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The catch-all word for the fears among men is homophobia: fear or dread of what is similar or the same as I am. Since American culture has a dread-love relationship to sex, homo-phobia usually means fear of love with those of the same gender. But it has many other phobias inherent in it. There are fears of being physically harmed or dominated by another man; fears of being intellectually dominated and spiritually damaged or misled. There are fears of the bodies of other men, fears of the spirits of other men, and fears of the souls of other men. At the bottom is a fear that something in other men may be the same as something hidden in me, a shadowy something that I barely know of myself. At that level, homophobia is a fear of men based on not knowing my true self and fear of what may be hidden within me.
-- Michael Meade
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