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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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the -phobic suffix is used much like the -phillic suffix in sociology, it generally means "averse to X" or "attracted to X" respectively. It's not used in the sense of an actual psychological fear, but as a sociological flat amoral description of a group being anti-X and averse to it.
Think Hydrophobic and Hydrophillic. Rightwing groups are homophobic because they are averse to homosexuality and don't want to interact with it, and when they come into contact with it they react negatively. Hydrophobic molecules are not "afraid" of water in a literal sense, it's a description of their reaction to water.
where do you think any of these terms come from? They all originate in academia in a more scientific and rigorous setting, and then leak out into the mainstream ideology. Specificity and rigor is lost when strict control over the definition is lost and the word enters the public zeitgeist and takes on a meaning of its own.
This type of non-moralistic descriptionist language is what Marxists should seek to use when describing society, our role is to do a cold autopsy not to sit in moral judgment. We will never be able to control the public usage and steer language and how it develops, but we can control how we describe the world scientifically to each other. What others do with it later is their problem.
I don't recall this personally, I recall instead it being framed not as fear but as ignorance and lack of understanding and willingness to understand. The 90s common knowledge among the more social-liberal portions of the public was that racism and bigotry were finished as powerful forces in the West, that they only existed in vestigial corners where education and diversity had not yet reached. It was not shown as innocent fear, but as a regrettable silly superstition that would be flushed out by history's end if we all just keep being polite to each other.
i'm not sure what your point is though. That we shouldn't use amoral descriptionist language when describing social forces? That we should seek to control public common language with an iron fist (something historically not very realistic)?
That a white supremacist society coopted a revolutionary idea and blunted it is not surprising, it's what it does to all revolutionary ideas it gets ahold of. Is that any reason to stop having revolutionary ideas?
I thought you were getting at the point that "homophobia" is a problematic and not useful term because it isn't inherently loaded with enough moral judgment against homophobes (compared to something like 'gay hate' or 'anti-gay bigotry'), or that the colloquial definition that has been adopted being less accurate means we should retroactively change our own descriptions and accurate usage of the term within sociology and left-politics.
Personally, I'm completely fine with the -phobia and -phobic suffixes to describe tendencies among populations and think it's better than using moralistic terms when it comes to understanding social forces at play correctly. It just depends on the context. If you're hurling invectives at a specific reactionary, go for the moralist jabs if it is effective with your current audience. If you're trying to do a sociological description of the forces of society among fellow comrades I think we should stick to the cold autopsy approach.
You're right. These words don't describe fear, they describe persecution. Framing it as fear absolves people of their active and purposeful involvement and makes them sound like victims. As if transphobia or homophobia or whatever is akin to agoraphobia. And as if targeted harm can only be done by the mentally ill.
It also leads us to falsely conclude that the solution to bigotry is individual - reaching out and educating bigots one by one. It totally ignores the systemic causes that motivate such bigotry and how oftentimes, it's not even bigotry! It's just people rationally working within the ghoulish constraints that capitalism imposes which is honestly worse.
See my comment, it’s a phrase that is scientific and comes from the social sciences. It’s not about “absolving people” of sins, that’s moralism and unscientific and Liberal idealism. It’s a scientific description of a relationship between forces. You will never defeat the forces of reaction if you believe they stem from inherent evil in the souls of people instead of a materialist framework describing and addressing the root causes of the reactionary ideology
What's different about the academic term from the colloquial word? I don't see the distinction that you're referring to.
And yeah we're in agreement: reactionary ideology is rooted in material reality. And oftentimes what we call bigotry isn't bigotry per se, but rather people making calculated decisions, intentionally and purposefully.
Read my comment below, the correct original use is akin to hydrophobic. IE, Y can be described as X-phobic if it shows an adverse reaction or rejection of X. It has nothing to do with fear in the psychological sense, which is the colloquial definition that you are attacking.
Describing reactionaries who don’t like gay rights as “homophobic” is 100% correct and accurate and has nothing to do with baggage you are bringing in about fear or morals
I see. "Aversion to gay people" and "fear of gay people" is a distinction without a difference imo but whatever. I still don't like the parallel this jargon implies between panic disorders and persecution. They are nothing alike so our language should reflect that.
(also who cares what the original use is if people don't mean it like that. Also also I'm not talking about morality? Kinda feels like you're reading things into my comments that I did not say)
Your original comment was talking about morality when your issue with the term is that it ‘absolves homophobes’. Absolution is a moral term related to sin.
You take issue with their term because of a moral stance. You don’t like the term homophobia because it is amoral when you want it to be moralized and loaded with moral sentiment.
You should care about the original definition, because the original definition derived from Marxist analysis of societal factions. That’s like saying “who cares what MLK or Lenin or Marx actually said and meant, what matters of how modern pop-culture understands their theories” which is obviously stupid and wrong
I meant absolve as in excuses/removes culpability. The same way you wouldn't be too hard on a claustrophobic person for panicking in a small room.
It makes it sound like homophobes have a mental illness and it's that illness which is the cause of their actions. But bigotry phobias aren't at all comparable to fear phobias so we should use different words to describe them. That's what I'm saying and that's what the OP was saying too, I'm pretty sure.
Culpability in what? An immoral act or sin. Again you are upset that the term isn’t moralistically loaded. You want it to aggressively impose guilt, this is a moral position and not a descriptive one.
Claustrophobia relates to psychological fears. Homophobia comes from a different source, from sociology and scientific descriptions of reactions between two parties. You are again using the incorrect definition, again in relation to how much moral blame to assign.
This is a fundamentally flawed way of analyzing society
What? I don't know what to say to you anymore. Goodnight dude
You know the scientific terms hydrophobic and hydrophilic used to describe various kinds of mechanical and chemical interactions? That is how sociology used the term “homophobic” when it created the term, describing that a certain group is anti-homosexuality.
What you are doing is akin to going up to a chemist and saying “I don’t like how the term hydrophobic lets phospholipids off the hook for their bigotry”. It’s adding morality into what should be a cold mechanical description of forces