Forum Game: Ban the Person Above You

Both of you:

:p

(Something darker than a DeVille you say? Is intrigued. Plz to show? :3 Also, sorry if I came off like a jerk in that last post of mine, not my intent. ;))

 

Banned because we're not going to mention DeathArrow's past (instead we're going to give him a chance to prove himself). ;)

Spoiler: ( )

Glad to see you went and did some research, cleggy. :) I don't know about clever or simple but:

In essence, the point behind my comment on the homo/heterophobia is that things are almost never as simple as they seem and, more over, that when things are made simple by people that usually means there's something ugly lurking below the surface. In this case, both words are constructed from Ancient Greek using the suffix phobia (derived from phóbos, meaning 'fear') and either (in homophobia's case) a prefix derived from ὁμο (meaning 'the same') or (in heterophobia's case) from heteros (meaning 'other/different').

Now, going strictly by the roots of the two words, you would think that they mean the opposite of what people commonly use them for. This discrepancy should clue us into looking deeper into the matter and, after some thought, we realise that it's quite probable the words have not been coined by anyone who actually understands Greek (e.g. a scientist, a psychiatrist or a linguist) but rather by someone who wanted an official sounding term to describe people, words or actions that they felt demonstrated a fear of same-sex relationships and people who entered into them.

What this means is that homophobia (and heterophobia for that matter) are not technical, unbiased terms that describe an attitude charaterised by fear, misunderstanding and (sometimes) hate but rather they themselves are terms that grew out of fear, misunderstanding and (possibly) hate.

Additionally, the suspicion that these terms are not legit is further supported by the casual way in which people often accuse other people of homo/heterophobia--i.e. because these terms are not well defined they allow for a very wide and loose range of misapplication. Often as not when someone is throwing these terms about they're not interested in having a civil conversation, but rather just getting the other side to shut up so they can win by default. :(

I could expound further, but to prevent this aside from being hideously long I'll finish by noting that if you're going to use the terms at all please consider using them according to their actual translation; or else just use the actual term we use to describe unreasonable fear or hatred of the unfamiliar, namely xenophobia (xenos meaning 'stranger' in Greek ) which, when you get down to it, is really the basis for most hatred towards LGBTs--people view them as wrong/different and hence feel free to fear/hate/abuse them. :(

 

Banned for having an exceedingly camp knight in your avatar.

 

Banned because I love those drawings so damn much.