Het can ruin a story. If you got a good thing going between the main leads and suddenly a dude comes in and ends up together with one of them it's ruined for me.
That's not the het ruining the story simply because it exists. That's the author doing a bait and switch, which is another problem entirely. I'm talking about stories clearly tagged with Het
getting hate for even being uploaded here, or the author of beloved yuri stories getting hate for doing a het romance. It's toxic and it needs to stop.
It could still be said it's heterophobia though couldn't it? Anyways I don't really believe it's a thing. What I do believe is that people love to read shit they don't like and complain about it, when they could just easily skip it.
No, it couldn't. Bait and switch stories are the author using one narrative to draw people in based on empty implications and then betraying the reader's understandable expectations. It's not definitely an annoyance at the content that is ultimately given, but an annoyance that it wasn't the content that was implied. It can, however, be both. I don't think most people who complain like I've described even read the thing, they just see the tag and make their ignorant comments. As far as you not believing it's a thing, heterophobia doesn't need your permission to exist. It makes its way in the world quite fine without it.