ISMS: THEY’RE EVERYWHERE

Posted on May 26, 2026May 26, 2026 by vlaw759

We’re all aware, at some level, of racism and sexism. Everyone lucky enough to live to be old will probably become aware of ageism. Many fewer are attuned to ableism. The world wasn’t built for people with disabilities, and because of that, the world we live in is inherently “ableist.”

“Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability. Like racism and sexism, ableism classifies entire groups of people as ‘less than,’ and includes harmful stereotypes, misconceptions, and generalizations of people with disabilities.”
Ableism 101 by Ashley Eisenmenger

-Isms and Stereotyping

All -isms are based on stereotypes. Stereotyping is when, based on one characteristic, we assume a whole constellation of characteristics, traits, abilities, or behaviors. While it can sometimes feel like a mental shortcut to quickly understand the world, it often leads to inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and unfair judgments.

Effects of Stereotyping

THE American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides legal assistance for people seeking civil liberties protections.

Bias and Prejudice: Stereotypes can reinforce harmful biases, leading to discrimination or exclusion.
Overgeneralization: It ignoring individual differences.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: People may unconsciously act in ways that confirm a stereotype, perpetuating the cycle.
Loss of Individuality: It reduces people to a single label, ignoring their unique identities, experiences, and complexities.

Common Areas Where Stereotyping Occurs

*The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a legal advocacy organization promoting civil rights in the US.*

Gender: Assuming women are “naturally” better at caregiving or men are “naturally” better at leadership.
Race/Ethnicity: Linking certain behaviors or traits to an entire racial or ethnic group.
Professions: Believing all engineers are socially awkward or all artists are “starving.”
Age: Assuming older adults are “out of touch” or teenagers are “irresponsible.”
Cultures: Assuming everyone from a specific country behaves the same way.

Ableism

Returning to focus on ableism, consider the following examples from the source cited above:

Presenting a disability as either tragic or inspirational in news stories, movies, and other popular forms of media

Choosing an inaccessible venue for a meeting or event, thus excluding some participants

Using someone else’s mobility device as a hand or foot rest

Casting a non-disabled actor to play a disabled character in a play, movie, TV show, or commercial

Making a movie that doesn’t have audio description or closed captioning

Using the accessible bathroom stall when you are able to use the non-accessible stall without pain or risk of injury

Wearing scented products in a scent-free environment

Talking to a person with a disability like they are a child, talking about them instead of directly to them, or speaking for them

Asking invasive questions about the medical history or personal life of someone with a disability

Assuming people have to have a visible disability to actually be disabled

Questioning if someone is ‘actually’ disabled, or ‘how much’ they are disabled

Asking, “How did you become disabled?”

All -Isms are Based on Stereotyping

—Isms take many blatant forms. Depending on the specific —ism, these can include:

Lack of compliance with laws like the ADA, non discrimination in housing, etc.
Segregating students into separate schools or classes
Not questioning existing discriminatory standards in medicine, banking, policing, etc.
The use of restraint or seclusion as a means of controlling students with disabilities
Institutionalizing adults and children with disabilities
Failing to incorporate accessibility into building design plans. This applies to disabilities but also such things as gender-neutral bathrooms.
Buildings without braille on signs, elevator buttons, etc.
Selectively enforcing dress codes
Restricting workplace benefits, such as family leave or health insurance, to opposite-sex couples
Creating inaccessible websites
Entrenching existing prejudices into computer algorithms and coding
The assumption that people with disabilities want or need to be ‘fixed’
Requiring hairstyles that are difficult or impossible to maintain with certain hair textures
Using disability as a punchline, or mocking people with disabilities
Conducting research without consideration of differences based on gender, race, abilities, etc. This is especially important in medical research and the creation of public policy.
The lynchings of Blacks in earlier decades and eugenics movement of the early 1900s
Disproportionate number of guilty verdicts and harsher sentences based on race or ethnicity.
The mass murder of disabled people in Nazi Germany
Hiring preferences based on the assumption that women will become pregnant and leave the workforce
Wage gaps based on sex, race, ethnicity

*“Die-Ins” during Black Lives Matter protests drew attention to racialized police violence in the US.*

Micro-Aggressions and “Isms”

Micro-aggressions are everyday verbal or behavioral expressions that communicate a negative slight or insult in relation to someone’s gender identity, race, sex, disability, etc. It seems to me that non-conscious put downs of -isms are more common—and more socially acceptable—than others these days.

“That’s so lame.”
Dumb blonde jokes.
“That’s so retarded.”
“That guy is crazy.”
“You’re so brave to wear that!”
“You’re acting so bi-polar today.”
Schools defaulting to communicate with a female parent, regardless of a family’s arrangements.
“Should you really be eating that?”
“Must be that time of the month.”
“You’re so gay.”
“Are you off your meds?”

“It’s like the blind leading the blind.”
“It’s fine to be gay, but why do they have to shove it in my face?”
“My ideas fell on deaf ears.”
Putting hands on someone to guide them to where you want them.
“You throw like a girl.”
“You look great for your age!”
“But which one of you is the woman?”
“That’s so psycho.”
“I’m super OCD about how I clean my apartment.”
Offering to help old people. Sometimes this is appreciated, putting a bag in the overhead bin, for example. But often it comes across as assuming incompetence.

