The article happens to pattern match a current politically-charged argument in which opposition to some particular position is labeled as coming from fear, which is labeled a -phobia, which is therefore labeled as being irrational and whoever has it is mentally ill. Unsurprisingly, people rarely respond to this by saying &quot;Oh, yes, you are correct, you have cogently shown me I am mentally ill, thank you so much for pointing this out!&quot; and instead develop a rather hostile response to anything that even smells like the argument.<p>I actually somewhat carefully read the article to see if it ever suggested that fear in response to personal space violation was bad, and I don&#x27;t think it did. I do think that it poorly supported its case, as a couple of other people are arguing, because just because certain activations look the same doesn&#x27;t mean they are the same, but it never claimed this was a bad response.<p>Personally, based on how it feels from the inside, I can well believe that personal space is <i>related to</i> fear, and may activate some of the same circuits as fear, but that it &quot;is&quot; a fear is going beyond the evidence. Especially given the overloading of the word &quot;fear&quot;. I am &quot;afraid&quot; of touching a hot oven, but I&#x27;m not running around in constant fear. It&#x27;s a perfectly rational, controlled, situational &quot;fear&quot;, not &quot;a fear&quot;. Personal space violations strike me as rather more like the rational, controlled, situational case even if we are going to call that a &quot;fear&quot; response, which is perfectly fine scientifically, but serializes into conventional English poorly.