After an unpleasant online discussion yesterday, I’m more convinced than before of the need to push back against “phobia” as an epithet. The amount of sheer rage directed at those who question the term — it seems I’m a promoter of “genocide” — shows that something important is going on.

A phobia, as I’ve said before, is a habitual, involuntary, irrational fear. Acrophobia is fear of heights; people with it get dizzy when looking down from high places. Claustrophobia is fear of enclosure in a small space; it can lead to a panic attack when stuck in an elevator that stops moving (or for some, being in an elevator at all). And so on. The involuntary aspect is central. The refusal to think is wrong because it’s irrational and voluntary, and it’s an entirely different case. People aren’t morally responsible for their phobias, though they can be responsible for the degree to which they let them control them.

Calling bigotry a “phobia” demeans people with actual phobias and absolves bigots of responsibility. At the same time, it serves to attack people who don’t conform to a set of attitudes. This is most obvious with “Islamophobia.” People who don’t obey its religious commandments, especially the one about never displaying a picture of Muhammad, are declared “Islamophobic.” Disregard for religious authority is rarely the result of fearing it; fear produces obedience, if anything. But the point isn’t to make sense, only to mock and denounce.

There’s a similar issue with “transphobia,” though here we’re on much trickier ground. Bigotry, hostility, and violence toward transsexual people are real and need to be denounced. But the “phobia” epithet locks out discussion of difficult questions of how to be fair to everyone while not violating anyone’s rights. How do schools and athletic organizations handle men who transition to female but have the physiological advantages of a male body without either excluding them or being unfair to ordinary women? How do prisons handle male prisoners who claim to identify as female just so they’ll get access to female inmates, while recognizing that disregard for actual transsexuals can have horrible consequences? At what age are children competent to make life-changing decisions about their bodies? The people who raise these questions are dismissed as merely having a “phobic” reaction.

The result is that nuanced discussion of the difficulties is impossible, and the most irrational opposition is left in control of the field, because they revel in being denounced.

Let’s talk about and firmly oppose bigotry, misinformation, and especially violence. They’re too important to be dismissed as mere phobic reactions, and yelling “Yer scared!” accomplishes nothing constructive.