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Question: What theories are suggested by the literature as to why women are more tolerant than men towards homsexuals and why both men and women appear to be more tolerant of female homosexuality than they are of male homosexuality?
Most studies indicate that women are more tolerant of homosexuality than men are ( Price, 1982; Nyberg & Alston, 1977; Thompson & Fishburn, 1977; Minnegerode, 1976; Larsen et al, 1980; Glassner & Owen, 1976; Newman, 1985; Larsen et al, 1980; Herek, 1988; Wells, 1989; Steffenmeier & Steffenmeir, 1974; Weis & Dain, 1979; Weinberg, 1972). Still, it should be borne in mind that some studies have failed to detect a difference between men and women (Smith, 1971; Simmons, 1965; MacDonald & Games, 1974; Levitt & Klassen, 1974; Henley & Pincus, 1978) and at least one study has indicated that women are less tolerant of homsexuality than men (Alston, 1974). Nevertheless, the data is as clear as most social science data ever is, that women are more tolerant of homosexuality, in general, than are men.
And it has become clear in recent analyses (e.g., Kite, 1984; Schachtman, 1989) that men's great intolerance of homosexuality is a specific dislike of male homosexuality not lesbianism, and that, in fact, men are as tolerant towards lesbians as are women. The apparent general intolerance towards all homosexuality (female as well as male intolerance) appears to be a consequent of the fact that most men (73%) use the term 'homosexual' to refer exclusively to male homosexuals (whereas only 37% of women refer only to men with this term, (cf. Black & Stevenson, 1984). Furthermore, those few men who do use the word 'homosexual' to refer to both female and male homosexuals are very signficantly more tolerant than those who use it to refer to only males (Black & Stevenson, 1984). This means that when men are asked how they feel about 'homosexuals' they often tell us how they feel about male homosexuals and many men feel more negatively about male homosexuals than about lesbians (Turnbull & Brown, 1977; Gurwitz & Marcus, 1978; Gross, et al, 1980; and Daugelli & Rose, 1990; Milham et al, 1976).
There are apparently no studies that fail to confirm the general male view that male homosexuality is more objectionable than lesbianism. However it is not clear (the data goes both ways) whether women are more or less tolerant of lesbians than they are of homosexual men. Turnbull & Brown (1977) and Belkin (1982) present data saying women are equally tolerant of lesbians and male homosexuals, but Gurwitz & Marcus (1978), and Gross, et al, (1980) present data saying women were more tolerant of male homosexuals, and DAugelli & Rose (1990) present data saying women are more tolerant of lesbians. Milham et al ( 1976) suggest women are less tolerant of lesbians but less oppressive, nevertheless, of male homosexuals than men are. So, although it is clear that men are more tolerant of lesbians than they are of male homosexuals, this kind of differential prejudice is not as apparent in women's attitudes.
Why are men more tolerant towards lesbians than towards male homosexuals?
This is especially puzzling in view of the fact that men are more likely to have had homosexual experience than women (recall that Kinsey's studies showed that 37% of men and only 12% of women had had at least one homosexual experience) and men are more likely than women to engage in homosexual fantasy (Aguero, Bloch, & Byrne, 1984).
Since men seem to be more frequently aware of homosexual urges and fantasies than women, and more likely to act on homosexual impulses, we might suspect that homophobic men, who experience repressed and self-threatening homosexual urges, are less tolerant toward male homosexuals because they are excited by them and frightened by their secret excitement. This would account for why about 10% of men are less tolerant of male homosexuality than female homsexuality (Shields, 1984).
On the other hand, the literature suggests that much of the great distaste for male homosexuality among men, is more widespread than the relatively small group of truly homophobic men. Men who are antihomosexual, but not pathologically homophobic, appear to have a particular distate for male homosexuality that they do not have for female homosexuality.
