Is there a word that means “a hatred of gay people”, rather than “a fear of or aversion to gay people”? Surely there are people who simply hate homosexuality without necessarily fearing it, and vice versa.
And similarly, why do we have words like “arachnophobia” which means a fear of something (not necessarily a hatred of it; though you might hate what you fear, that isn’t necessarily always the case, nor is the opposite always true either (fearing what you hate)), but “homophobia” is used to mean “hatred of homosexuality” rather than a genuine fear of it without necessarily hating it?
It makes me feel a bit sorry (as much as one can) for people who might genuinely be afraid of the idea of homosexuality, maybe even struggling with their own sexuality or possibly in denial of being homosexual themself, but without hating it at all (and being supportive of it), not having a word that conveys a fear of the concept/phenomenon without any kind of disdain for it, since “homophobia” would generally be interpreted to mean something far more negative. Usually when someone has a phobia for something, we support them to deal with it in a non-accusatory way, but in this case, well, I guess there isn’t even a word for that kind of phobia if it’s actually a phobia in the usual sense.
Xenophobia and racism are not related. Xenophobia is about foreigners regardless of race, and racism is about race regardless of nationality. The two get mixed in the head of people from the USA because a lot of guys claim they’re Irish or Italian without ever having set foot in any of those countries. If you dislike your [insert ethnicity] neighbour who was born and grew up in the same place as you did, you’re being racist. If you dislike your [insert nationality] neighbour who’s the same ethnicity as you, you’re being xenophobic.
-phobia means an irrational intolerance, for a lot of things we express intolerance by showing fear, but to others we show aggressiveness. It depends more on the person than the subject matter, some homophobics are actually afraid of gays, thinking they’ll corrupt the children or whatever stupid fearmongering propaganda they’re up to these days, meanwhile some arachnofobics will kill every spider they see. And their line of thought is often quite similar, e.g. I don’t hate [gays/spiders], I just don’t want to see them.
Every European: “but my hatred of the French is prefectly rational, does that mean it’s not xenophobia?”
Europe is not just UK. UK isn’t even EU anymore, and I have never seen negative sentiments towards french people in the rest of Europe.
As a German, I can assure you, there are plenty of people with negative sentiments
I don’t understand it, but I met an American who doesn’t like African Americans, but has no issues with actual Africans.
He’s racist, “African-American” means black, i.e. an ethnicity not a nationality, he doesn’t mind Africans because they’re not near him. A similar thing for a xenophobe would be I have no problem with Mexicans, it’s the Mexican immigrants I hate. Or from an aracnophobe: I understand spiders have their place in nature, I just don’t want them in my house.