Making Fun of Gays is Such Fun…!

Jewell, L., & Morrison, M. (2010). “But There’s a Million Jokes About Everybody . . .”: Prevalence of, and Reasons for, Directing Negative Behaviors Toward Gay Men on a Canadian University Campus Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25 (11), 2094-2112 DOI: 10.1177/0886260509354499

Do you remember when Irish jokes used to be funny? Cod ordinary comedians could build reasonable careers in ‘Clubland’ by telling dumb stories about how people from the Republic were so hilariously dumb. It was invariably portrayed as harmless humour, and those of us whose cultural heritage stretched back to the Emerald Isle, were supposed to take it all in our stride. I never got the joke. At a time when governments ruthlessly censored ‘the troubles’ in the six northern counties, when my compatriots were collectively described in the press as ‘terrorists’, and with racism still a fact of daily life for Irish people living in Australia, being repeatedly told that we were congenital idiots could hardly ever come across as mere mirth.

Ditto, I do not think that I ever ‘get it’ when straight people tell jokes about gay men…

In this article by Jewell and Morrison (2010), they combine quantitative (survey, n=286) and qualitative methods (interview, n=8 [4 male, 4 female]) ‘to assess the frequency and types of negative behaviors directed toward gay men on university campuses and to understand heterosexual men’s and women’s motivations for engaging in antigay discrimination’ (p.2094). It would seem that homophobia is well and truly alive and head kicking in what many of us stereotypically assume to be progressive learning and cultural environments. Moreover, far from being innocent fun, the authors (2010) contend here that the jokes told about gay men by their straight comrades represents a form of deliberate, ‘covert antigay behavior’ (p.2094).

For me, the pivotal question asked by the authors (2010, pp.2095 & 2101) of this study is ‘why?’ Why do seemingly intelligent and articulate straight men and women purposefully engage in the destructive practice of homophobia? Ordinarily, we bother too much trying to work out what it is about us fags that makes some straight people hate us, in certain cases quite literally, to death (2010, p.2095). Is it our dress sense or our hand flapping or our backdoor proclivities or our love of diva music? Interesting asides, maybe, but ultimately of little benefit in trying to understand what motivates that particular straight university student to concoct harmful jokes or spread harmful rumours about a gay comrade (2010, p.2094).

What we really need to do is get inside the head of the homophobic perpetrator (2010, p.2101)…

By utilising interpretative phenomenological analysis as their ‘methodological framework’ (p.2101) for the participant interviews, Jewell and Morrison (2010) claim to have indeed gotten inside the heads of those eight (8) homophobic students. What they found includes the following key points…

• That generally, participants did not endorse aggressive behaviours toward gay men (2010, p.2101)
  • Which somewhat surprised the authors (2010), since these participants had been drawn from the larger survey sample on account of their stated homophobia.
• That although they believed that ‘homosexuality is wrong’, most participants were usually hesitant to ‘express [that]…opinion to others’ (2010, p.2101)
  • However, the authors (2010) noted that participants were more likely to be forthcoming about their homophobic attitudes when in the company of like-minded family, friends, etc.
• That despite seven (7) out of eight (8) participants having told or laughed at antigay jokes, they all felt that such jokes were ‘common, acceptable forms of conduct’ (2010, p.2105)
  • That led the authors (2010) to ponder whether these students were even aware of the potentially ‘derisive nature of these insults’ (p.2105).
• That ignorant or not, participants could still find sufficient insight to refrain from making antigay jokes ‘directly to a gay man’ (2010, p.2105)
  • The authors (2010) put this ‘unwillingness’ (p.2105) down to concerns participants might have had of others perceiving them as prejudiced.
• That the male participants ‘distance[d] themselves from gay men’ (2010, p.2105), fearing that the latter might be (sexually) attracted to them
  • According to the authors (2010, p.2106), such distancing behaviours also existed because the male participants were avoiding coming to blows with gay men.

So, what can be made of all of this?

Compared to earlier research in similar settings, this study (2010, p.2106) demonstrated a considerable decline in overt physical violence by straight university students against their gay comrades. Whatever violence did occur on campus, it tended to be subversive, primarily via straight students telling antigay jokes or spreading antigay rumours (2010, p.2106). Jewell and Morrison (2010, pp.2106-2107) conjecture that the purported decline in physical acts of homophobia might be attributable to a reluctance by straight students to express such behaviours. Alternatively, they suggest that this study might pinpoint a fundamental cultural difference between Canadian students, the source of this study, and American students, amongst whom research has shown that physical acts of homophobic violence are rife (2010, pp.2106-2108).

So, why did participants engage in antigay behaviours?

1. To ‘alleviate feelings of discomfort experienced on encountering gay men’ (2010, p.2107).
2. To ‘reprimand men perceived to deviate from society’s gender role expectations’ (2010, p.2108); and, for the male participants,
3. To ‘demonstrate their own heterosexuality’ (2010, p.2108)…

The unanswered question posed for us by the authors (2010, pp.2108-2109) is whether being kicked in the head or bashed with a baseball bat is preferable to being disconfirmed through distancing or denigrated by malicious backstabbing. We should be asking gay men on campus for their responses to that…