don't like homophobia. BUT, i think what they are talking about is more akin to something like the epidemiology of disease. they're asking why a certain disease emerge in society, among which groups it is likelier than others, what cultural factors are involved, how economic factors play a roll, etc.
i totally adore it when carrol writes penis. :)
shag
Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> An illness is individual, different in each person who suffers from
> it.
> Hence trying to interpret a general political phenomenon in terms of
> an
> illness is a bit iffy at best.
>
> I objected to "heterosexism" and favored "homophobia" in a post on the
> marxist-feminist list about 10 or so years ago, on the basis that we
> already had too many terms coined on the analogy of racism. Yoshie
> persuaded me otherwise on the basis of an argument similar to but
> perhaps less aggressive than those being made here. "Phobia" is a
> technical term (though usage is not consistent here), and most phobias
> so identified are rther dramatic. They don't, for example, _say_ they
> hate spiders and think they should be abolished; they scream when one
> lands on them. And gay men who conceal their gayness but oppose gay
> rights presumably aren't feeling too much of an impulse to scream and
> run as they penetrate their partner's anus.
>
> Making the family a political issue seems absurd to me, but a rather
> large number of conservatives (independently of their own sexuality or
> attitudes towards gays) do make it an issue. And some really stubborn
> concwrvatives are still campaigning for the formal submission of
> woemen
> to their husband, etc. In other words, there are _some_ men and women
> at least who have no impulse to scream and run when gay sex is
> mentioned
> but as part of their political or religious principles oppose gay
> rights. Heterosexcism, which is a political not a medical term, seems
> to
> be a more comprehensive term than homophobia, leaving the latter term
> to
> describe specific individuals whose cases can be examined.
>
> I'm not sure how big a deal this issue is. My post on it merely
> expressed a doubt abut the wisdom of "outing" gays, regardless of othr
> features of the gay person outed.
>
> Carrol
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>
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