Quote:
Originally Posted by scott snedeker
I think that your professors have been awakened to their own feelings and biases. This made them uncomfortable.
While I agree that homophobia is emotionally charged and reactionary, I feel that heterocentric is not. Heterocentric is neutral in it's flavor. So if a person feels emotionaly charged by this term I feel that it reveals the underlying homophobic undertones the professor who is consciously or unconsciously adding transferrence into his scholastic criticism.
As a counter criticism you could invite them to search within themselves with curiosity for the possiblity that transferrence did color their criticism as an exercise in intellectual insight.
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Bishop Robinson said once that he prefers not to use the word 'homophobia' because it's a conversation stopper. The person you're talking to, rightly or wrongly, just shuts down. He prefers the word 'heterosexism', which is probably more correct anyway, though I can't imagine that word being mainstreamed. He said (
here's the clip; having a blog to put things in comes in handy sometimes!) that using 'heterosexist' "points to where the responsibility lies. It lies with the oppressors, not with the oppressed, to dismantle the system that benefits them."
I don't understand the objective problem with the word 'heterocentrism', though. It's rarely enough used that I think it would probably be best if you defined it on first use, but it's a recognized phenomenon. And yeah, if they didn't offer any alternate word or tack, I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that they may have been uncomfortable with the topic in general rather than the term in specific.
My current favorite is 'heteronormative'. I'm dying to fit that into a conversation.
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Alternately, it could be that that isn't what they meant by 'equivocation'.
As a logical fallacy, equivocation could be meant as a term that has more than one meaning.