Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - The Fear of “Phobic”

Episode Date: February 21, 2021

Have you ever been called a "phobic" term like homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, or xenophobic? Alan discusses three reasons why you don’t have to fear the “phobic” label.

Have you ever been called a phobic term like homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, or xenophobic? Well, if so, I want to tell you why you don't need to fear that label on this February 2021 episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schliemann. Well, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is no longer the beloved author. In fact, in recent tweets over the last six months or so, she has expressed her view that men who identify as women are, in fact, men. Now, this view, of course, is consistent with what virtually every human being has thought about this matter throughout all of human history. But despite that fact, she was branded as transphobic. That's what they called her.

So it's like, OK, checkmate rolling. Calling somebody transphobic is really bad. And so she needs to be afraid of this particular label. Now, there's a lot of terms that end with the term phobic. Like there's homophobic, there's Islamophobic, xenophobic, and of course transphobic, which is what they've been calling J.K. Rowling. If someone expresses disagreement with the mainstream narrative on, say, homosexuality, or Islam, or foreigners, or transgender people, then, of course, you'll be slapped with the label phobic. Okay, now, the word phobia has historically been understood to be a fear of something.

You know, for example, arachnophobia is a fear of spiders. That's the way historically it's been used. But today, adding that suffix is intended to signal that you hold a bigoted view on the subject. And of course, that's bad, right? You're supposed to be so afraid of being labeled phobic that you'll change your position or at least you'll never express that position in public. And so if you do, you know, prepare to be canceled, if you will. Now, I will admit that there are times when using the term phobic, like Islamic phobic, for example, might be legitimate, right? In fact, I've met people who are genuinely fearful and angry with Muslims. In fact, they even admitted that they are kind of Islamophobic.

But I'll tell you, despite the fact that I've spoken all across the United States and many countries in the world, I will tell you this is a very rare circumstance for the vast majority of people, even Arabs, for example, in the Middle East that are Christians. I don't find that people are generally angry or hostile towards Muslims. Okay. And so therefore they wouldn't, you know, appropriately be called Islamophobic, right? So this is why I believe you don't have to be afraid of being called phobic. I guess that would be called phobophobic, fear of being called phobic. But anyways, let me give you three reasons why I don't think that you should let the term phobic bother you or if somebody calls you like Islamophobic or homophobic or whatever that might be. Okay, so three reasons why you shouldn't let that label bother you. Here's the

first one. Calling you phobic is intended to dismiss you or your view. So you see, instead of providing a substantive response to your position, sometimes people will just simply try to dismiss you or your position. And so once you've been labeled, for example, homophobic, well, then there's nothing left for you to do, but allegedly kind of cower and sort of walk away. After all, in their mind, you've been identified as the bigot that you are. And now you just need to sort of bow out from any kind of further conversation about that particular subject. Okay. So this is when they dismiss your view. That's basically what calling euphobic does. It tries to dismiss your view. Now that problem is similar to the second problem with calling euphobic. And that is when someone calls you phobic,

basically this is a form of name calling. Now in logic, this is called an ad hominem attack. And it's recognized as an illegitimate approach to engaging someone that you disagree with. And this ad hominem attack occurs when someone attacks you or your character instead of addressing your argument with some kind of reasoned response, right? Now, elementary school children are well known for dealing out ad hominem attacks to each other during recess, right? And so the reason is because elementary

school children don't typically have a very civil means to express their anger. And so they just resort to name calling. And when I was a kid at recess at elementary school, people would call me, you know, dork or dweeb or loser. You know, these are sort of the go-to jabs that people used back when I was a kid. Now, sadly, some of those same kids, some of those same students have now grown up and are now using a similar means of engagement. Only today, their disparaging terms sound a lot more sophisticated than what they used back at recess in elementary school. So for example, they use the term xenophobic or Islamophobic or homophobic, right? Which, of course, sounds more sophisticated and more intelligent. But at its core, this simply is name-calling.

Now, a third reason why you don't have to have a fear of being called phobic is that it's often an irrelevant distraction from the topic at hand. And in logic, we call this a red herring. And it's a faulty way to dialogue because basically what's happening is it diverts the conversation away from the main topic and it inhibits productive conversation. In fact, I remember one time years ago, I was invited to speak at a secular university about the subject of abortion. And the hosts invited me to spend 20 minutes giving my case for the pro-life view. And in that, in those 20 minutes, I gave a scientific defense for the full humanity of the unborn

from the moment of conception. And then I was obligated to answer any objections that would come my way from my presentation. And so there was about an hour or so of conversation, Q&A with me. And during that time, many people offered objections to my view. And so I responded to those objections. And so eventually, people got frustrated that they weren't able to overturn my view. And so I responded to those objections. And so eventually people got frustrated that they weren't able to overturn my defense. And I'm not saying that because I'm trying to suggest that I'm amazing or anything like that. It's just the defense for the pro-life view is very, very strong. But finally, somebody got up to the microphone and said to me this, they said,

well, you're just anti-woman. Now, remember, the event topic was about whether the unborn is a human being. And I presented scientific evidence that the unborn is a human being from the moment of conception. Now, notice that whether I'm anti-woman or pro-woman has no bearing on whether the evidence I provided was true. Right? pro-woman, has no bearing on whether the evidence I provided was true, right? Because even if I were anti-woman, how would that affect the scientific evidence I presented, right? I could be anti-woman, I could be homophobic, I could be racist. In fact, I could literally be Hitler and that would still have absolutely no impact on the arguments I presented that day

right because whether or not the unborn is a human being is solely based on the merits of my evidence and not on my identity or on my character and so in the same way whether or not JK Rowling is transphobic has no bearing on whether or not a trans woman is a woman or not, right? Rowling's character, whether it's good or bad, is irrelevant. And so calling her transphobic simply shifts the attention away from the question at hand, and it focuses the entire conversation on her, which again is illegitimate. So there you go. Those are my sort of my three reasons why I think you shouldn't be afraid of being labeled phobic.

And to be honest, I'm not sure exactly what's led our society to sidestep rational discourse and instead resort to calling people's names. But I hope you can see it's unfair, it's irrelevant, and it's immature. And that's why there's no need to be afraid to get slapped with a phobic label, because in most cases, it's a totally illegitimate attack. All right, well, that's all I have for you today. If you've enjoyed listening to my topic today or enjoy just in general the topic of apologetics or theology, be sure to rate this podcast or review this podcast or just in general review my podcast feed on iTunes or wherever else you listen to this podcast. And thanks again for listening, and I will see you next time.