Okay before we get into it let’s first acknowledge that 99% of the people using the -misia suffix are well-meaning and good and kind and are only doing it because someone they trust told them to. And the 1% who are the ones actively pushing for it are probably also well-meaning and good and kind and it’s not out of malice that they’re doing it.
So if you see someone write -misia just let it slid and don’t correct them and don’t go after them. They’re good. Let them keep doing it. It’s okay. Do not be a jerk and go after the few people out there who are actively making a hard effort to help make the word better. Absolutely do not make this essay fuel that. Go after the homophobes, not the people who write “homomisia”. But if you see someone writing -phobia here’s why that’s okay and why you shouldn’t go after them, either.
Out of the arguments I’m gonna present here, this is the real one. Avoiding phobia out of some sorta eggshell notion that people who are afraid of spiders and leaves and the dark and heigths and crowds and confined spaces and other things would get hurt is a cruel carictature for them, or that there is an actual risk of them being read as hateful. “Oh you have a fear of dogs how dare you! You’re just as bad as a homophobe or an islamophobe or a transphobe!” That’s not happening. That assumption is what’s hurtful.
Separate words that have similar-sounding last halves are okay. We can know that a shellfish isn’t a lungfish or featherlight isn’t conflated with starlight. And know that homophobia is fundamentally different from arachnophobia.
Yes, the following is happening, especially in the past: ignorant homophobes trying to be silly or obtuse or know-it-all-y try to use the counter-argument that “I’m not fearful, just hateful”. But first of all, why cede even an inch to them to accommodate that, second of all, okay, so they’re admitting it, third and by far the most importantly the problem with them isn’t the word for them. It’s the hate, not the appellation of the hate, that’s the problem.
Speaking of the hate… Some of the pro “let’s call it -misia” essays I’ve seen have been like “oh those poor arachnophobes they can’t help it but the haters, they are absolutely willful and 100% guilty and completely informed”. That doesn’t seem right with me since I believe a lot of the hateful bigots out there really are ignorant and misinformed and have fallen for very expensive, very effective hate campaigns driven by wedge issue fascists and fossil billionaires.
Out of the three arguments here, this one is certainly the least important and more on a pet peeve level, but phobia is actually a Greek word (φόβία is a quality declension of φόβος) and misia is just a new-fangled mangling of μῖσος. Now, long time readers of this web page know that if the purpose is good, I love wordmangling. And I’ve unfortunately taken a vow of descriptivism, not prescriptivism (when I studied linguistics. Worst education ever). If people start calling it -misia then that is what is called and I neither want to or can change that.
Lastly, we already had “heterosexism” and “cissexism” and “anti-Islam sentiment”. There were other words already. Not that it matters or that it hurts that we now have a third word for it thanks to the “-misia” pundits. Nouns are an open word class so the more the merrier. I can think it’s an ugly and (pardon the triple entendre) hateful word but I can get over it. Conclusion: let people who say misia say misia and people who say phobia say phobia.