Comment 1 for bug 1560114

Yes, this is intentional.

See /usr/share/doc/fontconfig/README.Debian for instructions on how to enable bitmap fonts. I copied the instructions below.
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If you wish to enable bitmapped fonts manually, remove the
/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf symbolic link and add a symlink named
70-yes-bitmaps.conf pointing to ../conf.avail/70-yes-bitmaps.conf:

  cd /etc/fonts/conf.d && \
    rm -f 70-no-bitmaps.conf && \
    ln -s ../conf.avail/70-yes-bitmaps.conf