The reason for the widespread male antipathy for male homosexuality is probably found in a widespread world view that is more embraced by men than by women. It is the view that men and women should have different roles in the world, that the male role should be masculine and the female role feminine (cf.Henley & Pincus, 1978; MacDonald, 1974; MacDonald & Games, 1974; MacDonald, et al, 1973; Weinberger & Milham, 1979). This is not a theory of sexuality, so much, as of gender relations. These men feel men should be the bread winners and women should mind the kitchen. Men who endorse this view of rigid sex roles (the literature also refers to them disparagingly as 'sexist') tend to downplay the importance of erotic love even between men and women, and even the importance of intimate disclosure (Leonard, 1981), and they have less close nonsexual self-sex friendships (McRoy, 1990). They are often men who had mothers who stayed at home (Glassner & Own, 1976 ), and feel the structure of the family is more imporant than erotic love (Herek, 1988) Antihomosexuality is central to the world-view that says that the world should consist of feminine women and masculine men, there is no role for men who have sex with other men (Gorer, 1948; Churchill, 1967; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974).
But if there is no room in the world for men who violate the masculine sex role by being sexual with other men, how can lesbianism be tolerated by these same men? The answer apparently is that the male role is simply more rigidly defined than the female role. Society feels that men must follow a rigid set of guidelines to be called masculine. The guidelines for feminity are more vague (Hayes & Leonard, 1983). Men, for example, must wear pants to be masculine, but women can wear either dresses or pants and be feminine. The masculine role is violated when men stay home, cook the meals and watch the children in a much more serious way than women violate the feminine role by going to work in a traditionally male job.
Lesbianism, atlhough it may not be ideal, is simply not as much a violation of sex roles as is male homosexuality. Women are allowed to touch, gaze intimately between women (Ellsworth & Ross, 1975) allowed to disclose intimately, without it constituting a sex role violation, and to have closer more intimate nonsexual friends (McRoy, 1990). Males' childhood conditioning seems to cause them to be more sexually embarrassed than females (MacKinnon, 1988). And the increased amount of physical intimacy involved in lesbian love making simply seems, to the male mind, at least, less a violation of traditional feminity than the violation of the masculintity that occurs when men are sexually intimate with each other.
What evidence is there that the male role tolerates less deviation than the female role? First, little boys, appear to be more censured by society when they violate masculinity guidelines than when little girls behave in a more masculine way (Fling & Manosewitz, 1972; Hartley, 1959; Lansky, 1967), and the same appears to be true for college students (Seyfried and Hendrick, 1973). And, because homosexuality violates traditional sex roles, it appears that men may be more afraid of the homosexual role whether or not they have homosexual impulse (Morin & Garfinkle, 1984). And men who are more negative about homosexuality also appear to be men that feel more need to avoid any behavior that hints of femininity in themselves (Dunbar, Brown & Amoroso, 1973; Thompson, 1985, Chitwood, 1980; McRoy, 1990). As a result of the relatively rigid requirements of masculinity compared to feminity, male homosexuality seems to violate masculine guidelines more clearly and more objectionably than lesbianism violates the feminine role (Paul, 1984).
Why do men have more rigid role requirements than women? Some authors think the rigidity of the male role is a result of the fact that both men and women are raised by women. The woman herself becomes the role-model for the little girl, but the boy, not knowing the father in the kind of personal detail that he knows the mother, must have a set of guidelines, usually acquired by the mother and female teachers, as to how to be masculine. A set of rules or guidelines as to how to be masculine, is surely more likely to be a rigid definition than the human model of a mother that the little girl can copy (Lynn, 1959).
Tolerance towards female homosexuality may also result from the fact that women are less conspicuous in their homosexual behavior. They are generally in couples that are not clearly sexual whereas men are much more likely to engage in conspicuously promiscuous behavior, frequenting gay bars and bath houses. (Saghir & Robins, 1973; Bell & Weinberg, 1978)
Homosexual activity violates the male sex role in our culture: Real men, so the value goes, don't have sex with other men. Lesbianism is not as clear a violation of femininity men's minds and so, in our culture, men are more intolerant of male homosexuality than of female homosexuality. Men's intolerance of male homosexuality accounts for all the differences between male and females in their attitudes towards male homosexuals and lesbians.
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