[CS-FSLUG] Canadian bank, intimidation?
Aaron Patrick Lehmann
lehmanap at cs.purdue.edu
Tue Oct 12 11:31:41 CDT 2004
On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 08:15:27PM -0400, Brian Derr wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 09:45:43PM -0500, Aaron Patrick Lehmann wrote:
> > Look at the following result from dictionary.com:
> >
> > http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=homophobia
> >
> > All three definitions on this page, which come from reputable dictionaries (
> > Miram-Webster Medical Dictionary, and others ), indicate that "homophobia"
> > involves contempt, aversion, or dislike of gays and lesbians, and two of three
> > indicate that it includes a behavioral component. While fear is mentioned, it
> > appears to be optional. I'll grant you that the root phobe would seem to
> > require fear, but it appears that in fact, the term is more inclusive then
> > that. Of course, one could read it to mean that homophobia is the fear of
> > anything like the one doing fearing, but no one has had any difficulty
> > recognizing that that's not what the homo indicates. I suppose that they used
> > the term homophobia because they wanted people to think it was a subcategory of
> > xenophobia... which is pretty similar.
>
> I hate to get involved in this discussion because it is rather a dumb
> one, but I cannot let this slide. Lets look at the etymology of the
> word "homophobia". We have the roots: "hom" and "phobia".
It only gets stupider when you repeat what I just said, as though that somehow
makes me wrong. Whether or not we agree with its formulation, saying that its
not a word seems a little odd, since it is widely used and understood.
> Etymology
>
> The word homophobia is a neologism coined by psychologist George
> Weinberg in his book Society and the Healthy Homosexual in 1972.
> It consists of the Greek words homo meaning "the same" and phobia
> which means "fear". However the word combines the prefix homo- from
> "homosexual" with the root phobia. A precursor was
> homoerotophobia, coined by Dr Wainwright Churchill in Homosexual
> Behavior Among Males in 1967.
>
> (http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/h/ho/homophobia.html)
>
> In other words, it is a made up word with no actual psychiatric backing.
What does "no actual psychiatric backing" mean? I would have thought it meant
that no psychologists and pychiatrists backed it, but since the word was coined
by a psychologist, it must not mean that.
Aaron Lehmann
--
Sometimes you stay the course;
Sometimes the course stays you.
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