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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33038 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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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.

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