2012.12.07 反同性恋的偏见没有 "中立 "的说法

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There Is No 'Neutral' Word for Anti-Gay Bias
By Lily Rothman
DECEMBER 7, 2012
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The Associated Press has removed "homophobia" from its style guide, but its alternatives have their own downsides.

rothman_homophobia_post.jpg
Jorge Lopez/Reuters
Late last month, the Associated Press tried to clear something up about homophobia. Or, rather, about anti-gay bias: the word "homophobia" is no longer approved by the AP Stylebook, the resource many Americans newspapers use as the arbiter of how to write right. "It seems inaccurate," AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told Politico. "Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such." But reactions to the AP's decision have only shown why and how the language of bias is likely to get far cloudier before it gets clear.


At first, the decision—which also applies to other -phobia words, like Islamophobia—may have seemed straightforward enough, if surprising. The reasoning provided by the AP is that the -phobia suffix implies a DSM-certified pathological fear, which does not necessarily apply to so-called homophobes. As linguist extraordinaire Ben Zimmer told Voice of America, it's a weird choice considering we use -phobia in a non-clinical way all the time—what else would be the opposite of -phile?—but, sure, okay. Doing away with euphemisms is one of the commandments of good journalistic writing, and has been since 1946, when George Orwell wrote in Politics and the English Language about how euphemisms obscure truth: "A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details." A modern go-to example of the strength of Orwell's point can be seen in re: abortion. Pro-life and pro-choice are weighty terms; the AP prefers anti-abortion and pro-abortion-rights, phrases not coined by advocates. But language, too, abhors a vacuum, and a euphemism is like a gray hair. Pluck one and two grow in its place.

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The positive reactions to the nixing of "homophobia" have largely come from people in a position to get accused of being homophobic. These responses tended toward a point also made by Orwell: that "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Now that AP-following newspapers won't imply that people who express anti-gay thoughts are mentally ill, it'll may become easier to make arguments against gay rights. Those arguments tend to turn to a different piece of Orwell's work for back-up. At National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke claims that "homophobia" is a "thought police" word. He praises the AP: "Presumably, there are some people who are genuinely scared of homosexuals..."—here he goes on with a tongue-in-cheek list of absurd phobias-- "but homophobia is not a condition that afflicts many." The website Deceptionation.com mentions a study out of Regent University, a religious institution, finding that "homophobia" is part of a concerted effort to "desensitize" the population, again citing 1984: "[That strategy] is reminiscent of George Orwell's premise of goodthink and badthink." Frontpagemag.com differentiates fear and dislike, once again citing 1984, claiming that words like "homophobia" help opinion pass as news.


The negative responses to the AP's move generally argue that what we call homophobia is, in fact, an irrational fear. Strong arguments to that point have come from George Weinberg, who coined the term in the '60s and spoke to The Advocate (which does not use the AP Stylebook and where the term will still be employed): "Is every snarling dog afraid? Probably yes," he said. Other support for that idea comes from Nathaniel Frank at Slate and, of course, from Yoda ("Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.").

But support for "homophobia" is, to use a turn of phrase Orwell would probably hate, not unmixed. Andrew Sullivan—okay, not on the left, but not a defender of anti-gay sentiment or action—writing at The Daily Beast, mentions Orwell, calls the word smug, and makes the point that, within an anti-gay worldview, fear or hatred of gay people is a rational reaction, not a pathological one. And Zack Ford at ThinkProgress makes the interesting point that, because "homophobia" has been so successful as a summary of anti-gay feeling, the we're-not-actually-phobic argument allows those who are homophobic (or "homophobic") to explain away their positions without actually getting to the reason they might be identified as such:

It's become quite common— and unfortunately easy—for anti-gay activists to draw a distinction between their positions and any "fear" of gay people, though of course the term never had clinical diagnostic purposes anyway... If news readers perceive the label of "homophobia" as an overreach, they may not appreciate the severity of the anti-gay tactics at work.
Ford suggests "heterosexism" as a replacement but, as the excellent run-down on the take-down of "homophobia" in a column about queer words at Autostraddle argues, the different words for anti-gay feeling each express something different. The Autostraddle writer makes a plea on behalf of "homophobia" and many other words for the many shades of discrimination out there—which gets why the AP's decision will either do nothing or, amid this flurry of debate, backfire.

