Revista de Estudios Sociales

rev. estud. soc. | eISSN 1900-5180 | ISSN 0123-885X

Violence, Homophobia and Psychoanalysis: Between Secrecy and Openness

No. 28 (2007-12-01)
  • María Mercedes Gómez
https://doi.org/10.7440/res28.2007.04

Abstract

Through the psychoanalytical concepts of “symptom” and “repression,” this article looks at expressions of sexual prejudice-based violence in societies where heterosexuality is institutionalized and compulsory. With these concepts, it examines the tensions that exist between the prohibition of homosexual practices, the concomitant desire for the prohibited, and the violence with which this desire and its effects are normalized. The article begins with a legal example to show how practices of subordination in terms of non-normative sexualities are tolerated and maintained as sources of private pleasure, but how they become objects of exclusionary violence when the pleasure of the prohibited is made public. The text explores the vicissitudes of this transition from a psychoanalytical and political perspective.

Keywords: compulsory heterosexuality, psychoanalysis, prejudice-based violence, discrimination, exclusion, gender and sexuality

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