The 27-year-old man who police say shot and killed a California business owner over a Pride flag draped in her store appears to have had a yearslong history of posting disturbing — and often violent — anti-LGBTQ messages on social media.

The suspect, Travis Ikeguchi, gunned down Laura Ann Carleton, 66, on Friday, after confronting her and “yelling many homophobic slurs” over her clothing store’s Pride flag, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said at a news conference Monday. Shortly after fleeing the store, Mag.Pi, Ikeguchi was killed in a shootout with law enforcement.

    • Kerrigor@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      That is literally one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

      There is absolutely homophobia. There are people who very specifically go out of their way to harass primarily LGBTQ individuals. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US experienced this even in school as a child.

        • JollyTheRancher@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Absolutely. This is the same reason I am against the use of sunrise and sunset. The sun isn’t actually doing anything!

          Peanuts are not actually nuts, we must fix this as well.

          I heard someone say they were head over heels in love with their boyfriend the other day, imagine my outrage that they were standing normal on their feet!

          We should also get rid of the word hemophobia, they’re not actually afraid of blood, they’re just having a neurological reaction.

          It is just all so infuriating

          Oh, and don’t even get me started on “sleeping like a baby”! I’ve never seen a baby sleep through the night without waking up multiple times.

          Or when people claim they’re “freezing” when it’s just a bit chilly. To my knowledge, they’re not turning into ice!

          Ever heard someone say they’re “starving”? Unless they’ve been stranded on a deserted island recently, I doubt it.

          And the term “caught red-handed”? Unless their hands are actually painted red, I think we might be exaggerating.

          It’s all so perplexing; words just aren’t what they used to be!

            • JollyTheRancher@lemmy.world
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              Absolutely, words do matter! That’s precisely my point. If we’re to take every word and phrase at its literal, original meaning, we’d have quite the linguistic overhaul on our hands. It’d be a monumental task (and not literally involving monuments). But let’s remember, language is dynamic and ever-evolving. It’s as much about communication and shared understanding as it is about individual words. Let’s focus on the bigger picture and not get bogged down in the weeds—or should I say, not literally stuck in marshy grounds!

        • Kalkaline @lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          I get what you’re trying to say: “It’s not fear, it’s hate” but we call that hate homophobia and everyone agrees on the meaning.

        • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Is a hydrophobic material afraid of water? Or does it simply repel water?

          Similarly a homophobic person repels homosexuals from society via shame, discrimination, or violence.

    • skweetis@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      You think that you’re saying something clever, but you’re not. The suffixes “philic” and “phobic” are used in scientific contexts to denote when things are attracted or repelled. Yes, colloquially people use “phobic” to mean fear, but it doesn’t always mean that in science. For example, when scientists talk about https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Physical_Properties_of_Matter/Atomic_and_Molecular_Properties/Intermolecular_Forces/Hydrophobic_Interactions they aren’t saying that the molecules are literally “afraid” of water. They aren’t wrong in their language. You are. Homophobic people are repelled by gay people, and so “homophobia” is exactly the correct term.

      And, in addition to that, I gather from your replies that you are a straight person. If you consider yourself an ally, or just not a shitty person, then please refrain from reducing a homophobic murder to a semantic game. It’s real life for gay people, not a thought experiment for you to exercise your contrarian rhetorical skills. You are not helping.

      Editing to add: And, of course, people DO claim fear of gay people as a defense for murdering gay people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

      “A defendant may allege to have found the same-sex sexual advances so offensive or frightening that they were provoked into reacting, were acting in self-defense, were of diminished capacity, or were temporarily insane, and that this circumstance is exculpatory or mitigating.”

      So, even if you’re junvenile semantic games were valid (they aren’t), you’re wrong. So, again, please take a seat.

      • Landrin201
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        1 year ago

        Also I’d argue that none of this really matters because language doesn’t follow an absolute set of rules. Language is how people use it. If people start using a word to mean so thing it take son that meaning, it doesn’t matter if the word makes sense in relation to other words.

