I grew up amongst country folk, where livestock sometimes exhibited genetic anomalies … posterior duplication or hermaphroditism. The latter word they "morphed" into "morphydike" which I believe to be the basis for calling lesbians "dyke". People fear and destroy what they can't understand.

A character in one of Wendell Berry's novels, in an exchange over a broadly racist remark, observes that, "If we can't learn to live together, we may not be able to live at all..."