Look, I have had enough of this semantic game. Being prejudiced against someone for any reason might make you a bigot, and an asshole, but it doesn’t make you “phobic” of them. If I don’t like gay people, for whatever reason, why is it assumed that I’m afraid of them?
If you don’t like Jews, you’re an anti-Semite. If you don’t like blacks or any other race, you’re a racist. If you’re against women, you’re sexist or chauvinistic. But if you aren’t a fan of gays, you’re AFRAID OF THEM.
What the hell?
Could everyone just stop it with the “homophobe” name calling? If you want to say anti-gay, say it. If you want to say bigot, just say it.
Informal surveys have revealed, to me at least (and some other folks) that ultimately dislike for gay people is borne mostly of ignorance and fear. YMMV.
I’d say more, but someone more eloquent will come along very soon and explain it better than I could. It has to do with those particular heterosexuals feeling threatened and latency and all that good stuff, but I’d make a muck of it, so I’ll wait for **matt_mcl ** or **Otto ** or Mockingbird to do it right.
Of course, “anti-semitic” isn’t used, and understood, to mean “someone who is opposed to semitic people”. Rather, it’s used and understood to mean “someone who is opposed to Jews”.
Similarly, “homophobia” doesn’t mean what you might think it would mean based on its roots. Deal with it.
No, no, no. Because it has a very different implication.
Call me a homophobe and you’re saying I’m afraid of homosexuals. But I’m not. I might hate homosexuals, but I’m not afraid of them. (I don’t actually hate them, I’m using the generic “I” here.)
In fact I doubt most people are afraid of homosexuals, and I doubt most people have latent gay urges. And I doubt most people to whom that label is applied have actual FEAR of homosexuals. More like annoyance. Most of them probably are annoyed the “gay” attitude and the “gay” voice and the body language and the very obvious, very real physical attributes that many, though not all, homosexual men display. That’s not the same as fear, do you understand?
Just because it’s a “semantic” thing doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate:
That bit about “lacking an affinity for” kinda sorta means “not liking.” People who “not liking” spiders stomp on 'em.
People who “not liking” open spaces avoid them
People who “not liking” enclosed spaces structure their lives around avoiding closed in spaces.
People who “not liking” high places cling tightly to what they believe will support them when confronted with a high place.
People who “not liking” closets … oh wait …
People who “not liking” gays display all of the above reactions.
Try looking up the definition of the word homophobia.
Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men. For better or worse, that’s what the word has come to mean, and it’s being used correctly.
For the record, I think that the idea that people who claim to be against homosexuality are afraid that they’re homosexuals themselves, is utter bullshit. But “homophobia” makes more sense to me than anything else. I can have sympathy for someone who is ignorant or afraid of homosexuality. I can’t muster any sympathy for someone who just has outright contempt for me because of it.
It’s just a word, like fucking faggot bastard, queer motherfucker, fucking pervert, sick twisted bastard, goddam fairy freak, and lots of other words that are tossed at us everyday. I think you got stuck with a cooler, more highbrow sounding word. On the other hand, it sounds an awful lot like hydrophobia, and maybe that was on purpose. Get over it.
Cf. ignorance, which my last post addressed. Ignorance tends to hate and fear.
In other news, today I spent the first few minutes of class inking over the work of someone who had written “FAG” on the back of a seat. I am fairly sure that this was not applied to me (I have been in that seat more than once this semester, but then so have several other people, and I am fairly non-flaming), but it was still distasteful in extremis. Below it was written something like “I don’t give two shits cause I’m GAY.” There has been graffiti going back and forth between one group and another on the back of this chair, evidently. I couldn’t think of anything to which I ought to change the GAY bit, so I scrawled “bigotry is ugly” below it. There wasn’t enough room for “homophobia.”
FAG is still legible, but it does not stand out nearly as much as it originally did. I wanted to erase it completely, but I lacked Windex. Beside that, erasing it would just be giving that same person the room to re-write it.
But it’s not. As several people have pointed out, the root word -phobia means fear or ** aversion to. When I have a migraine, I am photophobic**. I have an aversion to light, I’m not really afraid of it.
