Yoo Yoo, welcome back to Virtue Vibes, the podcast where we think hard about how to be good. I’m your host, Jarrod Blair, and today we’re going to talk about a topic that’s been on my mind for a few years now, which is the way that the terms ‘homophobic’, ‘transphobic’, and ‘fatphobic’ often misconstrue what’s really going on in another person's mind.
I started thinking about this when I went to graduate school, and I heard a disturbing percentage of students and professors willing to throw out these kinds of accusations so loosely without much justification. And as you’re probably aware if you're a regular listener to Virtue Vibes, I really value accurate language, and I’m always trying to understand the ways that conversations get derailed that could otherwise have been productive ones. If we want to think hard about how to be good, we have to talk in clear and precise ways, so that no unwanted or unjustified implications get in the way of what we’re really trying to say. So I hope you find this episode helpful, because I’m sure you’ll encounter someone making accusations of homophobia, transphobia, or fatphobia sooner or later. You might even be someone who regularly makes these accusations, so I hope what I have to say with be interesting and challenging for you as well.
Also, I want to say it's good to be back making more episodes. If you haven’t noticed, I really try to put a lot of thought into these episodes, because I don’t want to waste your valuable time. But sometimes I get into a perfectionistic mindset, and I think this caused me to run into a bit of a writer's block recently. But this episode, however, ended up being one of the easiest ones to make because of how much time I had already spent thinking about this topic. So I hope you enjoy it, and now that my juices are flowing again, there’s plenty more where this came from haha.
So with that being said, let’s get into it.
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So to begin, I want to clarify what exactly I am talking about. In this episode, I’m NOT going to be talking about the ethics of homosexuality, transgenderism, or perceptions towards obesity. So I’m not going to defend any conclusions about whether we should encourage or discourage homosexual relationships. I won’t say anything about the legitimacy of transgender ideology, surgeries, sports participation, and pronoun use. I also won’t address whether we should encourage or discourage lifestyles that lead to obesity. These are all really interesting ethical questions, and I plan to do episodes on these topics eventually, but for now my focus will only be on the misleading ways that the terms ‘homophobic’, ‘transphobic’, and ‘fatphobic’ get used. But stay tuned for future episodes and you’ll get to hear my hot takes on these other highly controversial issues.
The cases I have in mind for this episode are ones where I’ve heard people accuse others of homophobia, transphobia, or fatphobia, usually after that other person has taken some stance on the ethics of homosexuality, trans ideology, or expressed their attitude towards obesity. So, for example, someone will say, “I believe that homosexual marriage is wrong, and that marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman.” And then someone else will reply by accusing this person of being homophobic.
Another example would be when someone says that males can’t change into females, or that children shouldn’t be put on hormone blockers, or that biological males should not be playing in women’s sports. In response to these assertions, someone else will then reply by accusing this person of being transphobic.
A third example would be when someone says that it's important to be healthy and to not have excessive body fat, or when someone expresses that they are not attracted to overweight people. Someone else then replies by accusing this person of being fatphobic.
Apart from the truth or falsity of each stance on these issues in question, what are we to make of these accusations themselves? Are they helpful? Are they accurate? Are they misleading? Is some kind of phobia really what’s going on here?
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After a quick google search, I’m told that the word phobia means an extreme or irrational fear or aversion to something. And crucially, what makes things a genuine phobia is that the fear doesn't match the actual danger of the situation. So, for example, acrophobia is the fear of heights, especially when one is not particularly high up. Claustrophobia is the fear of small, confined spaces, especially ones that aren’t particularly dangerous, such as elevators, small cars, or MRI machines. Again, the key here is the mismatch between the lack of actual danger, and the irrational levels of fear within the person who has the phobia.
With this in mind, let’s consider again those cases where people are being accused of some kind of phobia. When someone believes that homosexuality is wrong, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s some kind of irrational fear of homosexuals involved. Rather than having an irrational fear, perhaps they’ve just come to a different conclusion than you have on this issue, perhaps based on their religion, or on their beliefs about the superiority of heterosexual relationships. But none of these things are necessarily rooted in fear, and making this kind of accusation will likely hinder your ability to directly address the real disagreement about this issue at hand.
You might think that the meaning of the terms homophobic, transphobic, and fatphobic have just changed over time to not imply fear, but rather hatred or something like that. But again, just because someone opposes your stance on these issues doesn’t mean there’s necessarily any hatred involved. And going one step further, if your use of these terms has become so loose that it just means “anyone who opposes homosexuality, or trans ideology,” or something along those lines, then you’ve sufficiently watered down the meaning, and you should probably consider using terms that don’t strongly imply fear or hatred.
