Tonight I attended the Wellness Wednesday meeting in Corey which was on the topic of homophobia. It was something I had planned on attending for a while, as it was reguarding a topic of my interest.
A man named Jeffrey Wynnyk who works for a group in Binghamton called STAP (Southern Tier Aids Program) spoke to us about many different aspects and perceptions of homophobia and homosexuality. In an opening activity, he had us anonymously fill out a sexual attitudes inventory reguarding feelings on certain issues such as the situation of having a gay/lesbian child, and sex outside of marriage. We would check off a box ranging from “strongly agree to strongly disagree.” He then handed back other peoples’ surveys to us, and would ask us to go stand under an area labeled with our choices (strongly agree, somewhat agree, etc.). This provided confidentiality in our choices, as well as it gave us an idea of what others’ thoughts were on the certain topics.
Wynnyk presented his information with a neatly done powerpoint. He explained that gender roles developed early in a child’s life can be a start to homophobia because the person as a child is exposed to things that they think is normal, or the way it should be. When the child sees something that is not considered “normal,” such as a boy playing with dolls or a girl playing sports with boys growing up, they could get negative perceptions of that person. He also tought me that homophobia can have a negative perception on not just homosexuals, but heterosexuals as well. Examples of this would be a family that ostracizes and loses a family member in the process because that family member is gay. Wynnyk broke down the numbers on how many people really are affected by homophobia, such as 10% of people have a gay family member, and then another 20% of people have a gay extended family member. After friends and others, it all equated to 1 in every 2 people are affected by homophobia.
He tought me that there are different levels to homophobia, 3 to be exact. There is personal, which is a fear that you yourself might be a homosexual, and you repress those feelings, there’s interpersonal, which is the beliefs of others being homosexual, and institutional, which refers to government, church, and other institutions discriminating against homosexuals. He also tought me other things I did not know such as prejudice is a learned behavior, one that is tought to you early on. He exposed me to a new word that I had never heard before, heterosexism, which is the discrimination towards homosexuals, which these negative attitudes are prejudices.
I also learned facts like until 1962, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Other facts about involuntary sexual urges are how there are different components of sexual orientation. One of them is attraction, which is the involuntary component. He explained if you are gay, then you cannot help but be attracted to the same sex. Anothe component, he said, was behavior, which was the voluntary component, and identity, which is the process of identifying the behaviors.
This wellness group was a very interesting one to me, and I learned many things about tolerance and homophobia. One could say I was uneducated about homosexuals, and how to tolerate them. I havin’t had much experience dealing with homosexuals, and the man who spoke tonight was a gay man. One thing he said that really struck me was when he asked the audience “when did you decide you were straight?” This really stuck out to me because I came into the meeting with the idea that a persons’ sexual preference was decided by nurture, and not nature. I would argue that homosexuals made the choice to be that way, and that they had the decision to make. What Wynnyk said had struck me because I don’t ever recall making a choice that I wanted to be straight, it was just the way I’ve always felt. While my ideas may have not completely changed on that topic, I have learned many things tonight and I will use the things I learned to help me be more tolerant of not just homosexuals, but all types of people.
-Connor Clark
