Internalised homophobia is the quiet, learned belief that being gay or lesbian is somehow wrong, shameful or second-rate. It is not usually planted by open hatred, but by a thousand small messages: the film lesbian who always dies, the disgusted tone when someone says “dyke,” the assumption that every story needs a straight hero. “Lesbians usually die. If they didn’t die, they were in pornos. I didn’t want to die, or be in a porno… so I internalised my attraction toward women as wrong, unhealthy, and something that will go away.” – ParticularSwanne source [citation:ae9b8129-71e9-4cce-a8ca-ad22be5edd56]

Because society still treats heterosexuality as the invisible default, gay children often absorb the idea that growing into an adult homosexual is a fate to escape. For some, this dread shows up as hatred of the body that will announce that fate. “I started hating the body I was growing into… I couldn’t stand the idea of being with a man in this body.” – Your_socks source [citation:cad02c17-d595-4c17-957f-696654d70214] The same pattern appears in lesbians who convince themselves they “must” be bi, because the word lesbian feels tainted. “Everyone tiptoes around the word lesbian as if it’s dirty… that shame makes women dislike the word, whether they realise it or not.” – piedeloup source [citation:7200a174-e5ab-4888-8294-b10c2d80fc0b]

When puberty arrives, the body begins to look like the sex that society deems “wrong” for the people you love. That discomfort can be mis-read as “gender dysphoria,” especially if no one around you offers a positive image of gay adulthood. “As I got more masculine it caused me ‘dysphoria’ which really was just a fear of aging into an adult gay man… part of detransition has been accepting myself as a gay man.” – Aware-Resist-8655 source [citation:eae609f7-d962-4790-8e24-6ad9a5b556ba] In other words, the distress is not about being in the “wrong body”; it is about fearing the social consequences of living happily in the body you already have.

Undoing this internalised script takes conscious, daily work: noticing every self-shaming thought, asking why same-sex love feels unacceptable, and deliberately seeking out healthy gay role-models until the feared future feels livable. The path is not medical; it is psychological and social—learning to treat the word “gay” or “lesbian” as an ordinary, honourable possibility rather than a fate worse than death.