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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33358 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means. In practice, the people who use the term "transphobia" - and hence the people who most get to define what it means - use it in such a way as to describe people who refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women ...

In other words, they are being intellectually dishonest in order to delegitimize their outgroup and/or views with which they disagree. How is that ok?

I'm not sure it's "ok," but does that really matter? People choose to do things not based on whether or not it's "ok" in some abstract moral sense, but based on whether or not they can get away with it. The people who are defining "transphobia" to mean "disagrees with me on trans issues" seem to be able to get away with it. They're probably being intellectually dishonest - at the very least, intellectually lazy - but it's not like we can impose negative consequences on them for being so. My personal approach is to just embrace and accelerate the redefining; yes, it's transphobia, and transphobia is the morally/logically correct position to take.

Why was it ok for "homophobia"? I mean, you're not wrong, but the argument applies equally well to things that we've already allowed to become completely ubiquitous, doesn't it?

I don't think it was. Or "Islamophobia", for that matter.

Homophobia refers to an actual phenomenon --discomfort with or dislike of gays (whether it is aptly deemed a "phobia" is another question). It does not refer to a set of policy beliefs.

Your logic continues to baffle me, sir.

If homophobia is not an actual phobia, what possible purpose is achieved by calling it one? And the claim that it is not used to refer to a set of policy beliefs is beyond credence. I am confident that I can find you an arbitrary number of examples of prominent progressives referring to laws, policies, rules, and so on as "homophobic". Certainly I have not seen a time in my own life where the term was applied narrowly to an actual phobic condition, rather than broadly to anyone skeptical of the LGBT social agenda.

"Homophobia", from its introduction to the public vernacular, has been used to label people who refused to validate homosexual behavior and lifestyles, in precisely the same way that "Transphobia", from its inception, has been used to label people who refuse to validate transgender behavior and lifestyles. Ditto for Islamophobia, for good measure. The entire [thing_we_like]phobia family has, from the very moment these terms were coined, been a weaponization of language, an attempt to frame dissent from Progressive values as mental defect. Such framing is never applied to fears or dislikes or even hatreds that Progressives approve of, only to those of their opponents.

Such framing is never applied to fears or dislikes or even hatreds that Progressives approve of, only to those of their opponents.

Indeed, the best attempt their opponents have made to do the same thing is "hoplophobia" (fear of weapons), and of course it has not caught on generally, because the progressives control the culture.

I am confident that I can find you an arbitrary number of examples of prominent progressives referring to laws, policies, rules, and so on as "homophobic"

You are confusing the noun and the adjective. I am sure that you agree that some people, and almost certainly most people in the not-too-distant past, had a visceral aversion to / disgust with gay people. That aversion/disgust was labeled "homophobia." The claim that a law or policy is "homophobic" is simply a claim that said law or policy is rooted in homophobia. Just as a practice of refusing to hire Catholic teachers can be labeled "prejudiced" if it is rooted in prejudice.

Now, look at what the OP said. OP did not say, "transphobia" is an aversion to or disgust with trans people, and these laws are transphobic because they are rooted n that aversion or disgust; rather, OP said the exact opposite:

Transphobia" might have components that imply that it should mean something like "irrational or severe fear/hatred of trans people," but that's not what it actually means. In practice, the people who use the term "transphobia" - and hence the people who most get to define what it means - use it in such a way as to describe people who refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women ...

I am sure that you agree that some people, and almost certainly most people in the not-too-distant past, had a visceral aversion to / disgust with gay people.

Sure, in exactly the same way that a whole lot of people currently have a visceral aversion/disgust reaction to Trans people. On the other hand, I don't agree that all or even most opposition to the normalization of homosexuality or was reducible to that visceral aversion/disgust, as opposed to more serious social, philosophical, religious or political objections. In the same way, the fact that a lot of people find transsexuals gross doesn't mean that grossness is their only or even main objection to the various demands of the trans movement.

That aversion/disgust was labeled "homophobia."

All objections to homosexuality were and are rounded to "homophobia" without distinction, and this was done because it was correctly perceived to be effective. "Transphobia" is being deployed in exactly the same way now, again to great effect. It's the same shit it always was: pretend the only sources of disagreement are stupidity, insanity, or irrational hatred, ignore the legitimate concerns, shout down anyone who objects. And again, this only goes one way; there are no culturally-recognized *phobias for anything Progressives don't like, no matter how irrational, bigoted or divorced from reality their dislike of those things may be.

Now, look at what the OP said.

I did. They're describing exactly what I laid out above: the term is constructed to imply "irrational, unhealthy fear/hatred", and then applied overwhelmingly in situations that do not involve irrational or unhealthy fear or hate. It's exactly the same thing that was done with Homophobia: abusing language to smear the opposition. They're claiming "what it actually means" is based on the objective reality of who it's used on, not on the implication meant by the user and drawn by the listener. This has no impact on "what it actually means", in the sense of the intended message and the received message.

It does not refer to a set of policy beliefs.

Yes, it does. The phrase "internalized homophobia" is typically used specifically to equate homophobia-as-in-active-opposition-to-homosexual-coexistence and homophobia-as-not-privileging-homosexuality-above-heterosexuality.

The latter, of course, is what progressive political policy seeks to establish (the best example being plastering the Pride flag everywhere; if all sexualities are as equal as all religions, the State should not be [doing what equates to] plastering symbols of Islam everywhere).

No, "internalized homophobia" is homophobia by gay people: "Among lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, internalized sexual stigma (also called internalized homophobia) refers to the personal acceptance and endorsement of sexual stigma as part of the individual's value system and self-concept. It is the counterpart to sexual prejudice among heterosexuals (Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 2009)."

And see here

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