I have never rejected the dictionary definition. I have only shared the additional, less relevant personal criterion that I use to determine if that’s the right word in a given discussion.
I have never wavered from my criteria for using the word, nor from my agreement with the dictionary definition. So your continued repeating of the false meme is outrageous. Seriously, outrageous.
Also, your ad absurdum argument has the effect of misplacing the “burden of proof.” Your argument suggests the burden is on me, and Homebrew (e.g.) to exhaustively address and refute any possible hypthetical rational reason for prejudice; to make your argument for you, in other words; to prove a negative. This is not the way it works. The burden is on you to posit a rational reason for prejudice.
I’m not sure I buy the argument that prejudice based on ignorance is not bigotry. If someone reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and believes it to be true, they’re still an anti-Semite, right? Even if the only reason for their anti-Semitism is the fact that they believed a lie to be the truth?
I don’t disagree that a person’s homophobia might stem from misinformation. In fact, I take that as a given. That doesn’t change the fact that–for whatever reason–that person has an irrational prejudice against homosexuals. If they reach that opinion based on irrational misinformation, that doesn’t really change that.
In a case where someone has been fed misinformation from a source they trust, and they rationally process that misinformation to reach a conclusion that is prejudicial against homosexuals, I don’t “demonize” them. (This word has never been mine, by the way.) I never “blamed” my grandparents for adhering to their church’s teachings to support their prejudice. I don’t blame (much less demonize) a person whose prejudice is based upon ignorance and misinformation. But being able to trace a person’s reasons for homophobia–a church, a pamphlet, an urban legend, whatever–doesn’t alter the fact of that homophobia.
Granted, that’s a less “virulent” form of homophobia than, say, the same person holding fast to their homophobia in the face of further education, which is what I see magellan01 doing, for whatever that’s worth. But prejudice based in ignorance is still prejudice. Homophobia is just a specific type of prejudice, but it’s still prejudice.
The dictionary definition was quite short. It began with the word “irrational” modfying the brief text that followed. If you remove the word, you fundamentally change the definition. That is pretty much rejection by any standard.
No? You seem to be. Here is the definition from Merriam-Webster:
irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
Here is the definition from American Heritage:
a person who hates or fears homosexual people
You declared that any straight person who opposed adoption by homosexuals was homophobic by the narrowest definition. Yet, the narrowest definition requires either irrational fear, aversion, or discrimination or requires hates or fear. Thus, a person who did not fear or hate homosexuals and whose opposition to their participation in adoption was rational could not be defined as homophobic by the narrowest definition of the word. Your sole defense is that you lack the imagination to see where someone might have a rational basis for discrimination. (Rational does not require that it be correct, only that it proceded logically from either an understanding or a misunderstanding of facts.)
The only burden I have placed on you has been to treat a hypothetical stuation honestly rather than dismissing it based on your own beliefs.
Let me show you how a hypothetical situation works:
In all the silly fights over the existence of (a) god, one of the standard tactics is to provide a hypothetical situation. The situation does not have to be real; it is almost better if it is not. The point is to get one’s opponents to examine the source of their own beliefs, supposing some imagined event came true.
For example, the theists might propose to the atheists, "Would you change your belief in God if He came down from heaven before you, accompanied by all the angelic choirs, and spoke directly to your mind, “I am real.” The atheists might propose to the theists, “Would you change your belief in (a) God if we discovered verifiable documents from an alien race dating back hundreds of thousands of years and those documents, when translated, described the efforts of that alien race to perform tricks before various human communities followed by their planting of the idea that the tricks had been acts of a god and that the documents further explained that this was a psychological experiment by the aliens to discern what would happen if a rational creature was presented with irrational beliefs.” Now, neither of those hypothetical scenarios is likely to ever come true. The point, in each case, is to cause the holder of one view or another to examine their beliefs to see how they would change in the presence of overwhelming evidence against their current beliefs. It is valid to say “I will not play this game, because it will never happen” (although that sort of shortens the discussion). It is not valid to say that you can already see the holographic projectors displaying god on the clouds or that the alien documents could not survive hundreds of thousands of years.
