Erotophobia is the fear of sexual matters. In other words, it's
irrational and theatrical subnormal behaviour towards sex. Some scholars
described it as "sexual anorexia" - avoidance of sex topics and dread
of sexual contacts. Generally speaking, erotophobia describes those who have a
general fear of physical love, sexual feelings and sexual activities.
This fear obviously is unhealthy mental condition because sexual
activities are driven by intrinsic parameters but could be provoked by external
forces too.
"Eros" is a Greek word for "love" and
"phobia" is a suffix denoting "fear". Therefore,
erotophobia = love + fear. Eros, in Greek mythology is also the name of god of
love. Therefore, words which begin with "ero" or "eros"
usually have "love" or "sex" connotations. For example are,
"erotic", "erotomania", "erogenous", etc
Well, the direct permutations of "eros" and
"phobia" may not give a convincing idea of fear of sex. However, love
covers multitude of sins and sex is a prominent denominator.
However, there are those who do not fear sex topics and its
discussions - they are
okay with sexual contacts and its pleasure but they fear sexual
intercourse. It's termed genophobia. Genophobias, fear only sexual intercourse
and it's mutually exclusive to erotophobia. One may suffer from the former but
doing marvelously well with the latter and vice versa. However, the two
conditions can be present at the same time.
Some of the probable causes from my own skewed thoughts could be one
of the following: rape experience,
sexual myths, cultural sexual taboos, religion, family and parenting, fear of
unknown et cetera.
Erotophobia and genophobia are really serious psychological
problems. They need help! However, they may be difficult to identify and help
if you don't have some very "close" relation with them.
Erotophobia and genophobia are nouns. However, one can get
erotophobic and genophobic as adjectives from the parent words.
Usages:
Sapashini is a certified erotophobia.
Sofarawu shows some genophobic signs.
Tag someone you know or suspect is suffering from these mental
self-deprivation. Or form a word with either words or both.
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