Alynna, i understand you’re trying to participate, but you don’t seem to have a clue what you’re talking about. You’re right in that “-phobia” literally means a fear, but you’re ignoring the fact that a lot of oppression is called a “phobia” culturally. Homophobia is a real thing, and that’s what it’s called. It doesn’t mean a “fear” of gay people, it means the oppression of them. Is that something you’re willfully ignoring, or something you’re genuinely too dense to know?

I love how this has already devolved to name calling and denigration of ones intelligence.   But you are wrong about this and allow me to explain.   There was homophobia BEFORE there was systematic oppression of gay people.   Homophobia *led* to the systematic oppression.  Homophobia does not *equal* said oppression, as that is saying that the cause is the same as the effect.   There must be some other word, truly, that actually means the systematic oppression of LGBT people that resulted from the fear of them.

As it is, if we just start saying that the phobia, the fear, of a certain culture or way of life, is not valid until it becomes actual oppression, then we are saying it is not a problem we need to address with until a culture is oppressed.   The fear of a different culture comes way before the oppression of said culture.   This is in no way saying that LGBT people have not been oppressed, nor it is it saying that otherkin have been, and I don’t want anything I have written to be twisted and construed to say otherwise.

But the fact is, that before LGBT people were oppressed, they were picked on, discriminated against, insulted, and so forth.   And this was before we started applying -phobia in a cultural context, and it only meant fear of things.  Because people did not recognize this as an actual fear of said condition and/or culture, we did nothing to overcome it or stop it and that became implicit validation that homophobia was OK which then validated even greater expressions of it, until we made it to actual oppression.

But to be sure, this isn’t unique to LGBT people, many people of different condition, class, cultural background and different gender and orientation have been subject to the phobia of a majority class, and those people are “phobic” of said cultures and classes.   Just because it has not made it to the “oppression” of said class does not make it less of a phobia of said class.

Otherkin aren’t oppressed.  Its not mine to predict if they will ever be.  But they are discriminated against by those who fear their expression of themselves, and historically, discrimination eventually leads to oppression, particularly when people implicitly validate such discrimination, insulting, trolling and general hate of such classes by saying that the people perpetuating such acts are not being “phobic” of said class.  That they “deserve it” for “being different” and “not conforming to societial norms”.   Is this what you want?

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None of this should be twisted and construed as to make it seem like I am saying “homophobia is invalid” and (again) that LGBT aren’t oppressed.   However the point is, kinphobia IS valid, because kinphobia is the trolling, the hate, the discrimination, the insults, et. al, of all the different types of kin.  All things that shouldn’t be treated as OK, and shouldn’t be treated as anything less than fear of what we feel and believe we are.