In other news
Jan. 31st, 2011 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firefly124There's a discussion going on on Tumblr about whether the term "homophobia" is ableist. I have very mixed feelings about the question.
I tend to bristle every time people suggest terms like "crazy" should be stricken from common usage as ableist. To go by my clients, who by definition are severely mentally ill, there's actually a preference for using such terms to mean things that are not them. At a more abstract level, making casual references to mental illness taboo and unmentionable is actually, imo, far more problematic, because one of the big issues around mental illness is the way it has historically been something you "just don't talk about."
So the idea that one shouldn't use the term "homophobia" because phobias are actual mental illnesses and this renders the term ableist bothers me for both of those reasons.
On the other hand, what one generally means by homophobia is actually rather different than a diagnosable phobia. There's a definite qualitative difference between being agoraphobic and being homophobic. There isn't, or at least shouldn't be, any pejorative connotation to being agoraphobic. There most definitely is a pejorative connotation to being homophobic. So, are we potentially giving people with homophobic attitudes something of a free pass by linguistically linking their attitudes to the notion of mental illness? That's also problematic.
The proposal is to replace the term "homophobia" with "heterosexism." I suppose that could work, though I don't see that linguistic shift happening any time soon. And I'm also not sure the term carries the same weight, though if it does become more commonly used, I imagine it could come to do so.
What are your thoughts?
I tend to bristle every time people suggest terms like "crazy" should be stricken from common usage as ableist. To go by my clients, who by definition are severely mentally ill, there's actually a preference for using such terms to mean things that are not them. At a more abstract level, making casual references to mental illness taboo and unmentionable is actually, imo, far more problematic, because one of the big issues around mental illness is the way it has historically been something you "just don't talk about."
So the idea that one shouldn't use the term "homophobia" because phobias are actual mental illnesses and this renders the term ableist bothers me for both of those reasons.
On the other hand, what one generally means by homophobia is actually rather different than a diagnosable phobia. There's a definite qualitative difference between being agoraphobic and being homophobic. There isn't, or at least shouldn't be, any pejorative connotation to being agoraphobic. There most definitely is a pejorative connotation to being homophobic. So, are we potentially giving people with homophobic attitudes something of a free pass by linguistically linking their attitudes to the notion of mental illness? That's also problematic.
The proposal is to replace the term "homophobia" with "heterosexism." I suppose that could work, though I don't see that linguistic shift happening any time soon. And I'm also not sure the term carries the same weight, though if it does become more commonly used, I imagine it could come to do so.
What are your thoughts?
