Homophobia

There used to be a time when homosexuality was considered as some kind of mental illness. For that reason, people from various cultures came up with several methods to treat the disease, but now almost all the neuroscientists are convinced that how a person develops an interest in male, female, or both can not be determined and its nearly impossible to change their preference, so it is clear that what is not an illness can not be treated. In 1973 homosexuality was taken off of mental illness list and world health organization ( WHO ) delisted homosexuality as a mental illness in 1990. However, the hate crime against the LGBTQ community in Bangladesh and Homophobia around the world is getting attention. Neurobiologists are trying to figure out why people hate Homosexuality and the reasons behind the particular phobia.

Is this homophobia irrational?

The word phobia came from the Greek language, it meant some sort of irrational fear. In the 1960s an American psychologist Jorge R. Oksenberg developed the term “Homophobia”, in his book “Society and the healthy homosexuality” he wrote, I won’t consider a patient is healthy until the patient can not give up his or her hatred towards homosexuals. Similarly, a well-known professor of Endocrinology and medical sexology from Rome, Italy concluded Homophobia to be a mental illness instead. In 2015 Journal named Sexual medicine published a research paper that created few controversies surrounding sexual preferences, the researcher identified the Homophobic as a “coward” in an interview with BBC, he also suspects homophobia may have links to the person’s psychotic disabilities. Psycotizem has relations with anger and Aggressive behaviours, the homophobia can also be related to the patient’s inner fears.

The level of Homophobia

Neurobiologist Jenin has tried to measure the level of Homophobia. For that, he conducted a survey of over 551 students from Italian university students and his team compared this data with other mental patients. Jenin concluded that the people who hates homosexuality also suffer from psychoticism. His team believes homophobia is a mental condition and it can be treated with therapy, this phobia can be developed due to the patients surrounding religious faith or family teaching. In a similar study professor, Jenin illustrated how societies around the world have become male-dominated and feminine behaviour is prohibited, in some societies like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia feminine behaviour of a male member of a society is considered taboo similarly homophobia is encouraged by government and religion. So Professor Jenin is trying to find any link between hate against females and Homophobia.

According to BBC in 2011 Jenin and his team conducted a survey in three different countries with 1048 university students who belong to the different religious faiths. these three countries are Italy (Catholic majority), Bangladesh ( Muslim majority), Ukraine (Orthodox Majority). Professor Jenin tells BBC that astonishingly apart from Islam, Religion do not play much role in making someone a homophobic but extreme sectarian views about religion is the main player of this phobia. However, in the case of Islam, homosexuality is prohibited strictly in their holy Quran so no matter how progressive the person is, it is impossible to a Muslim to accept a gay or lesbian. In orthodoxies, Christianity homosexuality is considered forbidden but the believers of this faith like to keep this view into themselves. Unlike Islamic preachers in Bangladesh who have deliberately given death threats in almost every religious gathering ( Waj-mehfil ) towards the LGBTQ community in Bangladesh.

LGBTQ community in Bangladesh

JAB ( Just Another Bangladeshi ) an LGBTQ activist in Bangladesh has tried to talk with some Islamic scholar about this matter, JAB thinks it is a long journey toward getting acceptance in Bangladesh as a homosexual, but hate crime against them can be minimized by providing society with proper knowledge because no infant is born with hate against the sexual minority, but we acquire it from the society. According to JAB for LGBTQ comminution in Bangladesh, the main downer of this hate is the religious preaching buy the Islamic scholar in various towns apart from that politicians and Hindu temples which are strict followers of shattik beliefs.

the situation in Bangladesh has not got any better, but JAB believes LGBT populations are getting more and more acceptance in society day by day around the world.