Listening to the rather wonderful Fry’s English Delight reminded me of a post on the rather wonderful F Word Blog. A dimwit MEP by the name of Roger Helmer doesn’t believe that homophobia exists. Mr Helmer, whose blog has the strapline ‘Straight Talking’, says
In psychiatry, a phobia is defined as an irrational fear. I have yet to meet anyone who has an irrational fear of homosexuals, or of homosexuality. So to the extent that the word has any meaning at all, it describes something which simply does not exist.
This is the kind of English up with which I will not put. Firstly, the word phobia is used outside of the psychiatric context. A rabid dog is sometimes described as hydrophobic because of its fear of water – different to that described in the DSM – and a symptom of meningitis is often described as photophobia. Unless Mr Helmer is insisting that every tin can he buys is entirely Sn, he can sod right off.
Beyond that, the meanings of words change. Paedophilia comes from the Greek ????, child, and ?????, which best translates as ‘brotherly love’ (as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love). It was originally coined to differentiate from pederasty which definitely meant sexual love. I could use Helmer’s logic to say that we don’t need to worry about paedophiles, but those damned paederotes. It would be as pointless as Helmer saying that he is not a homophobe but a antibivirist – words change their meaning.
xD.
Good call. Plenty of words used with precise meanings in academic circles also have broader meanings when used more generally. My OED gives “fear”, “horror” or “aversion” for “phobia”, and there’s a specific entry for “-phobia” as a suffix: “Forming abstract nouns denoting (esp. irrational) fear, dislike, antipathy”.
What’s more, if you really want to get etymologically picky about “homophobia”, you want to look at the first part of the word. Fear of the same? It’s perhaps not a theoretically apt word, but by this point we all know what it means.
Which brings us to the bigger point: that (as Helmer must have known) the word is overwhelmingly used to mean prejudice against homosexuality – a real and noxious phenomenon. The word is not, as Helmer says, “merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions, which have been held by most people through most of recorded history.”
.-= Tom Freeman´s last blog: Where the record deficit comes from =-.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Helmer doesn’t think things like not permitting gay marriage are discriminatory. Indeed, his (almost Petainist) view of marriage, where the nebulous concept of ‘society’, in which Thatcher did not believe, effectively means Helmer’s prejudices. One might as well say that, as society sanctions marriage for society’s good and society needs reproduction, the purpose of marriage is reproduction. While it may be a purpose for some people, I find the idea that it is somehow morally obligatory to be wrong-headed.
There’s a similar piece of linguistic bullshitting going on with marriage. Helmer et al. define marriage as between a man and a woman, and so say that it can’t discriminate against gays. I find that a bit like saying that both blacks and whites have places to sit, so there’s no discrimination.