The editors at the Associated Press Stylebook have announced that they are “discouraging” use of the word "homophobia." The AP Stylebook is the widely used guide that media use to standardize terms and general usage.
The editors at the Associated Press Stylebook have announced that they are “discouraging” use of the word "homophobia." The AP Stylebook is the widely used guide that media use to standardize terms and general usage.
Why should the LGBTQ community be in a kerfuffle about it? Because the editors made their decision without consultation with the nation's leading LGBTQ organizations, leaders, activists and newspapers. That is a problem.
With an estimated 3,400 AP employees in bureaus around the globe, it’s suggestion could have a tsunami-like effect on how the world comes to understand, be informed about or dismiss discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people.
AP's online Stylebook defines "phobia" as "an irrational, uncontrollable fear, often a form of mental illness," and therefore should be expunged from political and social contexts, including words such as "Islamophobia" and "homophobia."
Preciseness in language is important, yet language is a representation of culture. How we use it perpetuates ideas and assumptions about race, gender and sexual orientation. We consciously and unconsciously articulate this in our everyday conversations, about ourselves and the rest of the world, and it travels from generation to generation.
What's in the word "homophobia?” A lot. The history and culture of, not only, discrimination, violence and hatred toward LGBTQ people, but also an irrational fear of us. It’s this irrational fear that may not need psychiatric or clinical intervention but should nonetheless be aptly labeled as none other than a “phobia.”
For example, the infamous bogus legal argument called the "gay panic defense." It's simply an excuse for murder in which a heterosexual defendant pleas temporary insanity as self-defense against a purported LGBTQ sexual advance.
Another example, the "ick factor." It's the revulsion some heterosexuals feel toward the way we LGBTQ people engage in sexual intimacy.
Altering the hearts and minds of these folks will take a while, if not a lifetime.
more on next page...
READER COMMENTS (
Most Popular