So, too, with the example in this thread. If a situation was described in which a person, (gay in the case of magellan01’s example), came to an opinion regarding adoption by homosexuals that did not agree with yours, despite there being no evidence that they were, themselves, irrationally fearful of or hateful toward homsexuals, would that person be homophobic?
It is a legitimate point in such a discussion for you to raise the question “What logical, but not fear- or hate-driven motive could be behind such an opinion?” the author of the hypothetical needs to be able to provide some sort of basis for their scenario.* If the answer was was that that person had been molested as a youth, you would be correct in dismissing the claim, based on the probability that such an experience would instill an irrational fear or hatred. If the answer was that they were prompted in their belief by their religious teachings, you could point out that such teachings have not been shown to have a rational basis.
However, simply saying that “I can’t imagine a rational reason, so there cannot be one” does not address the hypothetical. Claiming that a gay person would be suffring self-loathing is an inappropriate change of the rules, because that was not stipulated by the author of the hypothetical and you have made no effort to determine what the author of the hypothetical believes to be the motivation.
I do not claim that there is any good reson to prevent homosexuals from adopting children. I do say that your claim that every person who held a contrary opinion must be prompted by homophobia is wrong. I will even go so far as to say that some sort of homophobia is far more likely than any other explanation, but you have made it an absolute condition and you have failed to demonstrate why that would be true, bsed on the dictionary definition of the word.
Unfortunately, unlike the word racsim, which has an “institutional” value, there is no similar “neutral” connotation to homophobia. Even with racism we generally distinguish between racism or racist beliefs and the calling of a person a racist. You may not choose to demonize a person when you use the word homophobe, but the word carries that stigma, regardless. If you can point to uses of the word outside your personal vocabulary where it is not intended as an insult, you will actually be speaking to the point that magellan01 raised when he started this thread:
Is there a context in which “homophobe” is not recognized as an insult and where can we see examples of such usage?
I suspect that if you wish to discuss the issues of “institutional homphobia,” someone should probably coin a new term closer to racism or sexism, because the current term has way to much baggage to get by.
Of course, if both sides agree, for the purpose of exploring a situation, the basis my be utterly outlandish, but both sides were hardly agreeing to the discussion, here.
Possible source of confusion: I never meant to suggest that only an irrational PERSON could be homophobic. A rational person can reach a conclusion, based on ignorance, that is actually an irrational conclusion.
That person is irrational only if he persists in his prejudice in the face of further “education” (for want of a better word).
Note, I don’t mean “irrational” as in insane, or anything like that. I mean irrational as opposed to intellectual. In this context, for example, a conclusion reached by a purely emotional process–the “ick” factor. e.g.–is irrational; i.e., not rational, or reasoned. A prejudice based entirely on the ick factor–a mainly emotional response–is not a rational prejudice, because it was not arrived at by reason, but by “gut.”
If someone tells you that there is research that conclusively proves that children raised by gay parents are more likely to commit suicide, and you believe the source, your belief that gay parents should not adopt was arrived at rationally. But the conclusion is based on false information, so the conclusion is not a rational conclusion.
In other words–and this is where I begin to think of flying monkeys with toolbelts–if you hypothesize a person who has no access to real information, and has only false information, and draws logical conclusions from that false information, then of course you wouldn’t say–from the omniscient perspective of the experimenting scientist who has isolated this person and controlled their access to information–that this hypothetical anomaly is (at least based only on this one piece of information) necessarily a homophobic person.
Does such a convoluted “yeah but what if [sup][to the power of infinity][/sup]” really have any illuminating value in this discussion? Isn’t this just a bizarrely baroque attempt to find the needle-in-a-haystack exception to the generality addressed by the dictionary definition?
How is it relevant, here, now? Magellan01 is not living in a controlled environment with carefully limited information, being kept entirely in the dark in:re the actual real world information that is available about gay people. So this still doesn’t exclude his secret prejudices from the dictionary defintion.
