While the (medical) definition of “phobia” — “an overwhelming and unreasonable fear of an object or situation that poses little real danger but provokes anxiety and avoidance” — does not specifically include the fear of people, of course we know of phobias that encompass aversion toward and fear of certain groups of people.
There are hundreds of phobias toward objects and situations, especially those that include animals: arachnophobia (fear of spiders); ophidiophobia (fear of snakes); entomophobia (fear of bugs and insects); musophobia (you guessed it, fear of mice); fear of dogs and even fear of cats and chickens.
Some of us are very familiar with fears of certain situations, such as fear of heights (at my age, acrophobia starts to set in on the third step of a six-foot stepladder), fear of flying, claustrophobia, glossophobia (the fear of public speaking) and more.
Others have phobias towards people, large groups of people, rather than towards individuals but not based on hate, prejudice or similar motives. For example enochlophobia and the related demophobia and ochlophobia.
Then there are those dark, malevolent phobias towards people because of their race, “foreignness,” sexual orientation, religion, etc.
We are all too familiar with xenophobia and homophobia — more recently Islamophobia.
These “people phobias” are probably as old as humankind is. Until recently, we just had not come up with “scientific” labels for people we fear or despise or with “phobia-suffixed” names for such maladies.
Don James McLaughlin at The New Republic tells us that hydrophobia, “transliterated” from Greek in the late fourteenth century, was the only major term in English to adopt phobia as a suffix for hundreds of years.
Then, early in American history, one finds specific mention of real “people phobias” or “social phobias.”
Mc Laughlin explains how, more than two centuries ago, the terms “colorphobia” and “Negrophobia.” were used by abolitionists not only to “contest” the slave system, but also to unearth “an emotional basis for slavery’s persistence.” In the eyes of abolitionists, “racial phobia was a malevolent force—one that threatened to tear the nation apart,” McLaughlin adds, calling them “political phobias.”
But while those terms have faded from our collective memory, other similar terms — and phobias — have surfaced in our “modern” way of life and especially in our 2016 political discourse.
Witness the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s repeated use of phobias as a political weapon, appealing to and fanning people’s fear of foreigners — especially Mexicans — fear of Muslims, of immigrants, etc. Even his misogyny could reflect and give rise to a new kind of gynophobia.
While homophobia has a long and ugly history in our society and has been consistently used as a political weapon, this year we see the rise of two even more specific phobias — phobias this author had not even heard of until recently: biphobia and transphobia.
The following are definitions of these two phobias:
Biphobia is aversion toward bisexuality and bisexual people as a social group or as individuals…Biphobia is a source of discrimination against bisexual people, and may be based on negative bisexual stereotypes or irrational fear.
Transphobia is a range of antagonistic attitudes and feelings against transgender or transsexual people or transsexuality. Transphobia can be emotional disgust, fear, anger or discomfort felt or expressed towards people who do not conform to society’s gender expectations.
We see these phobias raise their ugly heads not only in the GOP presidential “debate,” but also in the ludicrous “bathroom battles” presently taking place in various state legislatures.
While some of the terms may be relatively new, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia have sadly been with us for a very long time and are not limited to the United States.
Unbeknownst to me, an International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, (IDAHO) observed on May 17, has existed for 12 years, intended to raise awareness of LGBT rights violations.
During the most recent commemoration of IDAHO, Michael G. Kozak, Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, reiterated our country’s full commitment to the “struggle for the human rights of LGBTI persons,” not only in the United States but also around the world.
“For us, the human rights of LGBTI persons are not ‘special’ rights. Rather, precisely because they are persons, LGBTI persons have the same human rights as other persons. As human persons, they are entitled to these universal rights by birth. It is an affront to human rights when a person is beaten or killed, or denied access to justice due to their religious belief, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity,” Kozak said.
Wouldn’t our official statements of support for the human rights of LGBTI persons — of all persons — carry even more weight, if state and national politicians, especially those aspiring for the highest office in the land, stopped using bigotry, hate and prejudice as divisive “political phobias”?
Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of fomenting chronophobia (the fear of the future) among the electorate, our presidential wannabes would instill confidence in ourselves and in the American future?
Wouldn’t it be great if, one day, social activists would not have to rely on using the ‘‘-phobic’’ suffix as their “most trusted term of art for pinning prejudice on an opponent” because such prejudices no longer exist?
Yes, we can all dream as long as we don’t suffer from oneirophobia.
Should all else fail, we could move to Samoa — home to the fa’afafine — “the tiny island nation that can teach the world’s most powerful democracy a thing or two about the basic business of human sexuality.”
photo credit: Sirheo Shape via photopin (license)
