Some might argue that "homophobia" is an excellent word. It conjures up images of jack-booted skinheads, swilling beer and spitting insults while inwardly recoiling in horror at the sight of a pair of men holding hands. Mindless thugs who associate any intimacy between men with weakness, a weakness that they cannot face in themselves and that terrifies them. It's an evocative image all right, and it provokes a predictable response: homophobes are at worst scum and at best misguided; the men holding hands aren't hurting anyone; leave them alone. I don't believe that "homophobia" is an excellent word. I'll admit that it's a powerful word, but I also think it's a dishonest one.
Pretty much everyone between twenty-five and seventy in North America today read George Orwell's 1984 on their way through the school system. 1984 taught the world many things, one of the most influential being that you can manipulate how people respond to something by changing the way they talk about it.
"Homophobia" fits right into this category. After all, if you want to discredit a group of people, if you want to invalidate their ideas and trivialize their concerns, a powerful one-two punch is to first label what they believe as "fear" or "hatred" and then lump them in with a bunch of yahoos and crazies who really are either afraid or filled with hate. Then, anyone who dares say anything incorrect can immediately be marginalized by slapping a label on them, a label like "homophobic."
What "homophobia" really means is "fear of the same" or, in the context in which we use it, "fear of same-sex relationships." The linguistic slight-of-hand that is going on here is the labeling of all that is anti-gay as being rooted in "fear." Since nobody has bothered inventing any other word for "objecting to the gay lifestyle" or "against gay politics," the word "homophobic" is slathered around like mustard at a weenie roast, landing on violent thugs and thoughtful dissenters alike.
Once one sees the trick, it's easy to have some fun with it by making up some new "shock" terminology for other opinions that are all the rage these days:
"Androphobia" would be a great word for almost anything that explicitly or implicitly slams men, from rabies-infected feminists like Catherine MacKinnon and Patricia Ireland to the women who lunch together at the office and giggle at how stupid men are. After all, they all dislike men or find men foolish because deep inside they're afraid of us, right? What we're really saying by calling them "adrophobes" is that their anti-male sentiments are not the result of life experience, thoughtful reflection, or study and research, but are instead a knee-jerk reaction, nothing more than a reflexive bout of fear.
How about "conservaphobia," for all of those small-l liberals who constantly wail over how "conservative" the media has become, who think that being concerned about how much money the government is spending reflects a lack of concern about people. Small-l liberals are terrified of conservatism because they think that liberalism is the only way to save the world. Again, calling the beliefs of others "conservaphobia" implies that they haven't thought about what they believe, that they're simply afraid.
We could have "Fraserphobia" for the Revenue Canada bureaucrats who are desperately trying to yank public funding from the ultra-conservative Fraser Institute. After all, they're not doing it for any legal reason, just out of fear. Then there would be "Shellophobia" for those wanting to boycott Shell Oil, "WTOphobia" for the protesters tearing up the streets in Seattle over the latest World Trade Organization summit, "genetiphobia" for the twenty-something revolutionaries who thought they were being original and daring by chopping down a bunch of research trees at U.B.C. in the middle of the night, not to mention the myriad groups and individuals protesting the introduction of genetically-altered foods, whom we could call "GMOphobes." How about "deforestophobia" for those who are trying to stop the cutting of forests in Brazil, or "globalwarmaphobia" for David Suzuki and others who see the planet turning into either a dust-bowl or a steam bath? I'll even throw in "femiphobia" for people like me who rail against modern feminism.
The point is that we could invent a "phobia" for everything, and reduce all protest, disaffection, and discomfort to mere "fear," regardless of whether the people in question had carefully considered their opinions. Inventing words like "androphobia," "conservaphobia," "genetiphobia," "femiphobia," and, yes, even "homophobia" doesn't help anyone understand anything; all it does is trivialize someone else's opinions. Certainly there are people who are genuinely afraid of men, conservatives, genetic manipulation, feminists, and homosexuals, and some of those people may even be irrational. However, painting all people who disagree with something as "fearful" also paints them as having no good reason for believing what they do, which is insulting and demeaning.
Often the very same people who roll off words such as "homophobia" and "racism" claim that they stand for open debate and the free exchange of ideas. They then argue vociferously to ban speakers and writers who oppose homosexuality, feminism, or anything else they believe in. I'll be impressed when these same people welcome articulate men and women who hold such unpopular opinions, and then resist the temptation to dismiss them by calling what they believe "fear."
