Attack of the Self-Hating Homos

Okay, you've heard of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Giant Leeches, but have you ever been subjected to an attack by a self-hating homo? As much as I'd like to think that SHH's are a dying breed, they still exist. Most of them are in the religious ex-gay camps or on the down low, but a few identify as gay and can be found in gay bars and parties. They can strike when you least expect it.

It usually goes like this. SHH is offended by your gay identity because he or she has none of his/her own. Instead they're dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia. They are almost never out of the closet, even to family and [non-gay] friends, even though just about everyone knows that they're gay anyway.

What brings on an attack can be anything, but especially a discussion on gay rights and gay marriage. Self-hating homos will employ the same arguments that straight bigots use when discussing gay marriage and gay rights ["special privileges" to them]. Regardless of how old they are, they're stuck back in the 1970's.

Because they are on the periphery of the gay scene, they have little knowledge of it beyond their own sexual urges. They know little of homophobia or of the struggle for acceptance, and couldn't care less -- to their minds, it doesn't concern them. They tend to eschew relationships and their sex is of the anonymous (as opposed to casual) variety. They have sex not in actual beds and bedrooms but in parked cars and bushes. Even if they are not in heterosexual relationships (wife and kids), they very much resemble those kind of closet cases. Since they think of gay men in the most stereotypical of terms, and feel they are not in any way like them (except, ahem, for the attraction-to-men bit), they want to disassociate themselves as much as possible from gay guys. They deign to have friendships with openly gay men. [As if we need them.]

They speak of gays as if they are somehow apart from them (which in many ways is true; these people are homosexual but hardly Out and Proud). Like straight bigots they will point out all the outrageous [to them] participants in Gay Pride parades -- "those drag and leather queens, why would I want to march with them?" -- blindly ignoring the fact that most participants in Gay Marches are just average folk who happen to be gay. [Let me make it clear that I am not putting down the more flamboyant marchers.]

They speak of total disdain for gay culture, gay life. Because they are essentially unhappy, they blame it all on their being homosexual. They brag about how they hardly ever go to gay bars, how they have few if any gay friends. In their own minds this somehow makes them better than the rest of us. Their superiority complex only masks an inferiority complex -- but it doesn't fool anyone.

An aside: Most of us certainly have and should have heterosexual friends. But whenever I meet a homosexual person who says, in that certain "superior" tone, that most of their friends are straight, I always get an impression that they feel this makes them somehow better in their own eyes because after all, they think heterosexuals are better than gays [or at least that it's better to be straight than gay].

Sometimes you can help a self-hating homo to find acceptance. More often they set up a stony wall of attitude that it's impossible to breach. They need therapy and counseling but will rarely seek it. They prefer to wallow in their misery.

Some of these people stay shivering in their closets. Others do real damage to themselves and others. They never understand that by acting as if there's something wrong with being gay, they insult every gay person they choose to associate with.

SHH's are all over the Internet. They have strong opinions, but their opinions are always ill-conceived and uneducated because, as they admit, they are on the periphery of gay life. Still they persist in mouthing off on message boards and blogs.

Always anonymously.