In the sense of “Holocaust apologist” - claiming something doesn’t/didn’t happen that obviously did/does.
Apologies for the confusion. It’s not your fault - I also have always wondered how you could be an apologist when you claim nobody’s to blame.
That’s not a Holocaust Apologist; that’s a Holocaust denier.
And apologist is someone who makes arguments in support of something, usually with the connotation that those arguments are unjustified.
The term “Holocaust Apologist,” in other words, would most likely be used only by a Holocaust Denier to describe people who argued in support of the actuality of the Holocaust.
Just so you know.
Woah, woah, woah. Back up a second here, Sparky. You’re saying that because I don’t believe homosexuality and pedophilia is the same, I’m claiming that pedophilia does not exist? Or am I just claiming that same-sex pedophilia doesn’t exist? I’d really like to know, Evil Death, just what do you think I’m saying?
More along the lines of “We didn’t do it”, which is why I used the word “apologist” instead of “denial”.
lissener, I’m fairly sure you have that backwards. A Holocaust apologist might have a conversation like this:
Holocaust Apologist: German soldiers never engaged in mass murder.
Society: What about Babi Yar? We know that happened.
HA: No it didn’t.
Society: We found 6,000 bodies in a ravine, dude.
HA: They must have tripped.
Society: And the bullets in the backs of their necks?
HA: Perhaps brave German soldiers came upon the scene and, in the course of trying to retrieve the bodies, accidentally discharged their rifles into them.
Society: 6,000 times?
<pause>
HA: German soldiers never engaged in mass murder.
Strangely, you’re right: I just googled the phrase, and it’s used as you describe. Very rarely --87 hits, compared to 19,300 for “holocaust denier”–but nonetheless used as you described.
Not that this makes your point more coherent, but I like to be on the side of good language usage :).
Daniel
Sigh. Can’t we agree that hating homosexuals due to traumatic childhood experiences is not correct, but still rational, as per the start of this mini-trainwreck?
After all, it makes perfect sense to assume that males with a predilection towards other adult males are more likely to have a predilection towards male children as well. It’s rational. It also happens to be wrong.
This also brings up a topic related to the OP: namely, not just the definition of “homophobe”, but the definition of “homosexuality”. Unless you torture the definition to include only those that perceive themselves as homosexual, or to only include consensual, adult relationships, then the two acts of homosexual pedophilia and homosexual adult sex are remarkably similar.
Similar enough that when I hear the term “homosexual acts”, I am just as likely to think of homosexual pedophilic acts as I am to think of pedophilic acts when I hear the term “sexual acts”. Not very much, mind you, but still, the point stands.
So it’s also completely rational to think that some homosexuals are pedophiles to the same extent as heteros. I personally have not decided if the term should be applied to homosexual pedophiles or not, since they are such a separate population from gerontophilic homosexuals despite engaging in homosexual acts.
Are you sure? I would take a Holocaust apologist to be someone who defended the Holocaust, or at least attempted to explain the reasoning behind it, rather than someone who denied that it ever happened. In this particular cases I suspect many “deniers” are merely putting on a show of disbelief because their “apologist” views would be even less popular, so it may be difficult to distinguish between the two. But a Christian apologist certainly isn’t someone who think that Christianity is a hoax.
I just did the same Google search, and it’s not clear to me that the term is used to describe people who think the Holocaust wasn’t real rather than those who think it was both real and a swell idea. I admittedly cannot bring myself to do more than skim the material the search turned up, but “Holocaust apologist” seems to be used as a rough synonym for neo-Nazi.
Personally, I use it as a precise synonym for “fuckwit” - in one direction, anyway. It saves typing.
As for why “apologist”, an apology can mean an excuse or a reason not to be blamed for something as well as the conventional usage of saying sorry.
Hmm…that’s possible, but I don’t think so. It could be that the phrase is idiomatic–somebody coined the phrase without entirely understanding its literal meaning, and a few other people picked up on it.
Like I said, it’s very rarely used, but I didn’t think it was being used to describe people who advocated the Holocaust, in the same way that “Christian apologists” are folks who advocate Christianity.
Even so, Evil Death’s point is far too opaque for me.
Daniel
Starving Artist’s qualification was that he does not concede that the word “xenophobia” is in common usage.
The debate over whether it is would constitute yet another hijack, and I advise against pursuing it here.
