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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.

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[–] fubo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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".

[–] Lafari@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

After researching your great word fuckerism (which I'm guessing you coined since I can't easily find mentions of it online), I found this: Sexual orientation discrimination (also known as sexualism) is discrimination based on a person's sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy.. This isn't entirely clear and could be interpreted as relating to "sexualising", which means to make something sexual, and "homosexism" might be more specific to discrimination against homosexual people.

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 [https://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.

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.