The other day, a friend of mine declared he was not homophobic; but finds the everyday antics of gay people disgusting. From a random guy couple holding hands gazing into each other’s eyes to their club scene, lingo and dressing. It all stresses him out. All of it! My friend, I told him, you are a homophobe; no doubt about it.
Homophobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards same sex or transgender behavior. The word phobia means irrational fear. So basically homophobia is the irrational fear of everything gay. But what exactly makes it a phobia and not just regular fear? If you don’t know how to swim or float, your fear of drowning is real because upon entry into water as high as your total body length, you must either swim or float or else you WILL suffocate. And if because of this fear you start avoiding any body of water, even that puddle after the rain, this once well founded fear has morphed into a phobia.
With the fear of the dark comes an enlightening analagy; you switch on the lights and the negative emotion desists. It is gone!
Fundamentally; you shed light on something the illusion disappears and you see it for what it truly is.
However, a lot of the time we refuse to investigate as this involves getting up close and personal with a stress element. So in essence some prefer to live with a blocked peripheral view of their external world, unable or unwilling to process crucial information about their surroundings.
What is the result of an entire population living out their lives this way? Whole generations of cripples who point at, discriminate and disassociate anything not within their line of sight.
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