Of course, this entire thread is a trainwreck, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Evil Death, I get the impression that you are moving the goalposts from one point to the next. In your hypothetical, you allow for a man to be pathologically afraid of gays because of having been raped by a friend of his father [a pedophile] as a child. When it was pointed out that homosexuality and pedophilia are not the same, you abandoned the hypothetical of the little boy, and began insisting that it is rational to ascribe homophobia to child-rape, on the grounds that somepedophiles are gay.
It would have been more useful if you had made the hypothetical pedophile gay in the first place. But it’s too late now. Sure, you can say: “I expected everyone to presume the homosexuality of the pedophile; everybody knows that,” but I don’t think you’re going to, somehow.
As it happens, the manuals of psychiatric/psychological/mental disorders does not list “homophobia” as a treatable clinical disorder. This is not to say that no mentally disturbed individuals exist, whose disorder manifests as a pathological fear of [perceived] homosexuals. But their medical charts do NOT list “homophobia” in the space for diagnosis.
“Homophobia,” “homophobic,” and “homophobe” are sociopolitical, not medical or psychological, terms. It is dishonest to characterize them as other than sociopolitical, particularly for the purposes of making sociopolitical points.
What does my being gay have to do with anything?
You did not say “homosexuality is not paedophilia.” look!ninjas said that. Three times. And you called that “mealy-mouthed apologist bullshit.” And I responded in kind, because you were being a belligerent ass.
That’s why I invited you to re-read her (?) post again. You say “of course the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘pedophile’ aren’t interchangeable,” which is exactly what look!ninjas said, and then go off arguing against some imaginary people who are apparently saying that there are absolutely no gay men who are pedophiles. Who exactly is the “moron” here?
And as I pointed out, the reason you’re getting so much shit for it is because there are plenty of people who, unlike you, do believe that gay people are promiscuous, lustful, and indiscriminate in their sexual proclivities, just waiting for the opportunity to anally rape somebody, anybody, young or old, male or female. And it’s pretty goddamn annoying to have to be expected to defend against that. That’s not “apologist bullshit,” that’s not “politically correct,” that’s just saying “lay the fuck off.”
Look it up, sport. I did.
So . . . 87 incorrect usages somehow convinces you that it is, in contrary fact, correct? Wouldn’t the rarity of its use support the actual fact that it’s incorrect?
And perhaps the reason it’s used so rarely is that it makes no sense, and “Holocaust Denier” is in fact the correct term. That there are 87 people out there who have used the incorrect term is, frankly, more in support of my original post on the matter.
Also, I looked it up before I posted.
Further, ED, an apology is an admission of responsibility; you’re using it totally contrary to its meaning.
This entire post is about your own uneducated impressions of the subject. Fortunately, you don’t have to depend upon that as the only source of information, because there’s a lot of information out there. Which is a good thing since your impressions happen to be wrong.
Yes, I can understand why this might lead you to the misapprehension that “apologist” carries all the connotations of a related, but distinct, word like “apology.” Luckily, there’s a very easy remedy for this reasonable but incorrect assumption: you can look it up.
Evil Death, I know what “apologist” means. It does not derive from “apology” but from the related “apologia”, which is a defense or explanation of one’s position or actions. (See the Christian apologists, or you could go all the way back to the apologia of Socrates.) It was the correct word to use only if you intended to say that look!ninjas was attempting to defend or justify pedophilia.
I stand corrected. You answered every one of the manifold inaccuracies of my post with aplomb.
Thanks, Sol. I am, indeed, a she.
I will admit to causing some of the confusion. The end of my first post says “Gay men do not rape little boys, full stop,” which is a little inaccurate. The problem is that there are two groups of people who rape children - pedophiles and child molestors. Pedophiles are attracted sexually to children - they are not aroused or are only barely aroused by adults (either gender, doesn’t matter.) Child molesters are equally or primarily sexually attracted to adults, and can therefore be described as straight or gay. Here’s a link for that. Pedophilia is a sexual attraction, and if a pedophile acts on their urges, it’s probably in the belief that there’s some sort of romantic/sexual relationship there. A child molester is much more akin to a rapist.
So you’d think that homosexuals are no more likely to be child molesters than straight people. Actually, it turns out that homosexuals are much less likely to be child molestors. Link. Link. The majority of child molesters, even those who assault children of their own gender, self-identify as being straight.
Is it technically possible for a gay man to molest a small boy? Yeah, technically. Is it likely that he will? Hell no. Is it rational for someone to fear gay people because they were a victim of same-sex assault as a child? Not at all. If anything, they should fear the straight guys. And as has been previously stated, homosexuals cannot be pedophiles. It’s a totally different orientation.
Apologetic enough for you?