Those words have become common accusations, often tossed about with little or no justification, but have you noticed the disconnect between them? An “-ist” ending “denotes a person who practices or is concerned with something, or holds certain principles, doctrines, etc.,” while “phobic” denotes fear.
The simplest explanation (ISTM) is that it’s hard to come up with a decent -ist word regarding the trans issue. Sexist is already taken, and I don’t believe there’s a word that means something like “believing there are two sexes and you’re stuck with the one you were dealt.”
Still, accusing a person of holding to an (allegedly mistaken) ideology is a different thing from saying a person has a phobia.
Or … is it?
I said “allegedly mistaken” as if this whole thing involves some sort of appeal to truth. But it’s not about truth, is it? It’s really more about (alleged) hatred, and hatred and fear often go together. From that perspective, the words are about the same, in a post-modern sort of way.
Isn’t language inherently sloppy? When we speak of autism, for instance, we don’t refer to some sort of belief.
Autism is an interesting case, and yes, language is certainly sloppy. (I don’t know if it’s “inherently” so.)
Another case: An illusionist isn’t someone who believes in a doctrine of illusionism.
Inherently sloppy, casually speaking of course, just as human relations are inherently unstable. Not in the sense that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to 90 degrees.
180 degrees, or pi radians.
Yeah, 180…..but you get my point.
IDK. Women can have penises and men can have babies according to the woke. Why not say the angles of a triangle add up to 90 degrees? What if the triangle identifies that way?
I have written quite a lot about the philosophy of Alexius Meinong, who argued that that objects divide into two classes, ones that exist and ones that do not exist. If a triangle has angles which add up to 90 degrees, it is a non-existent object, but an object nonetheless. Bertrand Russell thought that he could use his formal gobbledy gook to refute Meinongianism, but to no avail. When Russell said that a square triangle defies the law of non-contradiction, Meinong aptly replied that the law of non-contradiction only applies to existing objects. So I have no problem with the fictions of the the left or the fictions of the right (e.g. such objects as patriotic or rational followers of Trump), as long as one concedes that they are objects that do not exist.
I think it’s fair to say “inherently” sloppy. Language is nothing more than what humans say and how they say it, influenced by all sorts of conditions, interactions, etc. Over time, that becomes sloppy, and it cannot be regulated into anything else.
There are so many exceptions to “an ist is one who believes in” or “an ism is a set of beliefs” that I think it does break down rather quickly. Beside autism and illusionist, you have dentist, astigmatism, dwarfism, etc.
I do think the shift from “ism” to “phobia” is telling of something, though. Where you’re correct about “ism” is that the examples you gave, sexism, racism, etc. do mean someone who holds a certain set of beliefs about the thing. But with the “phobic” thing, it becomes not a matter of belief, but a matter of mental deficiency or disease. A phobia isn’t just a fear, it’s an irrational fear. I think converting opposition into a mental health issue fits well with the recent (less than a decade, I think) tendency for the left to view their opponents as beyond persuasion or redemption and simply in need of personal cancellation and corporate annihilation. (Some elements of the right also do this but I think they are viewed with far more suspicion by other elements of the right, than the mainstream left views the hyper-woke types.)
It seems to me that some of the isms do shade off into phobias. Racism is often more an emotional thing (or an irrational fear) than an intellectual thing. I don’t think that this is something just made up by the left. The interesting shift to me is the one from a moral assessment to a psychological one. The culture always seems to move from “that is immoral” to “that is sick,” but never (or seldom) the other way.
I agree that some of the other isms do shade into irrationality, but when the terms for those things came into vogue, that was not baked into the terms, but with more recently arisen concerns, it was. I think that’s significant.
I think you’re right, Pentamom, to point out that phobia is irrational fear. The idea of saying that making it a mental health issue puts them beyond persuasion or redemption is amusing, since the woke wouldn’t want to do that with any other mental health issue.
I’m not sure they would resist that with other mental health issues. The approach to mental health these days isn’t so much that things can be overcome, but that we must all bear with and accommodate whatever effects that creates. That’s not entirely wrong but I think the pendulum has swung too far, as always happens.
But you’re right, it is inconsistent, because we’re supposed to bear with depression, bipolar, PTSD, whatever, but the socially unacceptable “-phobia”s just put a person beyond the pale. I suppose that’s what you meant.