I knew I loved feminism for a reason. Let's become lesbians! (r/WitchesVsPatriarchy on Reddit
- image cropped)
Posted on June 30, 2025.
Pride Month is coming to an end, but that doesn't mean homophobia is over, we queer people are free from discrimination, and our resistance has ceased. Inspired by my queer identity, I reflect on how enduring homophobia and living under heteronormativity and the patriarchy has likely shaped the personal lives of the LGBTQ+ community.
Homophobia and transphobia are rooted in every society despite social progress having been made in some regions. During childhood, we discover our identities, some aspects of which are sexual orientation and gender identity, and how society reacts to these discoveries. This time span aligns well with gender socialization, so not only are we learning what our assigned gender is (not) supposed to do, we're absorbing the hateful, discriminative attitudes against our secret attractions or gender variance at the same time. If we detect that these attitudes happen to be directed towards us, we end up with self-hatred or low self-esteem and feel like something is wrong with us. That is, if we don't internalize homophobia and transphobia before realizing that we also embody the marginalized qualities. Either way, we are broken down by the patriarchy and heteronormativity.
Heteronormativity originates from the patriarchy. Because the patriarchy needs to keep women in a subordinate position, it enforces heterosexual relationships in the most personal level, the family, where women are in direct contact with men and have to serve them, let it be by casual objectification, beauty standards, or domestic, reproductive, and emotional labor. Further, the dynamics in heterosexual intercourses, where women's consent and sexual gratification are left behind, rip women off their self-worth.
As a result, non-heterosexuality, which prevents such relationships, dynamics, and women's subordination by existence, is immoralized, and transgender people are punished for not conforming to the rigid gender roles associated with their sex-assigned-at-birth.
In addition, feminine qualities, which are associated with women, are signifiers of a lower rank and dismissed because of misogyny. Gay men's attraction to men is deemed feminine, so misogyny feeds the homophobia against them, and lesbians' attraction to women is deemed masculine. Transgender people challenge gender essentialism. These groups' oppositions to their patriarchal ranks constitute homophobia and transphobia.
After being defeated by the patriarchy and its necessary consequence, social rejection, we tend to develop a higher self-awareness, as such rejection is a response to our identity. This might surprisingly result in higher levels of tolerance and empathy because we're aware of how it feels to be socially excluded and invalidated, and we wouldn't wish a similar painful experience on another person, similarly to how some people suffering from depression or anxiety disorders are often more sensitive to other people's feelings.
It's no surprise that queer people's adoption of tolerance and empathy traits intersects with the patriarchal mechanism that conditions women to be more tolerant, empathetic, and kind, which allows women to be kept in submission and exploited more easily by coercion and emotional labor.
Gay men, transgender men, and non-binary people who were assigned male at birth might also internalize these caring traits despite not being women, as they realize they're essentially not fitting into the patriarchal expectations of men/masculinity because of their sexuality or gender identity. In other words, one could theorize that some feminine-presenting men happen to be non-heterosexual because the non-heterosexual identity doesn't conform to the patriarchy, and they haven't internalized the expected gender norms that would make them rather present masculinely.
These caring traits having been adopted by women and queer people because they face misogyny and homophobia, which are all the patriarchy's reactions, aggravate the initial mechanism of subordination. Overall, I assert that homophobia and transphobia are indeed misogyny.
Could the social rejection we face lead to an increased hateful attitude towards other queer people because of emotional projection? Maybe it can - the patriarchy has already punished us, and such an attitude is reactionary, which means that people with internalized homophobia are victims of the patriarchy, just like women with internalized misogyny are.
However, it makes more sense that heterosexual men would spread homophobia and have a more profound effect, as they wouldn't want to lose their privileges and have had no contrasting experience with heteronormative and patriarchal norms. Most people who openly identify as queer are unlikely to perpetuate homophobia and transphobia, as they are comfortable enough with their identity to open up about it.
I knew I loved feminism for a reason. Let's become lesbians! (r/WitchesVsPatriarchy on Reddit
- image cropped)
Coming out of the closet is a resistance against the patriarchy. It feels liberating to have people know about your sexual orientation and gender identity, which are often assumed to be straight and cisgender by default. However, it doesn't set us free from facing homophobia or transphobia. Because of this, it's important that we queer people are selective in our space of acquaintances even though we cannot control some of who belong there, like our homophobic parents or the nosy government.
Sometimes, it's exciting to know my existence is resistance. Other times, it's paralyzing - a sharp pain stabs my chest when I remember that I cannot let my closest ones know the bottled down reality and that I'm not safe from violence, murder, social rejection, or service denials. I have to keep in mind that I can be targeted on the basis of conformity to gender norms.
I overhear my parents utter homophobic exclamations to some gay news or hear their misogynistic comments toward me, but little do they know I, the child they claim to love, also belong to the alphabet mafia. I have to ignore and forget their reactions and handle my thoughts and memories of these, that is if I even can.
The urge to scream “I'M GAY! AND I ENJOY FEMININITY,” which sounds like an unfunny joke to my parents' ears, can't even cross my mind in their presence because I can't risk losing them. I have to live within their perception of me and not as myself. Who are they to blame though? Driven by his break-up with Twitter's owner, the US president was furious, so he ended funding for the national LGBTQ+ youth suicide hotline.
As a queer person, I learned to have a love-hate relationship with life even if I can't have one with a person who my sexual orientation matches mutually with and understands my needs. Under the heteronormative patriarchy, gay and transgender people cannot sustain long-term relationships because of the social stigma against us, which feeds sexual repression. This could result in an increased visibility of sexual, short-lived relationships within the community. We are forced into sex work at times.
Conservatives would enjoy it if I killed myself, or at least that's what their stances suggest - they are responses to my identity. Were they a bit compassionate, they would cope with a politically driven "Yay, another gay person off the earth!"
Those who claim to "protect the family institution" with their anti-LGBTQ+ agenda want us dead - either by conversion therapy, along with rape in some cases, or just pervading society with homophobia and misogyny. It's not the "family" they want to cultivate but the reality that they wish to erase us to continue feeding their oppressive, hateful structures. Our existence makes them uncomfortable, and they also have the power to punish us.
Rambling further on the impact of social rejection, we LGBTQ+ people tend to distance ourselves from people. As a result, the internet, where face-to-face interactions don't take place, is often the place we spend time on to satisfy our need for social interaction thanks to the relative anonymity, better safety, and ability to filter out homophobes and easily find other queer people. That is, if we can find online communities that haven't been infected by homophobia and transphobia, like those of the real world, where the region and language also play a role. The orange man's fascist juice's Twitter is not as beautiful as it used to be - the rise of online fascism is such a gift, right?
Despite all these hardships in our LGBTQ+ lives we have to endure because of our differences we've never chosen to possess but wanted to humanly express, which sadly make our existence political, we are said to be "shoving it down your throats" when all we want is justice, happiness, acceptance, and liberation. It's okay that I and other marginalized groups are finally more represented in movies, other forms of art, and more areas of life - why does that annoy you?
Thankfully, this marks the end of this rant about homophobia in my daily life. I enjoyed writing the heteronormativity analysis at the beginning, where I arrived at conclusions based on my personal observations and speculations, and hopefully it's obvious that if we're fighting against women's oppression, then we're also fighting for queer liberation. It's a surprising coincidence that the theme is similar to that of my first blog, which I published on the first day of Pride Month. Pride Month is over, but queer, female, black, and working-class resistance lasts.