It is step by step that a human being becomes aware of his or her difference from the others. At first he or she is afraid of being different, but then becomes proud of it. These are the traits of a normal person. The world is moved by phobias towards any demonstration of differences, and step by step the human being does one thing only: he or she destroys phobias. And the more fears of the different a person vanquished, the more of the inexplicable he or she accepted in his or her life, the more civilized this person is.

It seems that the 20^th century became the century of fighting the phobia of other nations. The centuries before did not really have this problem. There was a fear of other religions, but nationalities as a basis for self-awareness appeared relatively late, in the 19^th century only. People suddenly became aware of their national particularities, and then solved problems and mastered the fears of their national identity.

The same happens with human sexuality. First, in the 20^th century, humans became aware of their sexuality, and it looks like the 21^st century will be the century of fighting the fear of sexual awareness. Homophobia, as well as the phobia of other types of sexual awareness, more and more splits the world, giving the politicians and other public players various trumps allowing them to manipulate people using their fear of difference.

Through all its history the humanity kept winning over phobias, step by step. Phobias moved into the past. But, strangely, even the phobias that were overcome still are in some way present among even fairly civilized people. This was the case of religious phobias, and of gender difference phobias, when men were afraid of women intruding on their territory. Today no one in the civilized countries is afraid of this, but among men there is still a fear of a female driver, of a female soldier. Most often the phobias are overcome by a simple and almost routine method: the education. By understanding and becoming aware of some type of phobias people got rid of them. Phobias were left for uneducated and ignorant people.

There is apparently no other way except the way of all-round education. Education of the general population, of thinkers and politicians, of community workers and civil society activists. The widest possible education about all the various phobias, national, sexual, gender phobias, phobias related to animals and insects, fear of myths and human prejudices. The fear and inability to accept is a dead end of development, a systemic and conceptual dead end, and those who keep this fear existing are responsible before the future generations for being unable to understand simple and self-evident things.

Today the LGBT communities keep being on the edge, at the peak of the problem, and it’s the joint educational activity of civil society thinkers and LGBT community activists that can give a very real and positive result, the same way as the religious enlightenment by Confucius once changed China. The same way as the sex education by the feminist movement changed Europe for the better. The same way as Martin Luther King’s race education changed America for the better. Then people of different colors stood together to solve this problem. Then men joined feminist organizations to help women. Then the religious problems were being solved by people of different faiths working together.

Author: Igor Sazhin, human rights activist

Translated by M.S.