To: Solon who wrote (11787 ) 5/3/2002 11:54:48 AM From: TimF Read Replies (1) | Respond to Generally homopbes have a sense of being "threatened". This may result in reactive aggression. If there is no objective threat, then both the anxiety and the discrimiation are irrational. I covered this with you already. The consequences of irrational hatred, whether it be homophobia or misogyny, or something else...is "I do think that calling them homophobes without evidence of irrational fear is a good use of the language" "I'm not sure a specific word for people who hate homosexuals is needed" dictionary.com - "One who hates women." ) to describe people who for religious reasons don't think women should be priests (or would that be priestesses) or ministers or whatever in their church, or to describe people who think that we shouldn't have women in the infantry or on nuclear attack subs, then I would object to the term unless I had specific evidence that the person really did hate women. I guess your right that it would be useful to have a word that was the equivalent of misogynist but applied to hatred of homosexuals. That way homophobia would be limited to being the equivalent of gynophobia, and none of the four words should be automatically applied to people who disagree with gays or women in the infantry. If you disagree with these people it should be quite possible to argue that they are wrong without stating or implying that the person you are arguing with is full of hate or irrational fear. Do you see where you have walked??
