I think that people are generally lazy with regards to language, and "-phobia" is an easy shorthand for "dislike of/aversion to".
As for the unfitness thing, I know that for cardiovascular risk factors it is much better to be overweight and fit and active than at your nominal weight and sedentary. Quite how common the first case is, I don't know.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, you're saying that "homophobia" is linguistically acceptable, but "fatphobia" isn't? Aren't they constructed exactly the same way? Sure, you can say that people who hate gay people do it because they're frightened, in some way, but you can make a case for people hating fat people because they're frightened, too (frightened of becoming one).
(Incidentally I am very very very interested in the reasons why people dislike fat people, so if anyone reading this knows of any studies then please give me a pointer.)
((Incidentally incidentally I'm becoming a great fan of qualitative interview-based studies. I used to think they were all handwavey faff, but then I read some.))
Going back to commenting on your actual post... it seems to me that if you run up 5 flights of stairs every day then eventually your body will become optimised for running up 5 flights of stairs. Same way as if you play the euphonium every day, your body will become optimised for playing the euphonium. (You may not have to run up those
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Unless I'm misunderstanding, you're saying that "homophobia" is linguistically acceptable, but "fatphobia" isn't?
Ah, no, I didn't explain that very well. I don't like either word, and I think that "X-phobia" should be reserved for actual fears. That said, I suspect that we're stuck with "homophobia" for the forseeable future, so I'm just ranting against the rot spreading... The only reason I mentioned homophobia is that the web page I linked to was a specific rebuttal of a separate web page.
If people don't want to run up 5 flights of stairs carrying an oxygen cylinder, then fine.
Yes, absolutely, I'm not suggesting that everyone should run out and join the LAS :) I just thought that was an interesting example of an indirect health risk which might normally be overlooked. With regard to specific optimisations, I think that there may be some scope for people to be both fat and strong in a particular area (e.g. arm wrestling), but I don't think that applies to running.
What word would you use instead of "homophobia", then? The thing is that people like to have words for things so they can talk about them, and if a word doesn't exist then someone will make one. The other thing is that words can have more than one meaning, and the meanings of words can change. It seems odd to decide that only meanings which existed before a certain time are acceptable, if only because the certain time is so arbitrary.
What word would you use instead of "homophobia", then?I'm not sure that we need one - from where I'm sitting, "homophobia" and "fatphobia" both seem to refer to concepts that are so poorly defined as to make them meaningless. However, if you do want such a word then I'd recommend something that would be accepted by people on both sides of the debate. People who are afraid of spiders would probably say "Yes, I have arachnophobia", but I don't think that people who are opposed to gay marriage would describe themselves as homophobes. Playing devil's advocate (i.e. this isn't a genuine suggestion), how about "traditional moral values" as an alternative term
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Surfing in via nou's roundup, I'd say there's a second type of phobia I think you've missed: culturally created (and therefore culturally sanctioned) phobias. Homophobia is one of these: in the main, homophobic men are disgusted by gay men because they perceive them as a threat to the stability of their own gender identity. The culture we know here in the West has a lot to say about what a man's gender identity should and shouldn't be: he is not permitted to express emotion intensely, directly or frequently, unlike women, and furthermore true male-to-male bonding in the sense of deep friendship and affection is effectively forbidden thanks to the post-Christian paranoia that it necessarily entails homosexuality. And yet the human urge to bond persists; so in effect, homophobes take their own insecurity about relating to other men out on the gays, demonising them for 'corrupting' others when in fact what they really represent is an uncomfortable reminder that the homophobes themselves are being partly crushed by the narrow confines a
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As for the unfitness thing, I know that for cardiovascular risk factors it is much better to be overweight and fit and active than at your nominal weight and sedentary. Quite how common the first case is, I don't know.
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(Incidentally I am very very very interested in the reasons why people dislike fat people, so if anyone reading this knows of any studies then please give me a pointer.)
((Incidentally incidentally I'm becoming a great fan of qualitative interview-based studies. I used to think they were all handwavey faff, but then I read some.))
Going back to commenting on your actual post... it seems to me that if you run up 5 flights of stairs every day then eventually your body will become optimised for running up 5 flights of stairs. Same way as if you play the euphonium every day, your body will become optimised for playing the euphonium. (You may not have to run up those ( ... )
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Ah, no, I didn't explain that very well. I don't like either word, and I think that "X-phobia" should be reserved for actual fears. That said, I suspect that we're stuck with "homophobia" for the forseeable future, so I'm just ranting against the rot spreading... The only reason I mentioned homophobia is that the web page I linked to was a specific rebuttal of a separate web page.
If people don't want to run up 5 flights of stairs carrying an oxygen cylinder, then fine.
Yes, absolutely, I'm not suggesting that everyone should run out and join the LAS :) I just thought that was an interesting example of an indirect health risk which might normally be overlooked. With regard to specific optimisations, I think that there may be some scope for people to be both fat and strong in a particular area (e.g. arm wrestling), but I don't think that applies to running.
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