(There was a feature in the NYTimes about her last September: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/fashion/seeking-to-help-boys-keep-their-friends.html?_r=1.)

It’s been a theme in queer theory for a while: in Eve Sedgwick’s first major book “Between Men,” for example, or in George Chauncey’s argument not that Lincoln was gay, but that many more relationships, erotic & not erotic, were available for men — like Lincoln’s romantic friendship with Joshua Speed — before homophobia was so firmly established in the US.

So I wonder if part of the anger homophobic men reported in that study when they looked at pictures of non-sexual intimacy between men has something to do with their internal prohibition against exactly that. Like, hating that other men get to have that intimacy, or hating that it’s forbidden to them, or hating how much they want it & how scared that makes them feel.

“The finding that sexually prejudiced men reported comparably large increases in anger regardless of the type of male-male stimulus video used (i.e., sexual, nonsexual) has interesting but unclear theoretical implications. Men appear to be angered by witnessing male-male sexual activity regardless of their level of sexual prejudice, but only those who report high levels of sexual prejudice are angered by non-erotic male-male relationship behavior. Perhaps men who report high levels of sexual prejudice imagine sexual contact between two male partners when they witness them involved in common and publicly seen relationship behaviors. This speculation would be in keeping with previous research on sexually prejudiced men’s experience of sexual arousal in response to male homosexuality (Adams, Wright, & Lohr, 1996).”