Heterophobia (fear of opposite sex) what is, characteristics and examples

You have heard of homophobia, but ¿You had ever raised the existence of heterophobia? ¿Heterophobia is really fear or irrational aversion to people with a hetero sexual orientation? ¿Or maybe refer to another meaning?

Many talk about heterophobia referring to fear or phobia to people with heterosexual orientation. If you want to know more about this and this sure of what it means, ¡keep reading! In this psychology-online article, we explain a little more about the heterophobia: what is, characteristics and examples Of the same.

1. What is heterophobia
2. Characteristics of heterophobia
3. Heterophobia symptoms
4. Examples of heterophobia

What is heterophobia

We can understand the heterophobia term in several ways. Etymologically speaking, on the one hand, we know that phobia means fear or great aversion. On the other hand, Hetero refers to what is different, specifically in the sexual and gender field. So we could define heterophobia as the irrational fear to the opposite gender to ours, although many refer to him as phobia to people with heterosexual sexual orientation.

According to Daniel Ferstein, in the article The logic of racism Heterophobia is defined as the Fear, strangeness or confusion to the other, fear that is expressed as fear of the unknown and that is part of the personality structure of social subjects itself.

Characteristics of heterophobia

Now that we know what the term heterophobia means, we will see what are the main characteristics of the people affected by this irrational fear:

• Negative references to people of the opposite sex or to heterosexual people.
• Excessive avoidance and escape from these stimuli.
• Hyperventilation and palpitations.
• Intense anxiety Given the erroneous estimates of threat, that is, given the meanings attributed to the stimulus and the evoked response of fear. For these occasions, we recommend you consult this article about natural anxiolytics to calm anxiety.
• Appearance of other derived disorders of this phobia.

Heterophobia symptoms

In cases of heterophobia, the symptomatology that arises can be very diverse. Next, we will show you some of the symptoms of heterophobia:

• Digestive system affectation.
• Drowning sensation.
• Concern.
• Palpitations and/or tachycardia.
• Muscular stiffness.
• Peripheral manifestations such as hyperflexia, hypertension, hyperhidrosis or increased urinary frequency.
• Appearance of other fears.
• Feeling of shame. In this article we analyze why everything is ashamed and what to do.
• Confusion and distortions of perception.
• Selective biased attention.
• Irritability, restlessness or restlessness
• Feeling of oppression, overwhelming or excessive concern
• Control.
• Sweating.
• Feeling of suffering.
• There is interference in social development.

Examples of heterophobia

Understanding heterophobia as fear of the opposite sex, we can find several examples that illustrate this phobia. We must keep in mind that, on the one hand, this phobia can be consequence of other disorders or crisis situations that make the person develop heterophobia as a defense mechanism.

On the other hand, examples have been documented on cases of heterophobia that refer to the feeling of discrimination against a person for being Heterosexual. Next, we show you examples of the different heterophobia interpretations:

• Case of The Big Bang Theory series: The Indian nationality scientist, the DR. Rajesh Kothrappali, suffers selective mutism towards the opposite sex. We observe that in the presence of a woman is unable to articulate words aloud, unless it is under the effects of some depressor such as alcohol, whose uninhibitor effect makes it possible to overcome her phobia.
• Case of a woman who has suffered gender violence: develops an irrational fear of men, being unable to be facing one or even being in the same room. In addition, you must deal with the effects of deterioration at the social, labor and personal level that this entails.
• Screen capture a WhatsApp conversation: A person asked about the room rental. This one answered asking him about his sexual orientation, since his floor partner preferred colleagues from the LGTBIQ collective+. The first, seeing in this situation, decided for himself to leave the rental process of that room, notifying that he had felt discriminated against and that he did not understand the question.

Daily cases of discrimination are being given to people for their sexual orientation, but it is true that the number of people who receive discrimination because it is heterosexual is much lower than the people of the LGTBIQ+ collective who, daily suffer harassment or mockery for it. Luckily, these situations are increasing.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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