Sexualism
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Sexualism is the belief that one set of sexual behaviors is intrinsically superior to another set of sexual behaviors. The word also refers to behavior that discriminates against people with a different sexual preference based on that belief.
As with all discrimination, sexualist beliefs or attitudes may take the form of an aversion or dislike of those who are perceived to practice the 'inferior' sexual behaviors, it may include personal or societal persecution, or it may manifest, in extreme cases, as violence.
Etymology
The term sexualism is a neologism created to have a parallel construction with words like racism and sexism. Therefore, a "sexualist" would be someone who exhibits discriminatory attitudes or behaviors against people perceived to have sexual behaviors different from their own.The word 'sexualism' has been proposed as a replacement for "homophobia", which many people consider to be a misleading or misused word.
Issues
As this term is used primarily in the context of describing discrimination against homosexuals, this term has all of the standard controversies associated with political/societal debates in this vein (in this case, pro-homosexuality vs. anti-homosexuality).Some of these issues include:
- Discrimination defined as a purely negative action rather than the original definition of the word ("the ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment - treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality").
- A claim that states that attempts to make homosexual rights an equivalent issue to racism or sexism is merely an attempt to "legitimize" homosexuality as an issue.
- A preference by some involved for specific words to be used in the debate, e.g. "sexual orientation" instead of "sexual preference".
Relation of sexism with homophobia
| The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this section is [NPOV disputedisputed]. Please see the discussion on the [gender theorists interpret the fact that male-male relationships often incite a stronger reaction in those with homophobia than female - female (lesbian) as meaning that the homophobic person feels threatened by the perceived subversion of the gender paradigm in male - male sexual activity. To quote D.A. Miller, the "only necessary content of male heterosexuality is not a desire for women, but the negation of the desire for men." As Miller continues, this necessary negation is such that "straight men unabashedly need gay men, whom they forcibly recruit (as the object of their blows or, in better circles, their jokes) to enter into a polarization that exorcises the 'woman' in man, by assigning it to a class of man who may be considered to be no 'man' at all." (Thomas 2000) They regard the reason male homosexuality is treated worse compared to female homosexuality as sexist in its underlying belief that men are superior to women and therefore for a man to "replace" a woman during intercourse with another man he is then subjecting himself to inferiority. It should be noted that most of these thoughts are based highly on an idea of male chauvinism and weakness that many would term "reverse sexism", and imply a subconscious reasoning that the broad populace would not consider to be descriptive of them. A distinct presence of confirmation bias is sometimes noted.
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