Such oddly disproportionate fear, in the face of the huge number of heterosexual offenders, certainly can be used to justify use of the term homophone in many instances.
The technicality at issue is that the medical determination of homophobia, as I understand it, is not just disproportionate fear of homosexuals but that the fear is based on a latent homosexual tendency. Which is distinguished from how ordinary people use the word as simply an overblown reaction against homosexuals, a hatred or fear of the icky or alien or sick or sinful or whatever they consider homosexuals to be.
Ya gotta appreciate the irony when solid citizens, who consider homosexuals sick, find the shoe on the other foot and they are the ones with the medical diagnosis.
People who, for example, bring up pedophilia whenever homosexuals are mentioned
I agree with you that this is a "tell." For the common usage, that is. I would apply the word in that case, were I inclined toward name-calling, that is.
Yesterday Jewel mentioned an fear of being labeled a homophobe. I tried to distinguish that from being called a bigot, in general. I think that people who like to think of themselves as open-minded are particularly stung by being called such. (I still remember your calling me a racist. <g>) If the only word that causes that reaction, though, is "homophobe," then I have to think maybe it hit home, in the medical sense of the word. Why would one be so sensitive about that but that one associates it with latent homosexual tendencies and, therefore, equates being called a homophobe with being called gay, which, of course, would be the supreme insult to a homophobe. |
