Do homophobia and gay arousal go hand in hand? You’d be surprised

https://www.queerty.com/do-homophobia-and-gay-arousal-go-hand-in-hand-youd-be-surprised-20250902/

Henry GiardinaSeptember 2, 2025, 4:00 pm PDT

We’ve all heard of the gay bully trope, and we’re all pretty annoyed by it. Sex Education fan favorite Eric had to end up with his bully Adam later in the show, Charlie from Heartstopper has to deal with a closeted jerk named Ben before he meets his soulmate, and countless other queer plotlines in books and TV shows love to fall back on the idea that your homophobic bully’s biggest problem is that he’s harboring a crush on you—while stuffing you into a locker.

It’s not fun, it’s not helpful, and it’s not the representation we’d like to see. But is it even realistic?

A study from 1996 features some intriguing insights, and it’s causing plenty of conversation today about the link between repressed queerness and anti-gay violence.

“Basically,” TikToker Darath Khon explains, “they want to see if people who are homophobic get aroused by homosexual things.”

@darathk

#knowledge #science

♬ original sound – Darath | Powerlifting Coach

The study surveyed 64 men, half of whom were openly homophobic, and half of whom were not. All of the men in the study identified as straight. They were shown three different types of spicy videos: one featuring straight sex, one featuring lesbian sex, and another featuring sex between gay men. They tracked the men’s…area of arousal or “the growth and circumference of the meat” to see what videos they responded to in each other the videos.

So what did they find out?

While both groups of men indicated arousal from the videos of straight and lesbian sex, only the homophobic men showed marked arousal during the videos of gay male sex—even though they stated verbally that they were not turned on by the videos.

But meat doesn’t lie, especially when it’s being specifically measured for arousal.

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(Editor note from Scottie. In a way I can disagree with this. I know myself and other people who were abused as kids often get aroused about things even if it is not about their sexual interests. Such as their own abuse as children or the abuse of others as children that they read. All sorts of things they wouldn’t do or don’t want done to others that they read or see can trigger arousal in them because of the trained responses as a child. The child’s brain / body gets trained to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways that please the abuser. It simply means the body remembers the abuse and reacts to the same stimulation now as it did as when the person was a child. Hugs)

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Again—none of this is exactly breaking news. But it is interesting, and many commenters shared their own firsthand experiences of this depressing phenomenon.

“Anyone who says it’s a choice thinks it is because THEY’VE made a choice,” one commenter wrote. While we don’t know whether the men surveyed were all bisexual, that would make sense based on recent research that implies that men are far more bisexual than many of them would be willing or able to admit.

“[T]he call is ALWAYS coming from inside the house,” another poster wrote.

What an adorable couple.

Some viewers did bring up interesting counterpoints, noting the relative smallness of the sample size and explaining that physical arousal isn’t always directly connected to sexual arousal. Fair points, all. But it’s still interesting, especially in this current political climate, to think about how many men are either unaware of, or deliberately in denial of, their own queer desires.

One poster had an interesting theory. “[G]uys fetishize activities that are considered deviant,” they wrote. “If they consider gay activities deviant, that’s probably going to be more of a turn on than for guys who see it as normal. Also there are theories that fetishes come from strong feelings of fear or disgust. It’s the brain’s built in exposure therapy.”

There’s so much we don’t know about desire, physical attraction, and sexuality—but there are some things we do know. For instance, if your entire career is based around making anti-LGBTQ+ religious raps, there might be something much more complex—and contradictory—going on behind the scenes.

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Henry Giardina (he/they) is an Assistant Editor at Queerty. Past publications include the New York Times, The Believer, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic, Film Comment, and Gizmodo. He is @punkgroucho on Twitter.