Correlates of Internalized Homophobia in a Community Sample of Lesbians and Gay Men Gregory M. Herek, Ph.D. 1 Jeanine C. Cogan, Ph.D. 1 J. Roy Gillis, Ph.D. 2 Eric K. Glunt, Ph.D. 1 1 Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA 2 Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, 1997, 2, 17-25. Abstract Objective: To systematically assess internalized homophobia and its correlates among gay men and lesbians. Design: A measure of internalized homophobia (IHP) was administered to a community sample of lesbians and gay men, along with measures of psychological well-being, outness, and perceptions of community. Results and Conclusions: Women’s IHP scores were significantly lower than those of men. For lesbians and gay men alike, internalized homophobia was associated with less self-disclosure to heterosexual friends and acquaintances and less sense of connection to the gay and lesbian community. Lesbians and gay men with the highest IHP scores also manifested significantly more depressive symptoms and higher levels of demoralization than others, and high-IHP men manifested lower self-esteem than other men. IHP scores were not associated with disclosure to parents or the recency of developmental milestones for either lesbians or gay men. INTRODUCTION Like many other societies, the culture of the United States is pervaded by heterosexism, an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any nonheterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship, or community (1, 2). Most children who grow up in the U.S. internalize societal heterosexism from an early age. Consequently, lesbians and gay men usually experience some degree of negative feeling toward themselves when they first recognize their own homosexuality in adolescence or adulthood. This sense of what is usually called internalized homophobia often makes the process of identity formation more difficult and can pose psychological challenges to gay men and lesbians throughout life (3 - 8). In the course of recognizing their homosexual orientation, developing an identity based on it, and disclosing their orientation to others — the process usually termed coming out — most lesbians and gay men successfully overcome the threats to psychological well-being posed by internalized homophobia. They manage to reclaim disowned or devalued parts of themselves, developing an identity into which their sexuality is well integrated (5). Despite widespread recognition that internalized homophobia represents an important challenge to gay and lesbian mental health, few published empirical studies have attempted to assess its prevalence or identify its correlates (9). The available data suggest that higher levels of internalized homophobia are associated with lower self-esteem and greater psychological distress, such as depression (9 - 14). Internalized homophobia has also been found to correlate with lower levels of self-disclosure about one’s sexual orientation, or being out of the closet (hereafter referred to as “outness”), and reduced social support (9, 12, 15, 16). Findings in this area are confounded, however, because the measures of internalized homophobia used in these studies also included items about outness and attitudes toward social involvement with other gay people and the gay community. A striking limitation of previous empirical investigations of internalized homophobia is that nearly all of them have focused on men. We found only two published studies that reported data on internalized homophobia among lesbians. Bell and Weinberg (17) reported that lesbians in their San Francisco sample expressed somewhat less regret than gay men about their homosexuality, and were somewhat less likely to say that they would have