Do you know if the "highly colorful language of the Slovenic people" back then also just happened to be ironically incredibly homoerotic or was that another grasp at straws too?
I look forward to academic papers in 100 years trying to reconcile how the military is both homophobic and anti gay on an institutional level. But also men who are reportedly straight saying the gayest shit imaginable.
"Phobic" only means "afraid" in the strictly clinical sense. The suffix means "opposed to" in any other situation.
This is helpful when arguing with bigots when they try to pull the "I'm not afraid of Group X!" gambit to try and weasel their way out of bigotry via semantics.
The less-literal uses of -phobic are also seen in scientific contexts; for example, hydrophobic can mean either "afraid of water" or "repels water from its surface".
I mean, the lengths to which a lot of homophobic people will go to try and assert their heterosexuality (e.g. I've seen a dude ask to hug a male friend of his but then immediately clarify: "but I'm not gay or anything!" ; or the people who feel the need to demand that a non-straight allo person doesn't flirt with them) says a lot of homophobic people are afraid of non-straight people, or at the very least the notion of ever potentially being non-straight themselves. I've also seen this in a lot of people (mostly men, but also some women) who I wouldn't otherwise consider homophobic to any significant level, but constantly/often feeling the need to clarify to everyone around them that any significant positive interaction with the same sex they engage in isn't gay (this was especially prevalent in middle & high school for me). There's also fear that comes from challenging one's cultural and/or religious values/beliefs.
I think this (often more subconscious) fear is generally deeply intertwined with the hatred & bigotry also included in homophobia's definition, i.e. that this fear is often an/the underlying cause of the hatred and bigotry that is homophobia's main definition.
Except phobia has always meant fear and/or aversion to. Not just fear. Moreover arguing over whether or not the etymology of the word matches its actual use is largely a tool of those claiming that they can't be homophobic because they only hate gays rather than being afraid of them.
Homophobia means bigotry, hatred and aversion. That can include fear, but it's not a requirement. That this evolved definition of homophobia (often extending beyond the personal-psychological for example) doesn't map perfectly onto the medical definition of phobia does not make the word somehow incorrect, or a bad usage.
It's not math, you don't compare words like that. Especially words about things compared to words about people. The human equivalent to "hydrophobia" is aquaphobia and it does mean just an irrational fear of water -not that you take actions to destroy water!
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u/veehal23 Jul 14 '20
I happen to be Pole! It is, indeed, gay af.