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CreativeDominant -> RE: Indiania can now discriminant against anyone (4/5/2015 10:26:29 AM)
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And you might want to take a look at these, PS to understand how thick you seem when you ONLY use the dictionary. It might interest you to know that the word...as RE-defined by Weinberg in 1969...did not even appear in the Oxford into sometime after 2004.
Oh...one last side note. The AP is going to stop using the word 'homophobia'. Seems that they have finally figured out...just as they did with Islam...that a dislike or even hatred of CERTAIN tenets of being gay does not equate to an all-encompassing fear or even bigotry as the terms 'homophobia' or 'homophobe' suggest.
Q: Whenever there’s an insensitive, insulting, inhumane, or vulgar comment about homosexuals, the press describes it as homophobia. However, “homophobia” would seem to be the irrational fear of homosexuals, not the hatred of them.
A: It’s true that the noun “phobia” principally means an exaggerated or irrational fear. But when “-phobia” is a word element that’s part of another noun, it can also mean hatred of something, not just fear of it.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “homophobia” in its usual contemporary sense as “fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality.”
The adjective “homophobic” is defined by the OED as “pertaining to, characterized by, or exhibiting homophobia; hostile towards homosexuals.” And “homophobe” is “a homophobic person”—that is, someone hostile toward gay men or lesbians.
http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/02/homophobia.html
Critics have observed that homophobia is problematic for at least two reasons.
First, empirical research does not indicate that heterosexuals' antigay attitudes can reasonably be considered a phobia in the clinical sense. Indeed, the limited data available suggest that many heterosexuals who express hostility toward gay men and lesbians do not manifest the physiological reactions to homosexuality that are associated with other phobias (see Shields & Harriman, 1984).
Second, using homophobia implies that antigay prejudice is an individual, clinical entity rather than a social phenomenon rooted in cultural ideologies and intergroup relations. Moreover, a phobia is usually experienced as dysfunctional and unpleasant. Antigay prejudice, however, is often highly functional for the heterosexuals who manifest it.
As antigay attitudes have become increasingly central to conservative political and religious ideologies since the 1980s, these limitations have become more problematic. However, heterosexism, with its historic macro-level focus on cultural ideologies rather than individual attitudes, is not a satisfactory replacement for homophobia.
Sexual Prejudice Scientific analysis of the psychology of antigay attitudes will be facilitated by a new term. Sexual prejudice serves this purpose nicely. Broadly conceived, sexual prejudice refers to all negative attitudes based on sexual orientation, whether the target is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Given the current social organization of sexuality, however, such prejudice is almost always directed at people who engage in homosexual behavior or label themselves gay, lesbian, or bisexual (Herek, 2000).
Like other types of prejudice, sexual prejudice has three principal features:
It is an attitude (i.e., an evaluation or judgment).
It is directed at a social group and its members.
It is negative, involving hostility or dislike.
Conceptualizing heterosexuals' negative attitudes toward homosexuality and bisexuality as sexual prejudice – rather than homophobia – has several advantages. First, sexual prejudice is a descriptive term. Unlike homophobia, it conveys no a priori assumptions about the origins, dynamics, and underlying motivations of antigay attitudes.
Second, the term explicitly links the study of antigay hostility with the rich tradition of social psychological research on prejudice.
Third, using the construct of sexual prejudice does not require value judgments that antigay attitudes are inherently irrational or evil.
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/rainbow/html/prej_defn.html
Still, this doesn’t mean we should throw the word about. The ‘gay lobby’ and those sympathetic with the cause of Human Rights and justice ought to be wise to the fact that it isn’t always useful to use the term homophobia. Some words close down a discussion as surely as a fullstop closes down a sentence.
http://underthesaltireflag.com/2014/07/01/homophobia-towards-a-definition/
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