When making the decision to change the URL (we refer to ourselves here with the two words interchangeably), I researched words that people impacted by xenophobia/bigotry used in order to move away from the “phobia” idea and came across “xenobigotry”. No one here at this blog made up the word “xenobigotry” or decided to use it without first finding out what non “-phobia” alternatives people impacted by xenophobia/bigotry had come up with. 

I honestly don’t find the “-phobia” / other suffix argument against ableism to be particularly convincing because it is not particularly clear and people seem to be all over the place about it (and, by extension, I could not care less which word or words our followers use and I don’t and will not edit submissions unless they say something blatantly offensive, in which case I would try to contact the submitter). By all means, you should use whatever words you feel comfortable using.

However, I made the decision to turn to people impacted by xenophobia/bigotry to find an alternative word because I want to A) make this blog a safe space for as many people as possible -despite my own notions about the phobia arguments- while maintaining word usage that people who experience xenophobia/bigotry have come up with to describe what they experience and B) because people who experience oppression come from all walks of life and all kinds of oppression often occur in individuals and I want this to be a safe space for everyone who experiences xenophobia/bigotry, whether or not they experience extreme phobias and aren’t comfortable with those kinds of suffixes used to describe hate rather than fear. 

With all of that in mind, I realize that, while the word “xenobigotry” comes from people who experience xenophobia/bigotry, not everyone who experiences it is going to support that change. I also realize that there is a certain level of tension in the debate about whether or not using “phobia” as a suffix is ableist/problematic. 

There are, of course, no hard feelings in your direction -I understand where you are coming from and I hope you can at least see why I did what I did with the URL even if you maintain that it should be changed back to “stfuxenophobes”- and I would be happy to have a private email conversation about this if you want to discuss your concerns further (thefuror@live.com). I also welcome anyone else to shoot me an email or an ask if there are any other strong opinions out there about this. This Tumblr exists for all of you, not for me, and I want to make it as positive, welcoming, and safe for all of you as possible… and if that means tweaking the URL, the title, our posts, our blog description, etc. from time to time, then I am happy to do that following input from our followers… or maybe just more input from this Anonymous person if they want to email me.