Internalized homophobia (internalized stigma)
Taking in a society’s negative view of same-sex attraction and turning it on oneself: shame about one’s own desires, wishing to be straight, keeping away from other gay, lesbian or bisexual people, or judging those who seem ‘too obvious’. Many researchers now say internalized homonegativity or internalized stigma instead. It can last long after a person is out and settled.
What drives it
Children often learn what is shameful before they know it applies to them, so the judgment is in place before the attraction has a name. It then works from inside: a flinch at one’s own reflection beside a partner, contempt for a flamboyant stranger, a joke at one’s own expense that lands too hard. For identification it explains why distress can carry on in a supportive setting, since the critic travels with the person.
How it shows
Work
Keeping away from the gay colleague so nobody links you. Laughing first at the joke about the intern’s voice. Turning down the LGBT network’s invitation with a line about keeping private life private, and feeling relief when nobody pushes.
Relationships
Wincing when a partner is affectionate in public, or picking a fight after a night out with gay friends. Treating the relationship as second rate, or on hold ‘until things settle’. Contempt for partners who seem too obviously gay.
Self
Notice the voice that comments on your own voice, walk or clothes, and whose voice it sounds like. Notice any private wish, even now, that it were otherwise.
What tells it apart
Shame: Shame is the wider feeling of a defective self. Internalized homophobia is one source of it, aimed at sexuality, and it is more likely the issue when the shame clusters around desire, affection or being seen with other gay people.
Defectiveness/shame schema: The defectiveness schema is a broad belief of being flawed at the core, often from early criticism or neglect. Internalized homophobia may be the narrower case, more likely when the sense of being bad switches on with sexuality and is absent elsewhere.
Conflict between faith and sexual orientation or gender identity: Faith conflict is a clash between two things the person holds dear. Internalized homophobia may be part of it, and it is more likely the lens when the negative view has no religious content and would stay if the person left their faith.
A test
Ask the person to imagine a close friend telling them the same thing about the friend’s own sexuality, and to say what they would feel toward that friend. A gap between warmth toward the friend and coldness toward themselves may point to internalized stigma.
Questions to carry
- When did I last flinch at something gay, and whose voice was in my head?
- What do I still wish were different about myself?
Go deeper
- Read: The Velvet Rage, Alan Downs, 2005, second edition 2012. Written for gay men by a clinical psychologist, from his practice and his own life. He traces adult shame back to a boyhood of feeling different and sets out three stages of moving out of it. It is widely read and many readers say it named something for them. The stages come from his clinical work and haven't been tested in studies that we found. A related idea, that some gay men make up for stigma by achieving, was tested later by Pachankis and Hatzenbuehler (2013). It says little about women, bisexual or trans people.
- Study: Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence, Ilan H. Meyer, Psychological Bulletin, 2003. The paper that set out minority stress. Using meta-analyses of earlier studies, Meyer found higher rates of mental disorders among lesbian, gay and bisexual people than among heterosexual people. He explained the gap by stress from stigma: prejudice events, expecting rejection, hiding, and internalized homophobia, with coping that softens some of it. It is a review and a model, and later studies tested its parts. It covers lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Hendricks and Testa adapted it for trans people in 2012. The full text is free to read.
How strong the research is
moderate. In a meta-analysis of 31 studies with 5,831 people (Newcomb and Mustanski, Clinical Psychology Review, 2010), more internalized homophobia went with more depression and anxiety, a small to moderate effect that was stronger for depression than for anxiety and stronger in older samples. A larger meta-analysis of 68 studies (Lefevor and colleagues, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2023) found a similar link with poorer health, a correlation of about 0.28, and found it was stronger with scales whose items already include distress, so part of the link may come from how it is measured. In 396 LGB adults (Frost and Meyer, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2009) it went with more relationship problems, partly through depressive symptoms. A meta-analysis of 16 studies of men who have sex with men (Newcomb and Mustanski, 2011) found only a small link with sexual risk taking, and the link was weaker in more recent data.
Where it comes from
George Weinberg, who began using the word ‘homophobia’ in the 1960s, Society and the Healthy Homosexual, 1972. Alan Malyon, ‘Psychotherapeutic implications of internalized homophobia in gay men’, Journal of Homosexuality, 1982. Ilan Meyer’s minority stress model, 1995 and 2003