thing President Trump is putting an end to all this.
- I need some gay chemicals for a water supply. Trust me it will be really funny. The stuff I borrowed from wright laboratories didn't work

Maybe this explains that odd "prayer" group hug of Republicans in the Capitol that was posted these days ;-)

i literally know people like this

"You fear and reject what you are"

Maybe they were just thinking of fishing together
- I don't remember where this was from, but remember if effing funny and fitting here 😁
  
  From Ozark, first or second season I think

This is going to get the fundamentalists to hate science even more. Heh.

Even though this study seems kinda doubtworthy, that's what I've said for over 3 decades now. The louder they scream "evil!" The more "evil" they themselves are.

watch out, you're going to get a couple of frothing leftists saying it is homophobic to portray any homophobe as gay