On the role of stigma, retaliation, and the defence mechanisms of projection and devaluation

Whenever I walk around in the West End of Vancouver—one of the largest gay neighbourhoods in Canada—it never ceases to amaze me how some gay men can be so nasty and catty towards each other. One would think that after decades of being marginalised and stigmatised by society at large that gay men would still be brotherly and warm towards one another. Not so. How come?

One of the most common things I notice in the West End is many gay men making fun of each other's appearances, attire, and the way they carry themselves. They seem almost obsessed with how other people look and carry themselves. Some people can get so nasty that they actually talk about how "ugly" other gay men are. As I've stated elsewhere in my diary, whenever behaviour is "over-the-top", little red flags go up indicating that what is operating here is some sort of defence mechanism.

I think what's happening in the cases of cattyness is projection. In projection, one literally "throws" one's own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or conflicts onto someone else. "No, I'm not the stupid one, you are." "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not angry; you are." What is often projected on to others is feelings of one of one's own perceived inadequacies (these feelings come directly from people who were close to us when we were growing up (parents, teachers, friends, etc.).

In the case of gay men, years of growing up stigmatised can create a very negative sense of self. Other gay men remind them of these negative feelings of themselves. In order to deal with these negative feelings, they purge them from their own consciousness and throw them onto other gay men. "No, I'm not a fairy fag; you are." Physical appearances and the way one carries oneself are often the object of derision because during their childhood, the gay men who go on to project onto others were themselves often stigmatised for the way they carried themselves.

Projection has another goal other than merely allowing one to purge one's own unacceptable feelings. When some people project, they actually enhance their own self esteem by comparing themselves with the people they stigmatise. Because men in general are more "visual" than women (ie, they attach more importance to physical appearance than do women) making fun of a gay man's appearance is a surefire way of blowing a hole through his self esteem. Unconsciously, the aggressor believes one or both of the following: (1) That this act of devaluing demonstrates his strength against others; (2) that it creates a passive, weak, inept, seemingly "pathetic" victim who can't help but make the aggressor appear much more attractive in comparison.

All this could also be simple devaluing

Of course, I should mention that on a less complicated level, all this behaviour could simply be considered a more basic act of devaluation of others. Devaluation is itself a defence mechanism, and is often used by people in order to enhance their image in others' eyes—especially when their own self esteem is suffering.

People are more vicious to their own kind than to anyone else

As a friend once told me, people are most vicious with their own kind. It's easier being vicious to people of one's own group than to people in the outgroup that stigmatised you in the first place. First of all, if you were to project on to your stigmatisers, you would risk being stigmatised even more (or even beaten up!). Second, if you project on to other stigmatised gay men who, presumably, also have low self esteem, they are less likely to have the energy or courage to retaliate against you. I think this is the dynamic that sometimes goes on in gay neighbourhoods, where some gay men almost literally seek out other gay men on whom to project their own hostilities and, in a sense, retaliate against the larger society around them that made them feel so bad about themselves in the first place. Most importantly, those gay men who project on to others know precisely how bad it feels to be dumped on by other people (after all, they themselves went through a whole lifetime of abuse by society). They know, in other words, precisely where to stab their brothers for maximal hurt.