Talk:Haggard's Law/Archive1

Remember
I remember reading once of a study that found a link between homophobic attitudes and latent homosexuality. Anybody know any more specific details? 03:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I remember it. Can't remember where it would be.... 17:00, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Fear my Google-fu
 * http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/105/3/440/
 * http://web.archive.org/web/20040202035152/www.apa.org/releases/homophob.html
 * 17:04, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, Wikipedia-fu, but I did find it via a few other sites first. The moral of the story? Check WP fist! I've added this to the article, with a fair appraisal of the results, which may actually be a false positive. There are other studies that show how there is a disconnect between physical and mental arousal so it may be the conflating factors that produced this result. 17:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Removing the CP joke section
What's a Ken DeMeyer? ThunderkatzHo! 09:36, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Application of Haggard's Law to miscegenation, neo-Nazism and 'interracial' porn
Could this law, instead of being applied to homosexuals, also be applied to neo-Nazis who in secret masturbate to IR porn?

The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. In the brain, the centres that connect love and hate are linked together.

The problem with interracial is that it intensifies male breeding competition, and destroys human genetic diversity. Studies have consistently shown that it is far more common for non-white (especially black) males to enter into relationships with white females than vice-versa. This inevitably creates a class of sexually frustrated beta males, who might do something like the actions of Anders Behring Breivik.

Also, see this:

(Link to racist garbage removed. Go back through the history if you insist on seeing this crap)

Also, classical conditioning and psychological projection are evident here.

(Link to racist garbage removed. Go back through the history if you insist on seeing this crap)

It is just simply a fact that white women are more attractive than women of other ethnicities. There is strong evidence for this as a result of their dominance in pornography.--Just and Honest (talk) 14:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I mean personally i think black and light skinned people are fairly attractive but feel free to keep assuming that everyone is the exact same as you while also having delusions of your own grandeur. Evilatheistheathen (talk) 09:38, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally I think that neo-nazis are more attracted to interracial porn because the black brute stereotype allows them to simultaneously engage in another fetish that appeals to their prejudice -- that is, the degradation of women. It's like two for the price of one! Dr. Swordopolis (talk) 04:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I also think that being racist would make one more likely to enjoy racial porn rather than less, but for different reasons than Dr Swordopolis. If some dickwad is racist, then it's probably a safe bet that they see the idea of interracial relations as inherently scandalous, which then feeds into the reason incest porn and devil-themed lingere is a thing.


 * Also, I cannot deny that I've always found the average caucasian woman to be more attractive than the average black woman, but I just assumed that that was because I myself was in fact caucasian, and that for black guys it'd be the other way around. You're probably making the same mistake as straight men who say that women are inherently more attractive than men. Or more likely you're just a racist dickwad, judging by the warnings and censored bits of your comment.Skadooshbag (talk) 05:47, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Haggard's Law As Revenge Fantasy
Sadly, I think that the real reason why Haggard's Law really catches on because it's a revenge fantasy on behalf of the oppressed. That being that the oppressor becomes the oppressed. Pretty common when you think about it; that Greek Mythology story about some man who was turned into a woman to teach him a lesson, Trading Places, Liar Liar, a woman-hating jerk being placed under the thumb of a radical feminist, etc.. It appeals more to our sense of fairness that the jackass spewing homophobic slurs in the bar and harassing a transwoman has to go home sexually frustrated and loathing himself even though it's much more likely that he's still able to have a satisfying heterosexual sexual and romantic encounter despite depriving others of them. Dr. Swordopolis (talk) 04:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. On the other hand, it has some inherent plausibility. Sure enough, low-key homophobia is no doubt commonplace and needs no special explanation. However, vicious homophobia is something different. When a person goes out of their way to do harm to queer people or even decides that it has to be their life's mission to make queer people's lives hell, going above and beyond most people in intensity, the suspicion that this person has ... issues is justified. (The jerk in the example is rather borderline, IMHO: he doesn't actually put that much effort into it. A religious zealot who constantly rails against the supposed evils of homosexuality, sermon after sermon, does have an odd focus, even if they don't physically harm anyone.)

Especially in the more tolerant climate of today's Western world, why somebody would go against the grain and expend so much effort to oppress queer people (or verbally bash them, anyway), even when it makes them unpopular or appear ridiculously mean-spirited to most people, does demand an explanation. Why the hell do they care so much? The hunch "maybe they're just deeply repressed" has certainly been uttered many times before Haggard's law was a thing that people were discussing.

