Subject: Phobias are a special case.
Author: wobblestheclown
Posted on: 2014-03-07 00:08:00 UTC

I cannot begrudge anyone with coulrophobia, however mild. It's for much the same reasons I hope people do not begrudge my own phobia. Cynophobia, FYI. I cannot handle dogs at all under any circumstances.

I have not been bitten by a dog. Nor have I been attacked by a dog in any way. I still pretty much freeze up whenever dogs come near me and I've suffered panic attacks when dragged to the vet by my parents when I was younger. Why did I go? My parents being the sort of people who regard phobic reactions as non-existent unless they're prefixed with homo- or xeno-, at which point they agree with them and consider writing another letter to the Daily Mail and I'm getting really off topic and Freud would probably have an absolute field day with this.

I imagine it is largely the same for people with coulrophobia, arachnophobia, nyctophobia, or any of the other phobias. Phobic reactions are irrational. I cannot in good conscience attack someone for a medical condition that is not their fault.

I can and will attack people for going "Ew clowns are creepy I never want one near my children" when you need more extensive and strenuous background checks to be a children's entertainer in the UK than you do to own a high-powered assault rifle in the US. I will attack the media for pushing the image of the Monster Clown without showing the good side. I will attack the media for having the last real popular image of clowns that aren't axe murderers or paedophiles-in-waiting be one designed to sell dangerously-produced boxed helpings of cowpat flambée to impressionable children. THINGS SHOULD NOT BE AS THEY ARE.

Perhaps there are more worthwhile causes. Actually, scratch that, of course there are more worthwhile causes. But this one I can actually do something about besides middle-class slacktivist hand-wringing and the occasional bin liner full of old clothes to whichever charity shop's got the proprietor with the sanest expression. I can change people's experiences of clowns. I can change people's minds. I can get them to accept that the clown is, essentially, a positive force.

The clown is your friend, because the clown is everyone's friend. The clown might be silly and goofy and prone to acts of pratfalling clumsiness that border on self-harm - seriously, ask Ailavyn and Techno-Dann how much pain you go through as a trapeze artist and imagine doing it in bouncy trousers and shoes the size of a small South American country - but it's to make you laugh and smile. This is the best thing. This is the only thing worth doing, to me at least. Making someone's life better, even if they only feel better, is the best thing to do with your life, and the best part of that is how many forms it can take! If you're a doctor you're doing it, if you're a binman you're doing it, even if you're a politician you're probably doing it for a certain amount of people (mostly the ones that funded your election campaign and very occasionally one of the cleaner voters): it's all worth it if it makes someone else smile. At least to me.

That's what the clown is to me. Not a monster under the bed, but the person who makes it go away.

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