I agree on the ethnic cleansing removal.
But the prejudiced phobias? No-one calling someone a
homophobia is accusing them of having a mental illness. Merely having the word “phobia”
in
there does not mean mentally ill or even fear – as I’ve explained before. Have these people never heard of "xenophobia"? because we've been using that one for a whole long time.
But aside from that, I hate and reject this because there
is no adequate replacement word
And this is why I suspect the AP’s motives. This is less
about cleaning up reporting and far more about excusing and downplaying the
impact and severity of homophobia.
There is no word in the English language that means the
same thing as homophobia. What would we use in its stead?
“Anti-gay”. Please “anti-gay” is so mild that most of the
hate groups are quite happy to wear that label themselves.
“Heterosexism” is too academic and doesn’t mean the same
thing – heterosexism is how the systems of society are set up to favour
heterosexuals and assume heterosexuality – heterosexism is the damage that
heteronormativity brings and the prejudice that comes with it, not the bigotry
of homophobia (though there’s some overlap).
“Bigot” Oh I’d love to. But you know that’s not going to
happen. Just look at the extreme squawking over Stonewall’s
“Bigot of the year”.
One of the whole points of words like “homophobe” and “racist”
and “misogynist” is that they have impact. They are words people don’t want to
be associated with. Being these is shameful, is wrong and even the most vehement
bigot tries to reject them. We have fought tooth and nail to try and turn
homophobia from an accepted norm to something straight people should try to
avoid – and ye gods we’ve got a long way to go on that – but part of doing that
is the creation and popular usage of the word “homophobia.” Part of this
success is the use of a word that means the “hatred and contempt towards gay
people” which is a BAD THING.
So, no AP, we need this word. And I doubt very much this
is an attempt to “clean up” or “clarify” reporting. It looks like yet another move
by straight folks to downplay the importance and severity of homophobia and
trying to rob us of another of our weapons against it.
And the AP joins the list of arrogant, homophobic institutions fighting against us. And yes, I will still be using the word "homophobia"