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Weinberg, the man who invented the word, also told The Advocate that "we have no other word for what we're talking about," and, while that may have been true in the '70s, its not anymore. There are a million little fractured ways to talk about bias, and now that "homophobia" is a subject of mainstream debate that number of replacements seems likely to multiply. Even if the AP's deputy standards editor told Politico that the goal is to be "neutral in our phrasing," none of the replacement words can be neutral.

There is no way to be totally neutral in discussing a controversial issue, because each side of a controversy will claim certain terms for its own. "Pro-family" and "heteronormative" and even the AP's "anti-gay" already have their own implications, just like "homophobia" does. Whatever you think about the word, its banning is evidence of the power of labels and the power of whether or not a word is a euphemism and the power of being the one who decides, which means that each side will scramble to claim every label it can. The labels get more precise, yes, while they risk multiplying into such granular specificity that there's nothing left to say about a label than the fact that it exists. It's hard to talk to each other when we don't speak the same language, but maybe that's inevitable when words are owned by opposing positions.

And Orwell knew that too. "In our age," he wrote, and it goes for us too, "there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.'"

Lily Rothman is a freelance writer based in New York City.



性别
反同性恋的偏见没有 "中立 "的说法
作者：Lily Rothman
2012年12月7日
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美联社已经从其风格指南中删除了 "恐同症"，但其替代品也有自己的缺点。

rothman_homophobia_post.jpg
Jorge Lopez/路透社
上个月末，美联社试图澄清一些关于恐同症的问题。或者说，关于反同性恋的偏见："恐同症 "这个词不再被美联社风格手册认可，该手册是许多美国报纸作为如何正确写作的仲裁者所使用的资源。"这似乎不准确，"美联社副标准编辑Dave Minthorn告诉Politico。"相反，我们会使用一些更中性的词：反同性恋，或一些类似的词。" 但是，对美联社决定的反应只表明，为什么以及如何偏见的语言在变得清晰之前可能会变得更加模糊不清。


起初，这一决定--也适用于其他 "恐惧症 "词汇，如 "伊斯兰恐惧症"--可能看起来足够直接，甚至令人惊讶。美联社提供的理由是，-phobia后缀意味着DSM认证的病态恐惧，这并不一定适用于所谓的恐同症患者。正如语言学家Ben Zimmer告诉美国之音的那样，这是一个奇怪的选择，因为我们一直在以非临床的方式使用-phobia，还有什么会与-phile相反呢？摒弃委婉语是优秀新闻写作的戒律之一，自1946年以来一直如此，当时乔治-奥威尔在《政治与英语》中写到委婉语是如何掩盖真相的："大量的拉丁语词像软雪一样落在事实上，模糊了轮廓，掩盖了所有细节。关于奥威尔的观点，可以从一个现代的例子中看出其力量：堕胎。支持生命和支持选择是有分量的术语；美联社更喜欢反堕胎和支持堕胎权利，这些短语不是由倡导者创造的。但是，语言也厌恶真空，委婉语就像白头发。拔掉一根，就会有两根长在它的位置上。

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英语中最复杂的词："他"、"她 "和 "他们
对取消 "恐同症 "的积极反应主要来自于被指控为恐同症的人。这些反应倾向于奥威尔也提出的一个观点："如果思想腐蚀语言，语言也会腐蚀思想"。现在，追随美联社的报纸不会暗示表达反同性恋思想的人有精神疾病，反对同性恋权利的论点可能会变得更容易。这些论点往往转向奥威尔的另一部作品作为支持。在《国家评论》，查尔斯-库克（Charles C.W. Cooke）声称 "恐同症 "是一个 "思想警察 "的词。他赞扬了美联社。"据推测，有一些人确实害怕同性恋者......"--在这里，他继续列举了荒唐的恐惧症--"但恐同症并不是一种困扰许多人的病症。" Deceptionation.com网站提到瑞金大学（一个宗教机构）的一项研究，发现 "同性恋恐惧症 "是使人口 "脱敏 "的共同努力的一部分，并再次引用了《1984》："[这种策略]让人想起乔治-奥威尔的好思想和坏思想的前提。" Frontpagemag.com区分了恐惧和厌恶，再次引用了《1984》，声称像 "恐同症 "这样的词汇有助于将意见当作新闻。


