Young British people more homophobic.

[Britnonchaser]

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homophobia-lgbt-hate-crime-young-people-gay-trans-poll-research-a9157111.html

This article (yes I realise it's from October) blames "online hate"... yeah right. 

It's religion, I wonder which recently imported religion it 

[I need lots of attention, so I dare the staff to moderate me comment removed]

Yeah, it turns out that just because you pass gay marriage, that doesn't magically make everything okay forever..

Edited June 13, 2020 by drscorpio

[kinkysuBB]

I know I’m 7 months late, but I felt like talking about politics, and I don’t feel as qualified to comment on the many American threads. This is interesting. I’d like to see the methodology for that poll. I also wonder is it an outlier or is it part of a trend of similar polls?

I’m not British, but my experience of Britain is that it’s by and large a liberal country. I don’t honestly believe that a quarter of a representative sample of British under 25s are anti-LGBT.

A couple of theories:

1) Teenagers like to rebel and go against the flow. If society is pro-LGBT, if kids are being preached a message of tolerance and acceptance, to me, it stands to reason that some will go against that for a while, just for the sake of going against it. That’s what teenagers do.

2) There is a very vocal right wing movement in Britain, which we saw in the lead up to and aftermath of the Brexit referendum. I’m not saying that all or even most Brexit voters are right wing loons, but most right wing loons are Brexit voters, and they’ve been given a national platform in recent years. This means there is a very accessible alternative to the liberal consensus for people to subscribe to.

3) Certain religions I’m sure do come into it, as you said.

These are just theories though. Hard to know what to think, without seeing the polling methodology and the results of other, similar polls.

[gwmxyz]

6 hours ago, subBottomKink said:

1) Teenagers like to rebel and go against the flow. If society is pro-LGBT, if kids are being preached a message of tolerance and acceptance, to me, it stands to reason that some will go against that for a while, just for the sake of going against it. That’s what teenagers do.

That would be my bet - just trying to be annoying.  I don't think they actually are.

[BootmanLA]

I wouldn't be so quick to write them off as simply being teenagers trying to be annoying. I think there's always been an element among some young people, everywhere, that is racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc., but for a good while now, until recently, those sorts of things weren't publicly acceptable to vocalize.

Certain public figures in the US and the UK (and elsewhere) have emboldened bigotry to speak up again. It's always been there, beneath the surface, but they're coming out of the shadows. Not even necessarily growing in numbers, but we're seeing how many of them there have always been, and what some of them are capable of when societal pressure to be a decent human being is removed.

[Spunkinmyarse]

Mainstream culture in the UK (and elsewhere, I suspect) likes to think that the younger you are, the more liberal, tolerant and free-thinking you are.  Prejudice and bigotry are supposed to belong to the nasty, older generations: young people are nice, and wouldn’t the world be a much better place if it was run by them?
 

I’ve never really shared this view.  I remember the school playground only too well, with it’s rampant homophobia and bullying of all kinds.  And from what I hear, it’s not too different today.  Remember Lord of the Flies?  Children have to be taught to be nice, and young people need a civilized society to iron out their prejudices.  It doesn’t surprise me at all that the under 25’s display more homophobic attitudes than their elders.  Like compassion, tolerance comes with age and life-experience, or at least it should in any society worth living in.

[BootmanLA]

10 hours ago, Spunkinmyarse said:

Mainstream culture in the UK (and elsewhere, I suspect) likes to think that the younger you are, the more liberal, tolerant and free-thinking you are.  Prejudice and bigotry are supposed to belong to the nasty, older generations: young people are nice, and wouldn’t the world be a much better place if it was run by them?
 

I’ve never really shared this view.  I remember the school playground only too well, with it’s rampant homophobia and bullying of all kinds.  And from what I hear, it’s not too different today.  Remember Lord of the Flies?  Children have to be taught to be nice, and young people need a civilized society to iron out their prejudices.  It doesn’t surprise me at all that the under 25’s display more homophobic attitudes than their elders.  Like compassion, tolerance comes with age and life-experience, or at least it should in any society worth living in.

But "The Lord of the Flies" is a novel. An actual situation much like this did occur in the 1960's, when a group of six boys set out on a fishing boat from Tonga, were blown out to sea, and spent more than a year on a rocky, deserted islet before being discovered and rescued. Granted, they weren't English boys (they were Tongan locals at a Catholic boy's school), but instead of reverting to some form of savagery, they set up a very cooperative form of dealing with collecting food, storing rainwater, and so forth. And these weren't kids who came from generations of "civilization".

Not to discount childhood bullying, but I suspect much of that comes from parents who teach their kids, deliberately or not, by example or not, to be shits.