When JK used the word “Homophobe” he was probably making a concession, unnecessary though it was, to Ms. Westwood. It was an unfortunate use of the word in the context of his argument.

He did do well to point out however, that the terms Ms. Westwood used did not belong in any rational discussion. He was right to point this out to her, since (he says) she is a young person and the sooner she drops these bad habits the better.

I have been taught that people who feel constrained to resort to ad hominems are either lazy, and unmannerly, or know they haven’t got a leg to stand on.

If Ms. Westwood wants her “arguments” to be taken seriously she must actually have some that she can present, so she would not have to wield the twin clubs of insult and injury.

For 70 years capitalists sparred with communists and I don’t recall once hearing a partisan of one side tell a proponent of the other that he was off his rocker.

Using a term like “homophobia” does not further the discussion. It is deliberately intended to short-circuit it, and it seems to me you are putting yourself through fantastic cognitive backflips and somersaults in order to deny that.

Homophobia, as you perfectly well know, is THE accusation used against anyone who object to the homosexual-rights agenda for any reason. It is the go-to insult used by homosexual and their allies because it is designed to END all debate.

Perhaps it’s a manifestation of the so-called therapeutic culture we are said to inhabit nowadays. In my opinion it most resembles the classic Freudian con of “repression” wielded by the analyst toward an analysand who for some reason just can’t seem to remember the critical sexual traumas of childhood that are responsible for his condition. “Get with the program! You’re avoiding the truth because of repression.” Substitute “homophobia” for “repression,” and you have the substance of an argument to be deployed against anyone anytime, which is no accident. That’s the task the term was intended to accomplish from inception. We don’t even have to speculate about the matter.

At the risk of shocking you, I would claim that even in the case of someone who viciously assaults and, perhaps, kills a homosexual primarily because he’s homosexual, “homophobia” is a very ill-advised word to use to explain a murder. It’s a deplorable trivialization of a horrific crime, for one thing, like calling an NFL tackle “aggressive.” Second, because the word has no clinical content, it doesn’t seem to mean much more than a dislike of the particular homosexual who is murdered, which more than likely had nothing to do with fear, and so does not serve the cause of understanding at all. the world is not short of murderers whose motivations have nothing to do with their being “irrationally afraid” of their victims.

Now I don’t know if those using the term are confused about its meaning or just opportunistic and intellectually lazy. It is a faux clinical term for an ailment that clinicians do not recognize, an
all-purpose, unfalsifiable red herring whose use should be aggressively confronted and discouraged.

Joe Sansonese,

Because all the words I mentioned are in the dictionary (Merriam-Webster Unabridged), and the ones you mention are not.

The point you seem incapable of recognizing let alone admitting is that in plain English not one of them is a compliment.

Describing someone as homophobic is not meant to be a compliment. It is also not necessarily meant to be a slander. But allow me to point out here that the only people who have been described as homophobic are “homophobes who literally assaulted gays” in Joseph Knippenberg’s original post.

You clearly think so. Big whoop, and who cares but you? What one may not do assume that ANYONE is irrational in advance of any evidence. So I am sorry, you don’t get to steal a march to the high ground in that way and will have to climb down from the mountain. You’ll suffer fewer nosebleeds.

Might we try to keep this civil? I am merely trying to discuss the meaning of the word homophobia. I have not said, nor do I believe, that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is necessarily homophobic. I do not believe that anyone who considers homosexuality immoral is necessarily a homophobe. I do believe that some are, and I do believe that people who mock, ridicule, beat up, and occasionally kill gay people just because they are gay can reasonably be called homophobic.

That the “phobia” in “photophobia” is understood to mean “intolerance” is not particularly relevant; it is undoubtedly a synecdoche. One could mention “hydrophobia” (water fear), also non-psychiatric. The point is that true phobias are illnesses. They have clinical symptoms such as loss of appetite, sleeplessness, and tension. Introducing a word like homophobe, apart from being unnecessary, to denote someone who objects, say, to legalizing homosexual marriage, is like imputing “copulosis” to someone who enjoys regular sexual intercourse. Why should anyone put up with ridiculous, not to mention Orwellian, parti pris characterizations? There is no reason.

“Phobos” in Greek means “fear” and nothing but. Phobos and Demos—Fear and Panic—are the sons of Ares, God of War, whose name, at least in Homer, who regularly calls him “andreïphontes”, “man-slaughtering,” is a synonym for havoc, mayhem, and generally nothing good at all. Its use in forming the neologism “homophobia” is malicious and there is simply no prettying it up.