So what’s accomplished, by positing this sci-fi chink in the armor of the dictionary definition?
I think you seriously overestimate the general level of knowledge in the U.S. in making your claims. (Heck, the percent of people who accept the reality of the Theory of Evolution has gone in the wrong direction over the last ten years and a lot of people who accept the idea of evolution have only the fuzziest (mis)understanding of how it works. Why should the general level of knowledge regarding unexplained phenomena (such as the origins and prevalence of homosexuality) be better understood?)
As to your views of magellan01’s prejudices, they have a passing, but not direct, relationship to the actual topic of the thread, which was seeking a common understanding of the term homophobe, not whether someone would choose to stick that label on him.
Sorry I am so late in showing up. Having now slogged through this tome, I wish I had known about this thread; I had been avoiding GD on purpose, but I might have ventured in for this one. I feel that I had a part in starting (the first part) of this fight. Lemme go back and reorient myself with the BSA thread…
…well, I wasn’t the one brickbacon was referring to we he claimed someone was insulting him, but I had earlier said that the argument he was supporting was homophobic.
In an attempt to <erm> rehijack this thread back from tomndebb and lissener, allow me to answer some of what I have seen here.
…let me modify this slightly…
that any bias at all against a gay person simply based on that person being gay qualifies someone as a homophobe?
Now, yes, I would. In the same way that I would use the term “Christian” to refer to someone who professes belief in the existance of Jesus Christ the Savior. “Christians” can range from the kindly old lady who volunteers at a soup kitchen, reads for the blind, etc, to the fundamental extremist who volunteers to kill others for the cause of his faith.
Well, I’m glad you quoted that. I guess that pretty much is my definition. “A homophobe is one who is strongly partial to heterosexuals and is intolerant of homosexuals” would be a good way of stating it.
I honestly doubt that I am adding much of anything to this debate at this moment (as I am sure most once interested parties no longer are and have long since left), so I will wrap up with a quick list of people who have posted definitions with which I agree: Larry Borgia, in post 18, makes a couple of good points (echoed by Maureen in post 21, Diogenes the Cynic in post 26)
Also a good point. But I think the most common one is:
And I think this one (oddly enough, the first “non-go-look-it-up” post) actually hits the nail on the head in two important ways:
1.) An appropriate, concise, and usable definition
and
2.) The real reason we are here: it’s the only term in common use that seems to be right.
BTW, woudn’t the term be “sexual-preference-ist?” As racism is something like the choice of your race over another, “sexual-preference-ism” would be the choice of your sexual preference over another. 'Course, that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Maybe that’s why we use “homophobic.”
Are you suggesting that this discussion is ultimately not relevant to the “on the ground” reality of American life? Isn’t that an odd position to take, for someone who’s been arguing for the validity of a wholly hypothetical approach to the question?
Unless I’m reading it wrong, aren’t you trying to have it both ways? When I go concrete, you wave “yoo hoo” from the hypothetical side of the argument. When I play hypotheticals with you, you admonish me for sidestepping reality.
Right. And a consensus was reachecd early on, bewilderingly and consistently rejected by magellan01 because it continued, apparently, to include him. My elucidation, well in, regarding how I use the word, was only a (defensive) response to magellan’s (and Evil Captor’s, and others’) ad hominem focus on me and “my definition.”
Isn’t this all I’ve been saying? Is JustAnotherGeek going to be subject to the same ad hominem as I have been for essentially restating what I’ve been saying all along?
Hasn’t this, really, been the near consensus of this thread?
I responded to your extreme example, here, that made it sound as though 99.9% of North Americans know perfectly well that homosexuality is a situation and not a disorder and not a choice. That is clearly nonsense. I doubt that the overwhelming majority of people have any such understanding. The word “homophobe” is clearly pejorative when used by everyone else (and it is unclear, yet, whether you always consider it a pejorative, although that is how it usually sounds coming from your keyboard).
