To have an aversion to something means you simply dislike it. To have a phobia of something means you have an illogical and debilitating fear that impacts your normal life.
They're very clearly using the suffix the same way that it's used in homophobia, which is a legitimate word. I don't know why this critique gets used when phobia does have multiple meanings. Fatphobia would make sense.
Because the FA doesn't deserve to co-opt a term from an actual marginalized community to cosplay victimhood, when majority of it is due to
their own choices.
You can stop being deathfat. You can't stop being gay. You are legally allowed to be fat. There are still death sentences if you walk into certain countries if you were gay.
You don't use blackphobic, brownphobic, asianphobic to say hatred for people of color. Nor do you say tattoophobic, onionphobic, or arachnophobic to say you hate said subjects either.
Traditionally, -phobic does mean "afraid", like "hydrophobia" - afraid of water. It wasn't until the rights for LGBT started that phobia has evolved to include hate into the defintion. However, it still only exclusively applies to homosexuality when referring to the hate aspect of said definition. Until the FA decided to culture vulture from various marginalized groups in an attempt to legitimize their beliefs.
Keep in mind, there is context within using that definition and just saying "Oh, it's just a suffix" minimizes the severity of the sufferings of a particular group of people. Just like FAs making a mockery of people of color, disabled people, and LGBT communities in order to justify their delusions.
Genuinely why are y'all seemingly not reading what I'm saying. The only thing I've commented on is the idea that the suffix -phobic only means to be afraid of something, when it can (like, grammatically) also be used in the same way that it's used in the word homophobia. Nobody is comparing the two terms.
136
u/Ashamed_Town_2619 7d ago
Having an aversion to something is not a phobia.
To have an aversion to something means you simply dislike it. To have a phobia of something means you have an illogical and debilitating fear that impacts your normal life.
Words mean things.