In the mid-2010s, gay activist Valentin Belyaev posted his version of the gay man flag in an initiative group in VKontakte to combat gayphobia (homophobia against men) and on Tumblr.
Gayphobia is a form of homophobia that specifically affects men. Although it is primarily aimed at gay and bisexual men, it can also affect heterosexual men who are perceived as homosexual. Gay men may be targets of physical aggression or devalued by stereotypes linked to feminisation and hypersexualisation.
However, parallel to this semantic broadening, there has been an inverse movement of lexical differentiation operating at the heart of the concept of homophobia. Because of the specificity of attitudes towards lesbianism, the term lesbophobia has been introduced into theoretic discourses, a term which brings to light particular mechanisms that the generic concept of homophobia tends to overshadow. With one stroke, this distinction justifies the term gayphobia, since much homophobic discourse, in reality, pertains only to male homosexuality. Similarly, the concept of biphobia has also been proposed in order to highlight the singular situation of bisexuals, often stigmatized by both heterosexual and homosexual communities. Moreover, we need to take into consideration the very different issues linked to transsexual, transvestite, and transgendered persons, which brings to mind the notion of transphobia.
There is very clearly a difference in mechanisms between gayphobia and lesbophobia, and this translates into different types of aggression. Where the collective imagination over-sexualizes gay men and exerts strong verbal and physical violence against boys and men who are not considered "sufficiently masculine / heterosexual; for women, on the other hand, the assertion of their lesbian identity will be further disqualified, minimized, reduced to a fad, or even sexualized as a prelude to heterosexuality.
I'd say that many religious bigots and other MTF transphobes feel more threatened by trans females like me because they are homophobic and incorrectly peg us as gay when we are trans. They probably have less fear of FTM trans men they might incorrectly peg as lesbian. Gayphobia is probably more frequent in America than lesbianphobia. Transphobia is more frequent than either gayphobia or lesbianphobia.
2013, Karen K. Kirst-Ashman, Brooks/Cole Empowerment Series: Human Behavior in the Macro Social Environment, (page 59):
A major problem LGBTQ people face is gayphobia or homophobia, the irrational “fear and hatred” of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people (Morrow, 2008, p. 79).
