No Homo: Gendered Dimensions of Homophobic Epithets Online

Abstract

We examine a case of homophobic language online, specifically the deployment of the phrase "no homo," shorthand for "I'm not a homosexual." An analysis of 396 instances (comprising 1061 individual tweets) of the use of the phrase "no homo" on the social media platform Twitter suggests that the phrase is a gendered epithet that conveys cultural norms about masculinity. The first finding is that the phrase is used more often by male tweeters than by female tweeters. The second, as predicted by the literature on homophobia, is that the phrase is used in a negative emotional context to convey disapproval for men's homosexuality or behavior that is not gender normative. The third finding is that the modal use of the phrase "no homo" is in a positive emotional context, accompanying expressions of men's pleasure, desire, affection, attachment, and friendship. Our analysis suggests that the phrase "no homo" is a gendered one, primarily used by men to facilitate a particularly masculinized construction of positive emotional expression. Our research adds to and complicates findings on the relationship between homophobia and masculinity that suggests that homophobia is an organizing principal of masculinity in western cultures.

Can Social Media Anti-abuse Policies Work? A Quasi-experimental Study of Online Sexist and Racist Slurs

“…Thus, tweets that score as positive in sentiment, even though they contain derogatory terms, often represent alternative or unconventional uses of slurs. Moreover, similar to what Pascoe and Diefendorf (2019) found in their study of tweets containing "no homo," some tweets in this sample use racist and/or sexist slurs in a self-protective or boundary drawing fashion, where the use of a slur separates the user from other sexist or racist individuals, but the tweet itself is positive. In this project, we find some examples of such messages with "reclaimed" and "resignified" gendered or racial insults, as illustrated subsequently.…”

“…Sometimes members of the targeted group themselves (e.g., women, African Americans, or LGBTQ people) use these terms in a process that the feminist writer Judith Butler (1990) called "resignification." In other cases, slurs allow an individual to express a positive message while simultaneously using the slur as a means of selfprotection or boundary drawing (Pascoe and Diefendorf 2019). Instead, Twitter's attempts to reduce offensive content rely on a combination of top-down organizational signals that abusive behavior is considered non-normative and unacceptable, as well as bottom-up peer reporting or "flagging" of offensive material.…”

Google, Tell Me. Is He Gay? Masculinity, Heterosexuality, and Gendered Anxieties in Google Search Queries about Sexuality

“…C. J. Pascoe and Sarah Diefendorf's (2019) analysis of uses of "no homo" on social media supports these findings as well, documenting how the phrase is used to enable men to bend norms associated with heteromasculine identities while discursively supporting the idea that masculinity and heterosexuality are linked (see also Bridges 2014). Relatedly, as Ken Corbett (2001) argues and C. J.…”

Digital Traces of Sexualities: Understanding the Salience of Sexual Identity through Disclosure on Social Media

“…The remainder declined to use it, either out of privacy concerns or because they found it too rigidly binary to express queer identities. There is less prior research about the expression of heterosexual identities online, though Pascoe and Diefendorf (2018) show that men use homophobic language online to express a heterosexual style of masculinity, consistent with their offline behavior.…”