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2:35pm
2007/08/25
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Listening to a discussion of LGBT Olympic athletes, I heard people again discuss those not supporting LGBT athletes as "homophobic". (I would assume that those who support LGBT athletes are "homophilic".)
But homophobic is not the antonym of homophilic. That is, if you don't like something, that doesn't mean you fear it. You may just not like it, or not prefer it.
Wikipedia identifies -phil- as antonymic to -phob-. But Biology is the only application where -phob- is used for preference against; all other uses of -phob- mean the fear of. "Preference for" or "brotherly love for" is not the antonym of the "fear of".
Wikipedia sometimes conjoins "fear of" and "dislike", as in Arachnophobia is "fear/dislike of spiders". However, it lists Homophobia as merely the "fear of homosexuals", not the dislike of homosexuality.
I haven't found a good root that means "dislike". When I look up the antonym to philogynist, it says misogynist. Is there some kind of homo-miso-something word?
What's a more accurate word for those who don't favor LGBT activities & events?
What is the antonym to "-philia", meaning "dislike"?
(For that matter, why don't we use the word "homophilic" for those favorable of or sympethetic to the LGBT cause?)
6:01pm
2010/08/14
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The only usual antonym to -philia is miso-, which isn't really satisfactory since it's a prefix rather than a suffix. A misogynist is a person who hates women (or, as Joseph Sobran says, "someone who thinks feminists are typical of women"); a misanthrope is tired of the whole human race. Yet both words come from verbs, μισῶ and φιλῶ; there's no obvious reason I can see that we might not say "arachnomisia" or "philanthropy". Wait a minute…