Is there a word that means “a hatred of gay people”, rather than “a fear of or aversion to gay people”? Surely there are people who simply hate homosexuality without necessarily fearing it, and vice versa. Someone who hates homosexuality should probably be condemned for their unreasonable and hateful prejudices, but should someone who actually fears homosexuality but without hating it be condemned in the same way? Why isn’t there a distinction?
And similarly, why do we have words like “arachnophobia” which means a fear of something (not necessarily a hatred of it; though you might hate what you fear, that isn’t necessarily always the case, nor is the opposite always true either (fearing what you hate)), but “homophobia” is used to mean “hatred of homosexuality” rather than a genuine fear of it without necessarily hating it?
It makes me feel a bit sorry (as much as one can) for people who might genuinely be afraid of the idea of homosexuality, maybe even struggling with their own sexuality or possibly in denial of being homosexual themself, but without hating it at all (even possibly being supportive of it), not having a word that conveys a fear of the concept/phenomenon without any kind of disdain for it, since “homophobia” would generally be interpreted to mean something far more negative. Usually when someone has a phobia for something, we support them to deal with it in a non-accusatory way, but in this case, well, I guess there isn’t even a word for that kind of phobia if it’s actually a phobia in the usual sense.
homosexism
gaycism
What an absurd (and arguably harmful) distinction to make. Nobody is “afraid of homosexuality” for reasons unrelated to homophobia.
Pretty sure the word you’re seeking is homophism
I couldn’t find any record of this, could you possibly provide some reference?
I actually think the word should be sexualism https://www.wordnik.com/words/sexualism
Fear leads to panic, panic leads to pain, pain leads to anger, anger leads to hate.
Then may I propose a neologism: “Homosexualism” or “Homosexism” (discrimination of homosexual people)? Or alternatively “FOHO” (fear of homosexuality)? It would be interesting if another word already existed though.
Xenophobia and racism are not related. Xenophobia is about foreigners regardless of race, and racism is about race regardless of nationality. The two get mixed in the head of people from the USA because a lot of guys claim they’re Irish or Italian without ever having set foot in any of those countries. If you dislike your [insert ethnicity] neighbour who was born and grew up in the same place as you did, you’re being racist. If you dislike your [insert nationality] neighbour who’s the same ethnicity as you, you’re being xenophobic.
-phobia means an irrational intolerance, for a lot of things we express intolerance by showing fear, but to others we show aggressiveness. It depends more on the person than the subject matter, some homophobics are actually afraid of gays, thinking they’ll corrupt the children or whatever stupid fearmongering propaganda they’re up to these days, meanwhile some arachnofobics will kill every spider they see. And their line of thought is often quite similar, e.g. I don’t hate [gays/spiders], I just don’t want to see them.
Every European: “but my hatred of the French is prefectly rational, does that mean it’s not xenophobia?”
Europe is not just UK. UK isn’t even EU anymore, and I have never seen negative sentiments towards french people in the rest of Europe.
I hoped it’d be read as sarcasm
It’s not a serious hatred, but most major/Western European nations (at least Germany, UK, Spain, Italy and probably France themselves) have at least a friendly rivalry with the French despite being on friendly terms either since 1945 or even longer, with France having been fairly positive for Europe since at least the 80s, so it’s incredibly hard to justify that the “hatred” of them is rational
Although the Italians may have twisted it into a surprisingly valid case, just ask about how almost all famous French food is just Italian recipes with a French name and they will be incredibly convincing even if it may not be objective fact
As a German, I can assure you, there are plenty of people with negative sentiments
I lived in Rhineland-Palatinate when I was young and I remember asking my neighbors why every Saturday they all came out to trim their grass and sweep their sidewalks and gutters clean. They said it was to show that they are not French.
and racism is about race regardless of nationality.
I don’t understand it, but I met an American who doesn’t like African Americans, but has no issues with actual Africans.
He’s racist, “African-American” means black, i.e. an ethnicity not a nationality, he doesn’t mind Africans because they’re not near him. A similar thing for a xenophobe would be I have no problem with Mexicans, it’s the Mexican immigrants I hate. Or from an aracnophobe: I understand spiders have their place in nature, I just don’t want them in my house.
Heterosexist.
See also heteronormativity. The latter is a major cause of the former.
Sexism.
I’ve seen the word homomisia and the general suffix -misia used to reflect that a lot of “phobias” really mean hatred and not fear.
I don’t have an answer, I just wanted to say it blew my mind that I never thought about this
deleted by creator
Could have been but unfortunately I don’t think it really fits based on that definition… I think it’s like being homosexual and yet hating (or fearing) homosexuals. The type of person I described may or may not be homosexual (or closeted) themself, but is simply afraid of the concept, without the negative connotation of an implication of hatred.
However that reminds me that I was also wondering about what to call racism toward one’s own race, since “internalized racism” seems to describe being racist to your own race as a result of discrimination that you’ve already experienced, almost like a Stockholm syndrome type thing where you begin to sympathise with your oppressor for a sense of safety or belonging (or something), but someone can certainly be racist toward their own race even if they’ve never experienced discrimination based on their race before and even if they’re not generally a discriminated race.
The suffix -misia meana hatred. Both -misia and -phobia come from Greek.
isn’t misia used as a prefix? As in Misanthrop or Misogyn
Yes, miso- is also a prefix.
You’re absolutely correct that “(anything)phobic” is not an appropriate term for bigotry. Being phobic is as much a choice people make as being gay is, and of all the various groups, classes, etc. the gay community ought to understand.
The issue you’ll run into is common sense, and it’s lack of being common ;). Good luck trying to get people to understand, accept, acknowledge, etc.
xenophobia : racism :: racism : homosexuality
You’re trying to take a prescriptivist position on the meaning of the word “homophobia”, defining it as meaning “fear of homosexuality or homosexuals”.
But English doesn’t work that way. English words are defined descriptively not prescriptively. The definition of a word is changed to match how people use the word. When a word is commonly used with a new meaning the people who make dictionaries will change the definition to match how the word is used.
Homophobia can describe a fear or homosexuality, but it’s more commonly used to describe hostility or discrimination against homosexuals.
And as a result the Oxford English Dictionary now defines homophobia as “Hostility towards, prejudice against, or (less commonly) fear of homosexual people or homosexuality.”
Most words that end in -phobia do generally just describe a fear. But when we’re talking about a class of people, words ending in -phobia (e.g transphobia, Islamophobia, etc) we tend to use the hate, prejudice, and hostility meaning instead.
It doesn’t matter that “phobias” were at one time exclusively just irrational fears. If the majority of English speakers use the word to describe hate, that’s its meaning.
If anything, we now need a new word to describe “fear of homosexuality without prejudice towards homosexuals”. Because homophobia already means, to use your words, “a hatred of gay people”.
Fears also takes more forms than staying away from something. People with what you might define as more conventional phobias would avoid the thing they don’t like (maybe spiders), many would hate the thing and others may even seek to destroy it.