The effect of your statement was to say everyone who expresses any reluctance to embrace all homosexuals in all aspects of society are willfully being mean-spirited haters. That is why I explicitly noted that the word suffers in its current usage. We can point to racist beliefs and sexist beliefs and work with people to overcome those beliefs without claiming that a person holding those beliefs is virulently hateful toward persons of another race or sex. There is no way (in current North American usage) to label a person homophobic (using the standard dictionary definitions) without identifying them as willfully hateful toward homosexuals. By pretending that an ignorant person had to be one “who has no access to real information,” and claiming that such a person had to be a “hypothetical anomaly,” you distort the reality of the actual opinions of most people, many of whom are ignorant.
The purpose of the hypothetical was to break you free from your apparent knee-jerk reaction in which any expression of any idea that you believe to be prejudicial must be “homophobic.” Once that had been established, all the participants could have worked toward finding common ground to define where the hateful definition of “homophobic” ended and where some more neutral understanding of flawed reasoning might begin. You successfully avoided the “trap” of actually addressing the hypothetical, so we are left dancing around a word that means willful hatred to most users while applying it to people who may be mostly ignorant (and not willfully hateful).
As long as you include both people who choose to hate and people whose opinions are shaped by ignorance under the same word (while pretending that ignorance is limited to an infinitely miniscule portion of the population), thus drawing the line for willful hate in a way to include people who know that they are not intending to be hateful, you are going to get that sort of reaction.
A similar discussion does occur in the realms of racism and sexism, but there we can talk about institutional racism and unconscious racism, and while the discussions can still get acrimonious, we can move toward an understanding on the part of each side. By insisting that similar situations regarding homosexuality must be deliberate choices to hate (which is what the dictionary definitions declare), then you wind up simply throwing stones at people who might have been open to explore their misconceptions, except that whenever the topic comes up they are told that they choose to hate when they can look in their hearts and find no hatred.
Do you think the sexist and racists attitudes of the past changed because more enlightened individuals marginalized the attitude and made it socially unacceptable? Or did people change because they simply learned to be better people? Begging and pleading for rational acceptance is not working. It’s time to marginalize homophobic attitudes. It’s time to make them not socially acceptable. It’s time to confine them to the dustbin of history. If some ignorant punk from lily-white Fouke, Arkansas spouts racists attitudes about the hanging tree in the middle of town, we don’t try to convince him of the errors of his ways. We call him an ignorant punk and shame him. The same should happen to bigots who claim homosexuals are unfit to parent or don’t deserve equal rights. Why do you insist we be polite and deferring to people who deny us equality?
Do you think the sexist and racists attitudes of the past changed because more enlightened individuals marginalized the attitude and made it socially unacceptable? Or did people change because they simply learned to be better people? Begging and pleading for rational acceptance is not working. It’s time to marginalize homophobic attitudes. It’s time to make them not socially acceptable. It’s time to confine them to the dustbin of history. If some ignorant punk from lily-white Fouke, Arkansas spouts racists attitudes about the hanging tree in the middle of town, we don’t try to convince him of the errors of his ways. We call him an ignorant punk and shame him. The same should happen to bigots who claim homosexuals are unfit to parent or don’t deserve equal rights. Why do you insist we be polite and deferential to people who deny us equality?
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. - **Frederick Douglass. **
Hijack: my theory is that it took the both of them. King was a carrot; X was a stick. Scary radicals sometimes serve to extend the reaches of the political spectrum, making folks not quite as radical look reasonable by comparison, and making the opinions they advocate look far more appealing by contrast.
Tom. Dude. Take a step back. You have succeeded in changing the subject of this thread from the definition of homophobia to “how many angels can dance on the very tippy tip of this long, long limb I’ve Pied-Pipered you all out onto?”
Would you be constructing such elaborate houses of straw if the word under discussion was “racism,” rather than “homophobia”? Would you be suggesting that we can’t use the word “racism” as long as somewhere there’s a guy who’s been raised to be racist by his parents? (And would you be maintaining that everyone who insists on using the word anyway defines “racist” as “anyone who disagrees with me”?) “Homophobia” is to homosexuals what “racist” is to (e.g.) blacks. It’s specified kind of prejudice. Period. To hold the WORD hostage until every last ignorant homophobe (as opposed to malicious homophobe) is rooted out and educated is ludicrous beyond my capacity to express it.
