this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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You cannot define medical terms to suit your need to feel like you are not irrationally prejudiced. Acrophobia, which I suffer from, is an irrational fear. As an evolutionary biologist, I can explain in a great level of detail how acrophobia can emerge in an evolutionary context and how it can have a physiological as well as a conditioned component. That doesn’t mean that it’s not irrational for me to feel fear while standing at the edge of a perfectly safe bridge.
Feeling uncomfortable around trans persons is transphobic, full stop. Feeling uncomfortable around black people is racist, full stop. If people are acting in a threatening manner - physically or verbally abusing people around them, for example - then it’s perfectly rational to feel uncomfortable because it is rational to fear for your own safety. If you’re uncomfortable because Bob the Drag Queen is wearing a dress and kissing a man, though, that’s on you.
Homophilia - the tendency for birds of a feather to flock together - is literally one of my major research areas and I have literally taught entire courses on it, where we study the origins and causes of the tendencies, how the base attribute is confounded by contagion of ideas between people, and why it is toxic and destructive in modern contexts.