Patriarchy and Homophobia

The passage by Pharr, ‘Homophobia as a weapon of sexism’ illustrates homophobia as one of three weapons of sexism that creates the gender dominance. Three weapons of sexism, in addition to homophobia are economics and violence. As we all know by now from the class discussion, economics as a weapon in general, the society designed male as the head of the economic group and put female at the bottom. Violence as a weapon means men use their power and force women to obey them and this shows that our society was and still dominated by the patriarchal system. Homophobia, the fear of homosexuals, and about homosexuals, Pharr said they can be divided in two groups, which are those who choose to hide their sexuality therefore live in fear and those whose sexuality is visible and face the dangers of being abnormal, by the sight of society. (In the United States, the norm is white, male, and heterosexual).

The movie that we watched in class, ‘Fire’ illustrates many terms that we read in Pharr’s passage. It was about the patriarchy as well as homophobia. I cannot see that much connection between the patriarchy and homophobia, but I think those are related because patriarchy creates sexism which creates homophobia. In the movie Fire, two main woman characters tend to oppose the patriarch society which controls female sexuality and consider female as a baby machine. This movie was interesting because, two lesbians were played against those social expectations which are women have to obey their men, and have no chance to shout out their sexuality. They expressed those sometimes in daring way, and sometimes in secret. By watching the ending of the movie, which is a burning scene of one of lesbian, I could see that people’s view towards the lesbian and matriarchic society is not going to be change that easily.