The education of such a person, whose prejudice is rooted in ignorance, will quite probably begin with the realization that, like it or not, blame whatever external sources of misinformation, he is a homophobe (i.e., he is prejudiced against homosexuals). Realizing it is the first step to examining it and throwing some light on his ignorance. So “homophobe” is not a pretty word. What, and “racist” is?
And who cares anymore about 99.9% of whatever? Ignorance of the law is not an exemption. The entire culture can’t come to a screeching halt, held hostage by the ignorance of whatever remaining percentage of people who are still homophobic due to ignorance. To do so is certainly not doing them any favors; it’s supporting their complacency and making it far less likely they they’d even bother to examine their ignorance. You just aren’t making any sense.
A person who’s been raised by his parents to be a racist is a racist.
A person who’s been taught by his church to be a homophobe is a homophobe.
That’s all the word connotes. How you deal with it, or how it came to be, or whatever kind of peripheral issues arise, or are NOT addressed specifically by that word, are not addressed specifically by that word. A single Unified Theory of Homophobia, where one word can connote all possible causes and cures of every single individual exceptional case, is the strawiest straw man of this whole discussion.
A person who is prejudiced against homosexuals is a homophobe. Now, if you want to engage them further, and explore the causes of that homophobia, where have I suggested I have a problem with that? But to declare a mistrial because the entire proceedings gets derailed by a swirling storm of diversionary irrelevancies around the word “homophobia” serves NO purpose, except the furtherance of ignorance.
Strawman on the first point. Bullshit on the second.
I have made no call for begging and pleading. However, if you think that attitudes toward civil rights and toward blacks changed over throughout the 1950s and 1960s because everyone who expressed any racist opinion was immediately hauled out and tarred with the epithet “bigot” or “racist,” you either were not there or were not paying attention.
Racist attitudes were often attacked and there were many efforts to point out why specific beliefs or laws were racist even though their proponents did not initially see the racism. The people who were most often branded as bigots (or even racists) were the ones who actually demonstrated an attitude of in-your-face contempt or hatred.
And, as I have already pointed out, it is possible to discuss the racist effects of certain attitudes or beliefs without resorting to name-calling. Look at the meaning of the word racism. It can mean someone who hates people of other races; it can also mean someone who holds a belief that one race is either superior to or inferior to another race. One can challenge that belief of racial superiority or inferiority in many ways without attacking the person who holds those beliefs. In fact, the primary way that the attitudes were changed was to show that the beliefs were based on errors of fact, not that the person was a spiteful hater.
With homophobia, however, there is no equivalent alternative meaning. It simply means someone who hates or fears homosexuals. If you are seeking to change a person’s views regarding homosexuality and the first thing you do put a label of “hater” or “fearful” on them, where do you go next?
Why did you whine over so many posts that the definition was clear and could be found in the dictionary if you are going to deny the dictionary definition and invent a new one?
Dictionary definitions:
Merriam-Webster: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
American Heritage:
*a person who hates or fears homosexual people *
Nothing in your newest definition includes hate or fear, just prejudice.
Nothing in your definition relies on irrationality.
Period.
You have changed the meaning from what you initially claimed to be using. Your new meaning allows for misunderstasndings and confusion and does not require active hatred or fear by the person who is homophobic. Yet the definition that you insisted on does require hatred or fear and does require that the person so described actively engage in those passions. There is no room in the dictionary definition for the person who simply has an error in understanding.
Actually, I suspect that the dictionary definition is closer to its real usage, meaning that when you toss out the epithet “homophobia,” your audience is going to understand you to mean that the person so described is morally deficient. By using two separate definitions, you get to play both sides of the aisle: you get to call people morally deficient, (even when they may be simply misled) and then you get to stand back and say “Oh, I did not mean that” even though the common understanding of the word conveys that meaning.