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.
Words can convey negative connotations. Why perpetuate negative colloquialisms that serve to preserve hierarchies of world order? “Third World “ is a constructed designation meant to oppress. Stuff matters, even if it doesn’t to you.
I never said it didn’t, this just isn’t the right place and in this context it does not matter. It’s a term we all know the meaning of and that’s what’s important.
I wouldn’t say I’m sorry for making you think about the context behind the meaning of words, but because you have had to spend so much energy on this, I apologize.
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.
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.
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
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.
Anything over $100k is plenty to live, travel, and invest with if you don’t plan on having kids. There’s a point where it’s time and experiences that are more valuable than the money, so I’d prefer fewer working hours or more engaging work than simply just salary increases. I’m certainly happy to receive bonuses and raises, but as an engineer who has never made under $100k/yr the money doesn’t change anything about the way I live and enjoy life (note that I don’t have expensive tastes and carefully watch for lifestyle creep).
There’s a point where it’s time and experiences that are more valuable than the money
I think what you mean is there’s a point where free time and experiences are more valuable than food and shelter.
Money isn’t balancing against these things. Money is the thing the brings you things of value. It’s not Money vs Y. It’s money spent on X vs money spent on Y.
They’re free unless you want a “certificate”, which has no practical value and is mostly useful if you want to motivate yourself a bit more and want to support their business model.
Go browse Coursera and edX and learn to your heart’s content.
Also, if you’re coding, watch recordings of conferences about your programming language, e.g. CppCon/C++Now/CppNorth for C++, PyCon/PyData for Python etc…
It’s not “unattractive”, but I know belly attraction is uncommon, especially as a straight woman, especially an asexual one. It’s more like one of those things where it’s less entirely a turn-on and more like a “cute” thing, but there’s nothing else about a guy I would look for when it comes to their physical properties.
Also, not speaking for me, but a friend of mine used to really have it in for people with speech impediments, even though the person he ended up with doesn’t have one. He says it has an air of innocence and that “accents are overrated if nobody is going to appreciate things like lisps”, but it’s like watching Brock.
Internet Archive - Very useful for general usage internet but not for specific needs (check fmhy).
Have I Been Pwned? - Periodically use this to check whether your email/online presence is compromised or not.
Bitwarden (or if you want to self-host it use Vaultwarden) - Personally I used this password management so I can keep my pass and you can auto generate passwords with custom parameters if needed.
Curated OSINT resources - You want to ID someone online? this resources can help you to do so, though you also need to understand the basics. It may not work if person you’re looking for does not have a much online presence.
I know I’m going to be in the minority here, but I’ve been on a carbonated flavored water kick for a few years after I realized sugar was killing me. It was a two fold realization that I just really enjoy the fizz and not the sugar.
That said, Polar seltzer-ade with lemon or lime juice is just 🤌 if you’re into carbonated waters
fuckerism — prejudice against people on the basis of who they fuck (or would like to fuck).
In general, morphology doesn’t dictate meaning; the fact that “homophobia” and “arachnophobia” are similarly constructed words doesn’t mean they have to have analogous meanings.
Pornography is not played on a pornograph turntable.
Racism is not the same sort of thing as communism, cubism, masochism, autism, or Buddhism. The fact that those words all end in “-ism” doesn’t mean they are close analogies to one another. The words “sexism”, “ageism” and “ableism”, though, were coined as deliberate analogies to “racism”.
We also have a related concept of gender binarism (or in some uses, genderism (such as here, here) (though genderism can also apparently mean the opposite thing, to negatively describe gender-non-binarism(?), or what is referred to as “gender ideology” by people with “anti-gender” prejudice)) to describe specifically discrimination of “gender nonconfirming” (or non-binary-gendered) individuals (rather than transphobia or LGBTphobia for the same lexical confusion theoretically). Anti-genderism also makes sense as a term for this, I suppose. Anti-LGBTism ([Anti-LGBT rhetoric](Anti-LGBTism [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-LGBT_rhetoric)) could also work as a term for discrimination against LGBT people in general (horrific paper).
I also found a term, HOCD, which can mean excessive fear of becoming or being homosexual, though it can also literally means a form of OCD relating to homosexuality, but it’s the closest thing to “fear of homosexuality” (“FOHO”?) that I found, albeit a form that only applies to a fear around one’s own possible homosexuality rather than a fear of homosexuality in general regardless of one’s own sexuality.
which I’m guessing you coined since I can’t easily find mentions of it online
Yes, that was an attempt at humor. My point was that we don’t need a word fitting a specific morphology in order to talk about a topic. And when we need to be so specific as to refer to “prejudice on the basis of sexual or romantic orientation” or “violent hostility towards people perceived as gender nonconformists” we can spell those things out.
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