How Homosexual Attraction Can Lead to Violence Against Gays
How Homosexual Attraction Can Lead to Violence Against Gays
Exploring the possible homosexual attraction of Omar Mateen
Posted Jun 14, 2016
According to various news agencies, we now know that Omar Mateen was a frequent visitor to Pulse nightclub. His ex-wife has even stated that he was homosexual, and various men have reported that he had contacted them in the past for homosexual sex. To make matters more confusing, his father has stated that Mateen commented on how gay men kissing is disgusting just days before the shooting.
So what is happening here?
One possibility is that Omar Mateen was contacting men for sexual encounters and attending Pulse in order to perform various forms of attack on gay men. He was simply preparing. This seems very unlikely. First, this would not explain his ex wife's comments. Second, there is no evidence (I can find) from the men he contacted for sexual hook-ups that he was derogatory toward them. If he was simply contacting them to make fun of them, you would expect this.
Another possibility is reaction formation. Freud coined the term to describe a strong moral reaction (repulsion) against something that is caused by the individual him/her self actually having the characteristic that is being rebelled against. Put more simply, if someone were to have unwanted homosexual thoughts, he or she might be prone to acting out against homosexuality in exaggerated ways as a means of suppressing or otherwise managing the unwanted thoughts both publicly and privately.
I have written in the past on research that supports this possibility. In one study, men were assigned to view gay male pornography while blood flow was measured to their genitals. Before this, they were asked their attitudes toward gay males.
Statistical analyses were run comparing the men who scored high on anti-gay attitudes going into the study to men who did not. This study found higher blood flow to the penis in the men who scored high on anti-gay attitudes going into the study. In other words, the men who professed to be the most anti-gay actually had the most (on average) arousal when watching men have sex with each other.
I should add that all men in this study reported being heterosexual before watching the porn. I should also add that this study did not assess responses to any other type of pornography. So it is possible that the men that were the most anti-gay going in this study would also be aroused the most sexually by, for instance, heterosexual and lesbian sex, or any type of sex for that matter.
Research since then has found that these type of responses among anti-gay men might be particularly strong among people who had particularly strict, controlling parents.
Of course shootings are the result of a complexity of genetic, personal, cultural and social factors. But, that being said, it seems very plausible that part of what contributed to this horrific incident was Mateen's inability to come to terms with his own sexual preferences.
He was clearly attracted to men sexually. He clearly found this attraction disgusting. And judging by comments by his father - who condemned the shooting but has made some fairly questionable remarks himself about homosexuality - he likely faced great shame had he come out.
Of course, most people who experience this combination of factors do not go on to kill. But this does not mean that this combination of factors can not make such an occurrence more likely, or that it did not play a role in this particular case.
Fifty people have lost their lives. Fear, trauma and extreme hurt have spread throughout the world, not least among the LGBT community.
If the evidence is accurate that Mateen was indeed attracted to men, then if he had been accepting of his own homosexual desires, perhaps none of this would've happened. And we all can play a part in ensuring that people in the future do not need to be disgusted by their own (consensual) sexual desires.
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