I’m someone who has actually changed my mind from being against homosexual relationships when I was younger to being in support of homosexuality today, but at no point in time was I ever motivated by fear or hatred of gay people. So I think many people who oppose it are the same as I was, without fear or hatred, even if some people really do fear or hate homosexuals. This is why I would hardly ever make an accusation of homophobia, especially when I have no good reason to suspect there’s any kind of irrational fear or hatred present.
The same thing is true for the accusation of transphobia mentioned before. If someone believes that males cannot become females, or that kids should not be given hormone blockers, or that we should not use trans pronouns, this doesn’t imply that they have an irrational fear of trans people. They could just have come to a different conclusion than you did, and you’d get more bang for your buck by focusing on their actual reasons rather than making attributions of fear, hatred, or anything of that sort. This has happened to me when talking about this issue, and I gotta say that not only does it not feel good to be called transphobic, it also just doesn’t work. It doesn’t convince me of anything, because it doesn’t address the actual reasons for my disagreement.
Lastly, perhaps the clearest example of how these kind of accusations can misconstrue the situation is in the case of fatphobic accusations. When someone says that we should try to not carry excessive fat for health reasons, or that they are only attracted to skinny people, is there really any irrational fear or hatred of fat people involved? Probably not. Now I’m not saying that there couldn’t be other objectionable attitudes present. Someone could be too quick to criticize obesity without fully understanding the situation, or maybe they’re too focused on a person’s weight and not looking at them wholistically. Nevertheless, accusations of irrational fear or hatred are not only inaccurate, but they’re also quite likely to make the conversation digress into one where the participants become defensive and close minded.
Now having said all of this, I’m not ruling out the possibility that there may be genuine cases of homophobia, transphobia, or fatphobia. There really may be cases where people are extraordinarily, and literally, afraid of gay people, or afraid of trans people, or afraid of fat people, in a way that’s disproportionate to any threat of danger. Or people might have deep seated and irrational levels of hatred for anyone who falls into these categories. But none of this can be concluded simply because someone opposes homosexuality or trans ideology, or because they believe people should try to not carry too much fat on their body. This is what I find to be so lazy, and disappointing, about the way these accusations get tossed around today.
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How did we get here? Why is language like this being thrown around so often? I think there's a couple reasons for it. The first reason is related to something I mentioned back in Episode 4, titled “Compassionate Disagreement,” which you should totally check out if you haven’t already because it's one of my favorites. In that episode, I made the point that the people you disagree with probably aren’t like the Joker in the Batman series, with evil in their heart. Instead, they might just be mistaken about what's the right thing to do. Here’s another way of making this point, which is a phrase you might have heard before, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
People have a bad habit of assuming the worst in others, and we need to really make an effort to think in a more charitable way. Did that person cut you off on the road because their an asshole who doesn’t care about causing a wreck? Probably not. They probably just suck at driving and don’t understand the importance of caution, or it might have just been a mistake. Do people who oppose homosexuality have deep seated fear or hatred for homosexuals? Some might. But the more probable explanation is that they have a different conception of what is right and wrong than you do. So we should try to not assume things like fear or hatred in others, and we should hope that the same is done for us when disagreeing about these ethical questions.
Another reason why these terms are so common might be their rhetorical power. “You’re just homophobic,” “you’re a transphobe,” “you’re fatphobic.” These are shocking, and powerful, things to say, and they immediately put people on their backfoot. When people think they’re in jeopardy of being perceived as having hatred or fear in their hearts, they become defensive, and maybe even shut down. And in a strange way, both of these reactions kind of work out well for the accuser. If you can fluster another person, then you can appear to have “won” the conversation. And this kind of powerful, accusatory language can become quite intoxicating for the user. This, my friends, is the dark side of the force. Mere rhetoric. Using language in ways that are powerful for winning arguments at the cost of clarity and truthfulness. And this is often not even a conscious decision. We can subconsciously gain a sense of the effects that different ways of speaking have on other people, and if we’re not careful, and if we’re not self-reflective, we might end up being allured by the power of rhetorical tricks.
This is where the tools of philosophy can come to the rescue. Good philosophy, dare I say real philosophy, encourages us to prioritize clarity over rhetorical power. If we think carefully about what we’re really saying, and we have the integrity to purge our own language of unjustified implications and rhetorical tricks, we’ll have a much better chance of communicating effectively and arriving at the truth. This, my friends, is the light side of the force. Choose wisely.
