COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse Practicesfrom the imposing of structures and labels from the external mainstream culture. It is pervasive and commonplace as a means of describing an object, person or activity as bad or unimportant.However, not all sessions were dominated by me challenging homophobia. For example, one young man feltthat that the anti-gay attitude in the class was not fair and he told the class his feelings. The reaction was one ofsilence and surprise that he had the ‘guts’ to say this in front of his peers. This demonstrated the importance ofheterosexual males needing to stand up and tackle homophobia and challenge traditional heterosexualmasculinity issues. With these men has role models, homophobia can be challenged effectively and begin tochange attitudes.Overall, most of the young men were publicly homophobic and refused to acknowledge that difference isacceptable. Through peer pressure and narrow-mindedattitudes, they generally refused to agree with my challenges. However, when one of their peers occasionallyagreed with my challenges, their negative attitudes becamesilent. This indicates to me that they are aware that their attitudes are wrong, but in their particular environment,at their particular age, being more respectful to diversityis unacceptable. One young man did comment, after nearly throwing a table towards me in anger at mychallenges on his homophobic attitudes, that it is a matter of age.He suggested that they would not be as homophobic when they were older. He felt it was a process everyone asto go through when they were younger. This indicates that family life, peers, employers and education all play arole in promoting diversitybecause being homophobic to non-homophobic is not a process, but an unnecessary attitude to maintain.This small study demonstrated the importance of tackling homophobia becausethere is clearly still a lot of resentment for alternative sexualities. This study highlights that diversity is importantand the promotion of this through suitable role models is important. It is clear that much more work needs to bedone in changing the contexts that surround young men in terms of schools, youth organisations and families. Inparticular, it is crucial for more heterosexual positive role models to be available to tackle homophobia. Despitemy work challenging resentment for alternative sexualities and seeking to change attitudes, for attitudes toactually change, the narrow-minded attitudes of these institutions need to change too and act as suitable rolemodels. My work is a good way to approach the subject withchallenging groups and there are a lot of initiatives that are fighting against theoppressive and exclusive nature of heteronormativity. They do not necessarily transform attitudes towards gaypeople. For that to happen, political and educational attitudes need to change and be more progressive in fightingfor the rights of alternative sexualities.ReferencesChodorow, N.J. (1999). Statement in a public forum on homophobia. The American Psychoanalytic Foundation.Freire, P. & Fandez, A. (1989). Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation. Geneva, World Council Churches.199