        A word for something isn’t a 100% accurate description of that thing and it never has been. It doesn’t matter that a peanut isn’t technically a nut, we call it a peanut. Everyone understands that it’s a peanut. If you walk up to someone on the street and say “do you know where I can buy some peanuts” they will understand what you are saying with no problems at all.

        We spend way too much time arguing over the “right” and “wrong” uses of words. There is no such thing really. Words don’t determine their own meaning, people determine that meaning, and if enough people can regocnize a words meaning immediately when they hear it then it is a word with a valid definition. It doesn’t matter if the word is contradictory to the way other similar words work, because language isn’t defined like that.

        Ironically this whole stupid “homophobic peoe aren’t scared of gay people” actually proves that the person making that claim does acknoedge that the word homophobia is linguistically valid, because they are acknowledging that it’s understood definition differs from what you would expect if you strictly read the word literally

        • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world
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          Further, even their efforts to portray it as “silly SJWs constantly inventing new terms for things” falls flat on its face because “homophobia” has been a widely used and accepted term for literally decades. It’s a pointless (and incorrect!) diversion in pedantry. Plus, it ignores the fact that there is value in actually having specific terms for common things, actually. The reason we have a specific term for anti-gay bigotry is because it’s a concept we as a society talk a lot about, so it’s simply useful to have a specific term we can use to specifically address that phenomenon. No single person gets to play pedantic petulant child and dictate how the rest of us use language. Language is perhaps the single most democratic thing humanity has, as the meaning of words (and what words there are!) is solely determined by everyday participatory democracy.

        • Nelots@lemm.ee
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          And language changes with time and culture. A great example of this is the word ‘literally’. At this point it’s become a synonym of ‘figuratively’ with younger generations, just about the exact opposite of what it once meant. Some might argue that’s just using the word wrong, but if people are able to understand each other when using the word in that way, it’s clearly a working definition, no matter how odd.

          So even if homophobia meant actually being afraid of gay people at some point, even that would be irrelevant. At the end of the day, the meaning it holds today is the only thing that’s important.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      It’s easier to understand homophobia not from the perspective of being afraid of gay people but being afraid of what would happen to society if being gay were not considered a failure state lesser to being hetero and treated as such.

      Hence why they keep talking about “cultural Marxism”. It’s supposed to seem like a threat posed to “Western Civilization” they are VERY afraid of what happens when being gay is considered normal. “Cultural Marxism” actually doesn’t have any clear definable meaning aside from a vague implication that any form of socially accepted equality is dangerous to society, and cause for dissolution of the “traditional family” and so on. They absolutely DO frame these subjects in the context of fear. That’s why they keep evoking communist wording ( the Nazis used the term “Cultural Bolshevism” for the same purpose) You are already conditioned to be afraid of Communists so you are supposed to draw an emotional parallel. There really is no other purpose for using that term as while Marx himself did have some vague stuff about women’s role in society and that they were equally human as men but his works really were more gender blind and focused on how capitalism effects people’s lives. Calling him feminist is a bit of a stretch. But the point is to make you scared so you really stop thinking about it in any terms other than “Very bad society destroying thingy”.

      If they said “Gay people will kill you because they are all great at jujitsu and you should run!” people would think you’re a complete moron but “Their existence will erode the nuclear family and cause us to be weak as a society so that our enemies will take us down!” is a more nebulous fear that doesn’t stem from any specific completely harmless individual. It makes the existence of them at all as a whole a threat. Or they cam be treated as a threat to one’s personal perception of being masculine if ones entire premise of masculinity operates on the nessesity of being perceived as not being desired or desiring men. Hence homophobia - a fear of being perceived as gay.

    • Badass_panda@lemmy.world
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      Ah yes, “fear”, the notorious antonym for “attraction.”

      Phobia is the opposite of philia; they’re Greek suffixes, and they meant, and still mean, “fleeing from” and “seeking out”; the connotation of “fear” arrived considerably more recently, because of psychiatric conditions being named … in Greek.

      If you’re going to a pedantic dummy about etymology, at least take the time to learn a little before you dive in my dude.

      For instance, you could object that “homophobia” originally referred to someone who irrationally avoided other humans, and then demand that words never change their meaning and immediately begin proudly speaking fluent proto Indo European.