The fact that it is not pretty does NOT mean banning its use, only that it cannot be pointed out enough that anyone comfortable using it is a slanderer and a slob. Push the filth thing right back in his face.
Homophobia was coined by a physician precisely to describe a “fear” of homosexuals or, in some cases, a paranoid fear that one might oneself BE homosexual. It is not recognized as a medical condition by doctors. The justification in using it is stigmatization of one side in the current debate over homosexuality, nakedly displacing the controversy from one concerned with public morality to one concerned with private sanity.

Even in the case of so-called gay-bashers, which is no more a legal term than homophobia is a medical one, it is sheer assumption that what motivates such an assault is fear. It might be. But it is even more likely, I would suggest, that “disgust” is the motivating factor. Clearly disgust can be no justification for an assault on another to anyone but an assailant and should be dealt with as a crime, one possessing no more metaphysical significance than any other assault of similar severity.

Disgust, along with regret, shame, sorrow, and so forth, but usually not fear, are sometimes called “affective intuitions” by psychologists and without any simultaneous inference of mental illness in anyone exhibiting one of them. They are in fact for the most part laudable sentiments, whatever their origins within us may be. Whether they are discoverable in sundry evolutionary pressures on the species or, as St. Paul suggests, “are inscribed on the fleshy tablets of the heart” instilling the Christian virtue of temperance is enough to keep such emotions under control, not writing a prescription for Haldol, which quite frankly serves to trivialize the problem.

“anglophobia, francophobia, germanophobia, russophobia.”

Why not throw in sinophobia, hispanophobia, indophobia, and so on if all you are interested in is pointlessly multiplying synonyms. Are you serious? Loggorhea to one side, those words all describe ONE thing called xenophobia, “fear of foreigners.” The point you seem incapable of recognizing let alone admitting is that in plain English not one of them is a compliment. All are pejoratives: xenophobia is defined as an IRRATIONAL fear of foreigners. A technophobe has an irrational fear of technology. A francophobe is unreasonably afraid of Frenchmen. Must I go on? You are grasping at straws here to evade the plain meaning in words.

A homophobe would be someone with an irrational fear of homosexuals, yet it is employed indiscriminately to anyone opposing the homosexual-rights agenda, amounting to promiscuous question begging. Whether someone who opposes homosexual marriage is rational or not would in fact seem to be the very point at issue. You clearly think so. Big whoop, and who cares but you? What one may not do assume that ANYONE is irrational in advance of any evidence. So I am sorry, you don’t get to steal a march to the high ground in that way and will have to climb down from the mountain. You’ll suffer fewer nosebleeds.

Any word containing the ending “phobia,” as does homophobia, ALWAYS conveys and is intended to convey a sense of irrationality, which means mentally disordered, by the way, and if you are capable of ordinary English comprehension you know that perfectly well.

To top it all off, the man who invented the term, in 1969, the execrable Dr. George Weinberg in his book “Society and the Healthy Homosexual,” explicitly characterizes homophobia as a “clinical problem.” But of course that has had no bearing or consequences for its use later.

jfm,

I think you have made a good point. Also, remember technophobia, computerphobia, and xenophobia. And consider anglophobia, francophobia, germanophobia, russophobia, etc. In pop psychology there’s also commitment-phobia. None of these are intended to describe clinical conditions.

I still think ‘homophobia’ is not a useful word in debates. Of course, no words should be banned. But when someone accuses another of homophobia in a debate, it comes across as an ad hominem attack and not an attack on the substance of the argument. Re. sodomite. Same thing — ad hominem and not part of a true discussion.

The word is NEVER a proper or even a useful word but is instead a misleading one that was (a) coined about 40 years ago by a San Francisco psychiatrist who was very prominent in the homosexual-rights movement (b) and deliberately intended to stigmatize objections to homosexual conduct as a result of “fear” of homosexuals and having sort of scientific foundation that is entirely counterfeit and has no clinical content whatsoever.

Only an ignoramus could believe that attaching a Greek root to a word is all that is necessary to create an illness. Yet that is what was done in the case of “homophobia.” It is moreover illiterate. “homo” in Greek means only “the same.” Homophobia would mean, therefore, “fear of the same.” The same what?

Since it has no objective basis in medicine, what is the purpose of choosing a substantial form that suggests it does? To ask the question is to answer it. It’ s intended as a put down. Arguing that it is anything more than an insult is. It is a variety of what more honestly would be called a lie.

Use of he word “homophobe” is a clumsy and fairly contemptible way of saying that hose who object to homosexual behavior on moral grounds are clinically crazy. It really shouldn’t be tolerated any more than tolerance or understanding should be extended to anyone claiming that to be pro-homosexual rights is to be homophilic.