Misc facets

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These are facets of categorism which don't have pages (or proper titles) of their own yet, but might get one in the future. See also indirect facets.

  • Messiah Complex / Savior Complex / Manufacturing Victims: Creating a narrative where the targets are victims and the categorist is their savior. Related to supremacism (both hard and soft), voice appropriation, denial of agency, violence and enforcing cateity. For example defining all sex workers as victims, defining oneself as their "rescuer", and then turn hostile against any sex worker "ungrateful" enough to refuse to conform to the assigned narrative role.
  • Excluding from definitions of rights (could use a shorter title): Defining rights in a way that exclude groups of people who should have them, or defining the group in a way that exclude them from the right. For example excluding same-sex couples from the right to marriage by defining marriage as "between a man and a woman". Or justifying rape against masochists or against sex workers by denying that they have the capacity/right to give valid refusal to sexual acts - a position often combined with denying that they have the capacity/right to give valid consent to sexual acts.
  • Hierarchy: "Pushing a minority group to distance itself from (and thus further stigmatize) another stigmatized minority group" - currently files under Kyriarchy, but might be better off as its own page. Kyriarchy should be focused on the higher status and cultural dominance of dominant groups.
  • PIDuKS: Privilege Induced Dunning-Kruger 'Splaining. (AKA mansplaining, whitesplaining, and so on.) A combination of Infantilization and soft supremacism, where people of a certain category (usually an underprivileged one) is assumed to know nothing - even in cases where it is clear that the targeted person is far more qualified than the person who take it upon themself to explain.
  • Denial of rights: Declaring without just cause that certain rights doesn't apply to a certain category of people. This includes defining the right itself in such a way that it excludes.
  • Pathologization: To unduly or in the wrong way construct people as being pathological.
  • Clownification/belittling representation: constructing people as funny in a way that is at their expense.
  • Inaccessibility: Constructing physical or social limitations, making it hard for people to pass.
  • Closeting: Making it socially dangerous, harmful or even impossible to be open about being part of a certain category. Makes the group vulnerable to representation bias and outing.
  • Outing: Exposing someone as being a member of a certain category. Can only be done to somebody who has already been closeted.
  • Common knowledge: Certain prejudices and bigotries are considered true on the basis that everybody know that they are true. "Hey, do you really think you are smarter than the entire family?"
  • Categorism Loyalty / Internalized Categorism Loyalty: Teaching people that certain prejudices, bigotries and discriminatory behaviors are not only socially appropriate and common knowledge, but also mandatory. If you don't agree or don't participate, it makes you a traitor. Often internalized. Remember that scene in Huckelberry Finn, where Finn is feeling very ashamed for not hating "n***ers" enough, and assumes that he will go to hell for being friends with an African-American man?
  • Normwashing: Changing representation to conform to the mainstream, thus reinforcing zero-category status. When applied to skin-color, this is known as whitewashing. When combined with other foci of categorism, it could be called straightwashing, ciswashing, youthwashing and so on.
  • Tolerancewashing: Trying to sweep one focus of categorism under the rug by putting emphasis on one's lack of indulging in some other foci of categorism. When applied to excusing racism by the virtue of not being homophobic, this is known as pinkwashing.
  • Causewashing: Trying to sweep one focus of categorism under the rug by presenting oneself as fighting for a good cause. This includes "greenwashing". SOme forms of pinkwashing are included in this as well as in tolerancewashing.
  • Category Excuse: Justifying a person's behavior by labeling the person as belonging to a certain category. Note that this works both ways: While providing justification, it also implies that the behavior needs justification. So it can be really stigmatizing. (Example, sexism: Accepting sexual abuse done by males on the premise that “boys will be boys”. Note that this sexism is misogynistic by arguing for acceptance for male violence against women, as well as being misandrist by portraying men as being inherently abusive. Example, ableism: Casually diagnosing people as physically or mentally disabled when they are not. Casually diagnosing a disabled person's behavior as being caused by the disability when it is not.)
  • A priori supremacy: A kind of equivocation where a category of people is misconstructed as being by definition superior.
  • Privilege Blindness: Inability or unwillingness to see categorism when it is focused in a way that only targets other people.
  • Privilege offense: Regarding one's position as more privileged than other as being normal, thus seeing equality as an infringement on one's own "right" to be treated as superior".
  • Victim blaming: Creating a narrative where people are to blame for categorism and oppression being done to them.
  • Presumptuous Intimacy: The assumption that since those other people are inferior, they have no real need for privacy.
  • Selective Justice: A law or rule is implemented in a way that targets certain categories of people. For example: While a restaurant has a rule that their guests may not wear t-shirts, this rule is hardly ever enforced on white people but always enforced on people of color.
  • Identity fragility: Not being able to handle criticism that in some way connects to something you identify with.