对美联社此举的负面回应普遍认为，我们所说的恐同症实际上是一种非理性的恐惧。乔治-温伯格（George Weinberg）对此提出了强有力的论据，他在60年代创造了这个词，并对《倡导者》杂志（该杂志不使用美联社的风格手册，该词仍将被采用）发表了讲话。"每条咆哮的狗都害怕吗？可能是的，"他说。对这一观点的其他支持来自Slate的Nathaniel Frank，当然还有Yoda（"恐惧导致愤怒。 愤怒导致仇恨。"）。

但是对 "同性恋恐惧症 "的支持，用奥威尔可能会讨厌的说法，并不是没有混合的。安德鲁-沙利文（Andrew Sullivan）--好吧，不是左派，但也不是反同性恋情绪或行动的捍卫者--在《野兽日报》上写道，他提到了奥威尔，称这个词是自以为是的，并指出，在反同性恋的世界观中，对同性恋者的恐惧或仇恨是一种理性反应，而不是一种病态的反应。ThinkProgress的Zack Ford提出了一个有趣的观点：由于 "同性恋恐惧症 "作为对反同性恋情绪的总结是如此成功，"我们实际上并不恐惧 "的论点使那些同性恋恐惧症（或 "同性恋恐惧症"）的人能够解释他们的立场，而实际上他们可能被认定为同性恋的原因。

反同性恋的活动家将他们的立场和对同性恋者的 "恐惧 "区分开来，这已经很常见了，而且不幸的是很容易，当然，这个词从来没有临床诊断的用途...... 如果新闻读者认为 "恐同症 "的标签过于夸张，他们可能不会理解反同性恋策略的严重性。
福特建议用 "异性恋主义 "来替代，但是，正如Autostraddle网站关于同性恋词汇的专栏中对 "恐同症 "的出色阐述，反同性恋情绪的不同词汇各自表达了不同的东西。Autostraddle的作者代表 "恐同症 "和其他许多歧视性词汇提出了请求--这也是为什么美联社的决定要么什么都不做，要么在这一连串的辩论中适得其反。

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发明这个词的人温伯格也告诉《倡导者》，"我们没有其他词来表达我们正在谈论的东西。"虽然这在70年代可能是真的，但现在不是了。有一百万种小的分裂方式来谈论偏见，而现在 "恐同症 "成为主流辩论的主题，替代的数量似乎会成倍增加。即使美联社的副标准编辑告诉Politico，其目标是 "在我们的措辞中保持中立"，但没有一个替换词可以是中立的。

在讨论一个有争议的问题时，没有办法做到完全中立，因为争议的每一方都会把某些术语据为己有。"支持家庭 "和 "异性恋"，甚至美联社的 "反同性恋 "已经有了自己的含义，就像 "恐同症 "一样。无论你对这个词怎么看，它的被禁都证明了标签的力量，证明了一个词是否是委婉语的力量，证明了作为决定者的力量，这意味着每一方都会争先恐后地要求得到它能得到的所有标签。标签变得更加精确，是的，同时它们有可能繁殖到如此细微的特殊性，以至于除了它的存在这一事实之外，没有任何关于标签的东西可以说。当我们不说同一种语言时，就很难相互交谈，但当词语被对立的立场所拥有时，这也许是不可避免的。

而奥威尔也知道这一点。他写道："在我们这个时代，"对我们来说也是如此，"没有'远离政治'这回事。"

莉莉-罗斯曼是驻纽约市的自由作家。