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CANCEL CULTURE
Why Are So Many People Weaponising Words Ending in “Phobia”?
Be honest about why you’re labelling somebody with such a word
5 min readMay 24, 2022
I was recently reading Lorrae - Loving My AUTISTRY’s article about fatphobia:
If a man wants to lose weight, it’s internalised fatphobia? Lorrae was right to point out what utter nonsense that is.
There is a trend of people weaponising words ending in “phobia”. It seems to be a defence mechanism used when somebody’s feelings have been hurt because someone else has an opinion they don’t like.
But let’s take a step back a minute. Let’s look at the NHS’s definition of a phobia:
A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.
Phobias are more pronounced than fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.
