Heterophobia: What It Is, Symptoms, And How It Affects Relationships
The term known as “heterophobia” today is not found in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE); However, in recent years it has become increasingly popular, and it is worth noting that it has several definitions, as we will see in this article.
Heterophobia is a term with various definitions such as the following: “irrational fear of the opposite gender” or also as “fear or confusion in the face of what is different, in this case being the excessive fear of the unknown that causes discomfort in people who suffer from this type of phobia.”
In this article we will talk in more detail about the concept of heterophobia and its different definitions, its main characteristics, the most common symptoms of those who suffer from this type of phobia and, finally, we will present some examples.
Heterophobia is a somewhat controversial concept, its use being considered unnecessary, and even non-existent in practice depending on the different definitions it has. In this sense, there are those who consider that the term heterophobia understood as the “rejection of heterosexuality” does not exist because it is very rare for such cases to occur. Therefore, they claim that the existence of heterophobia could not be considered according to this definition because heterosexual people have not frequently been marginalized for their sexual orientation.
However, heterophobia has been defined in various ways, among which is the “rejection of what is different or the unknown”, a more accepted definition. Fernando Savater, the philosopher, already spoke about heterophobia in an essay, defining himself as that feeling of hatred and fear of others, strangers, different people, foreigners or those who break into our circle of identification from the outside; thus considering it as a “moral disease”.
On the other hand, psychology has come to use another definition for heterophobia, being understood as the “fear or phobia of the opposite sex” which could have been triggered by some bad experience on a sexual, relational and/or sentimental level.
Below we will see in more detail the different definitions that we have been able to find about heterophobia and then we will explain the main characteristics of those people who suffer from this type of phobia.
The different definitions of heterophobia
The term heterophobia may be new or unknown to many people; However, lately it has come to be used more frequently and, although it is not included in the official dictionaries of the Spanish language, many people have incorporated it into their language and that is why it is advisable to keep its meaning in mind. .
Besides, This term has been receiving greater attention within the field of psychology, being considered as a type of phobia, being taken into account by some professionals, although it is not explicitly included in any of the main diagnostic manuals on mental disorders (DSM and ICD); However, it could be classified with a specific type of phobia and its symptoms considered in relation to it.
By this we do not mean that behind heterophobia there is a textbook mental disorder, but we do want to keep in mind its possible classification within specific phobias in order to be able to understand this type of phobia in greater detail, taking as a reference other phobias that have been more studied and that could present certain similarities with it in terms of their possible symptomatology.
The word ‘phobia’, as we well know, is used to designate a strong aversion or fear of something, so heterophobia could be used to refer to one of those types of phobia. On the other hand, ‘hetero’, from an etymological point of view, refers to everything that is different, being used in the field of gender and sexuality.
According to its etymological meaning, we could begin to define the term heterophobia as that irrational fear of the opposite gender that some people may suffer from. In this case we would be talking about the fear of heterosexual relationships that some people could suffer and that can also develop due to various causes, such as having had a bad experience in the past.
Another definition of heterophobia would be a type of specific phobia that some people suffer towards other people with a heterosexual sexual orientation or towards heterosexuality, This word can be considered in this case as the opposite of homophobia which according to the RAE refers to the aversion that some people have towards homosexual people or towards homosexuality.
On the other hand, there is also the definition of heterophobia referring to that strangeness, that kind of fear or confusion in the face of what is different; In this case, the excessive fear of the unknown that causes discomfort in people who suffer from this type of phobia, and which is usually part of the personality of many social subjects.
Main characteristics of heterophobia
Now that we have explained the different definitions that we have been able to find about the term heterophobia, it is convenient that we see what they are. the main characteristics of those people who suffer from this type of phobia so below we are going to list them.
Symptoms of feared stimuli and situations within heterophobia
Once we have known the different definitions and the main characteristics of people who suffer from heterophobia, we are going to proceed to present the possible symptoms that these people could suffer when they are exposed to stimuli and/or feared situations because of this type of phobia, these being the ones we are going to list below:
Examples of cases of heterophobia
One of the examples that may be most familiar to most would be the possible case of heterophobia suffered by the character from the series ‘The Big Bang Theory’, known as Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali, an astrophysicist with Indian nationality, who suffers from a selective mutism towards people of the opposite gender, so those who have seen the series will remember those scenes in which Rajesh is unable to articulate a single word when he is in front of a woman, unless he is in a state of intoxication.
Another possible case of heterophobia would be the one that a woman can develop who has suffered some type of violence by people of the opposite sex be it physical violence, psychological violence and/or some sexual assault, so that he ends up developing an irrational fear of men in general and not only of the aggressor.