Psychologically, turning into a gay-basher in an attempt to deflect any suspicions that one might not be quite straight oneself, or to rid oneself of shameful desires, makes a lot of sense (and anecdotal evidence is often readily remembered). Also see the Shakespearean quotation commonly mentioned in this context: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." --91.7.0.235 (talk) 00:09, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Shakespeare
Is this an example of 'Methinks thou protesteth too much'? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

/r/AskSocialScience: Is there any truth behind Haggard's Law?
Some relevant sources for the article. 00:49, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * How could there be any truth behind it? The man's not gay. (Sweet link btw, let's mine it for sauces!)  Reverend Black Percy (talk) 01:19, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

[]
 * ClickerClock (talk) 09:23, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

There is a saying along the lines of 'whatever a politician denies three times (particularly if it involves resigning) is probably true'

Presumably the incongruity/dichotomy between the public persona and persisting 'body language, "tells" and other subtle hints' are the basis of the law. Anna Livia (talk) 18:18, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

No, Haggard's law has not been proved scientifically
I have removed the sentence:

"It is used as either a purely sarcastic musing that people who strongly object to homosexuality have been scientifically demonstrated to be more likely to engage in homosexual activities,(ref)Adams, H., Wright, L. and Lohr, B. 1996. Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal? Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol. 105 No. 3: pp.440-445.(/ref)"

Because it is plainly false. First, the cited article does not say that homophobic men are "more likely to engage in homosexual activities" but that "homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal", which is clearly different. Second, the study measured arousal via whose reliability has been extensively investigated only in regards of sex-offenders and pedophiles. Indeed, the authors of the study say themselves that: "It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se."

McLaghing (talk) 16:33, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the article is shit. Christopher (talk) 17:22, 27 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I have added a section "Is Haggard's law true?" with some skepticism, and I have moved the penile plethysmography study there, together with the section "Statistics". I could be also worth adding this study: (ref)(/ref) Anyway, I am planning to change the section "Statistics" because as it is I think it is quite flawed: First, it takes an argument showing that Haggard's law is true in at most 25% of the cases (hence, it is overall false), and make it looks like it says that Haggard's law is true in 25% of the cases ("i.e. one in four active gay bashers — could be a closeted homosexual."). Second, the figure of 8.2% of Americans having engaged in same-sex sexual activities overestimates homosexuals percentage, since it includes rapes, sex workers, bisexuals..., but the section makes it looks like it underestimates homosexuality ("the 8.2% figure only considers those who have admitted to same-sex sexual activity.") McLaghing (talk) 10:46, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

MMPI-based tests?
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is a collection of several hundred multiple choice questions. It is a fairly common (though debatable) research tactic to administer the test to two groups of interest, such as admitted homosexual males & reportedly straight guys, look for the few dozen questions on which the groups differ greatly, and construct a test consisting only of those questions which purports to measure 'homosexual tendencies'. This has been done repeatedly; Google search for "MMPI homosexuality" turns up dozens of hits, mostly scholarly articles by social psychologists. Lots of other tests were developed in a similar way; e.g. a lot of the work on 'authoritarian personalities' used them.

Back in my undergraduate days (late 60s) I saw a study that used one of those tests, reported that gay bashers generally scored quite high on the 'tendencies' measure, and speculated that one motive for hostility to gays was repressed tendencies of one's own. I do not currently have time to track it down, but if someone could it might make a good addition to this article. Pashley (talk) 01:47, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

A problem with Haggard's Law
Whatever about it being a real scientific relation or a common psychological trait among homophobes (or other bigots), as mentioned in the article, Haggard's Law has the unfortunate implication that homosexuality is a bad thing. That is, that these bigots who are clearly such horrible people are themselves gay, not only makes being gay seem horrible by association as one of their horrible traits, but it makes being the butt of this law's joke. There are plenty of real gay people out there who don't like the association with homophobes, and don't like homophobes being assumed to be gay because they're horrible bigots, due to this law.

Someone who has actually experienced this could put it much more eloquently than me. But perhaps this commentary should be noted in the article? --Cycloneblaze (talk) 03:05, 18 January 2020 (UTC)


 * That's not true at all. It's simply making the observation that militant homophobes tend to be themselves homosexual. Even when we aknowledge that there's nothing wrong with being gay, that trend is still an undeniable fact. Haggard's Law is simply a way of formally recognizing that trend. Merely openly acknowledging that two things are correlated is not at all the same as claiming a reason for why they are correlated. If anything, the joke is the other way around: the implication is not that being gay makes one a bigot, it's that being a bigot makes one gay.Skadooshbag (talk) 06:03, 2 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I kind of get where User:Cycloneblaze is coming from. Haggards Law kind of makes the claim that homophobia is really just the fault of homosexuals themselves. It allows the blame to be shifted away from heterosexuals who hate homosexuals, and put on self hating homosexuals instead. A lot of gay people have expressed dislike of this kind of thinking for this reason. For example, you can find extreme homophobia relatively commonplace in Russia, and it's statistically impossible for half of Russia to be "secretly gay". I think this point could deserve a mention. Debunky (talk) 11:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)