[Supermancho]

> It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations).

It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual". There are backwards people. The stigma that some may ascribe, is rarely removed. If they are in a position of power, this can hurt you professionally or socially, despite modern moral standards.

[hamburglar]

Fear of being perceived as a homosexual is a type of homophobia, but homophobia is not necessarily a fear of being perceived as a homosexual.

[Supermancho]

I don't think most people are arguing about that. Some post that puts forth "it doesn't mean this it means that" can be charitably added to with additional interpretation rather than "wrong. it's THIS". Dead-end true-scotsman argument.

[foldr]

I think you’ve got slightly the wrong end of the stick. No-one thinks that rollerblading went out of style because people were afraid of gay people. So the OP’s inaccurate (or at best overly narrow) assumption regarding what ‘homophobia’ means is leading them to misunderstand the claim about what happened. These days the term ‘homophobia’ is very rarely used to refer to a literal phobia of gay people.

(The OP said ‘fear of homosexuals’, not ‘fear of being perceived as homosexual’.)

[hamburglar]

Except I am literally responding to your very specific claim:

> It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual".

It doesn’t mean that. It can refer to that, but that is not what homophobia means.