“You’re so well-spoken!”
“A real man would…”
“I’ll pray for you?”
Addressing an elderly person as young man or young lady.
“Of course he’s paid more; he has a family to support!”
“I don’t even think of you as disabled/black/a woman.”
“I’m not saying she deserved it, but did you see what she was wearing?”
“I love old people; they’re so adorable!”
“This sort of thing comes naturally to your people, right?”
“Big boys don’t cry.”
Touching someone’s hair.
“You’re such a spaz.”
Witnessing or overhearing any of the above without speaking up.

How to Avoid Stereotyping

*The Stonewall Riots kicked off the gay liberation movement in the US, eventually leading to major legal protections and growing social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.*

Challenge Assumptions: Ask yourself why you hold a particular belief about a group.
Seek Diverse Perspectives: Engage with people from different backgrounds to broaden your understanding.
Focus on Individuality: Recognize that everyone is unique and shouldn’t be reduced to a stereotype.
Educate Yourself: Learn about the lived experiences of others rather than relying on stereotypes.
Practice Empathy: Put yourself in someone else’s shoes to understand their perspective.

Bottom Line: -Isms and stereotyping can harm mental health, self-esteem, and social cohesion. Stereotyping can often leads to systemic -isms like racism, sexism, ageism, and other forms of discrimination. Breaking free from stereotypes is essential for creating a fairer, more inclusive world.

PREJUDICE: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT ISN’T

Posted on October 8, 2019 by vlaw759

Is fear of grey people racism or able-ism?

Prejudice is generally defined in one of two ways:

1) A preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. This is the broadest definition and allows for being biased in a positive direction (such as assuming that harpists are poised and elegant). Wikipedia goes a step further, saying an affective feeling towards a person based on that person’s perceived group membership.

2) An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reasons; unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature (like thinking all wrestlers are vulgar and uncouth), regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group.

Santino Marella and Vladimir Koslav with Sheamus

Prejudice is one of the root causes of human conflict. Conflict, in turn, can result in crime, war, systemic repression, and mass murder. Writers note: anything that creates conflict between characters or between a character and society can be used in your writing.

Where prejudice comes from:

1) We tend to take on the attitudes—including prejudices—of the social groups to which we belong. Social groups include gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, sexual orientation, profession, etc., etc., etc. Adopting the attitudes of one’s social groups, including family, is often a means of fitting in and being liked. Thus, prejudice may serve a social adjustive function.

Zebras always vote the same way in local elections.

2) Sometimes assuming a host of characteristics based on knowing one is cognitively efficient. We don’t have to spend time gathering information or even stopping to think.

3) And sometimes, prejudice serves an ego-defensive function. If simply by being who we are we can feel superior to whole groups of people—e.g., all women, all blacks, all immigrants, all yellow ducklings—it helps counterbalance negative information about oneself (such as being chronically unemployed, ugly, or unpopular).

Like other attitudes, prejudice has cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.

Cognitive: overgeneralized beliefs or stereotypes. E.g., Yankees fans are arrogant and obnoxious.

Affective: prejudice, feelings about people that could be positive but are more often negative. For example, I hate Yankee fans. They make me angry.

Behavioral: the treatment of others. When negative, it is discrimination, and may lead to excluding, avoiding, or biased treatment of group members. Example: I would never hire or become friends with a person if I knew he or she were a Yankees fan.

Although people can hold positive stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory actions based on group membership—for example, giving preferential treatment to people who are like themselves—it behooves us to focus on the negative because that is what is most problematic.

First impressions: When meeting new people, we automatically note race, gender, and age because these social categories provide a wealth of information about the individual—albeit, based on stereotypes.

Categories of bias: Racism, sexism, ageism, sexual orientation, nationalism, class-ism, religious discrimination, linguistic discrimination, and more.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy: An expectation held by a person about how another person will behave, which leads to treating the person according to our expectations. The treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming the original stereotypic beliefs. (Think teacher expectations, employer expectations, etc.)

Confirmation Bias: Paying more attention to information that is consistent with our stereotypic expectations than to information that is inconsistent with our expectations..

In-groups and Out-groups: An in-group is a group we see ourselves as belonging to, involving a strong sense of belonging and emotional connection that leads to in-group bias and preferences. Out-groups are seen as different in fundamental ways, less likable, often resulting in discrimination. When an in-group’s goals are delayed or thwarted, an out-group is often blamed. This is scape-goating.

Bottom line for writers: stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination can define characters and situations. Think thoughts, affects, and actions and how each can work with POV and plot.

When Your Character is Prejudiced

Posted on March 12, 2019November 6, 2020 by vlaw759

Prejudice is an unjustified or incorrect attitude (usually negative) towards an individual based solely on his/her membership in a social group. In my opinion, prejudice is relatively benign for the target person if the prejudiced person does not act on the negative attitude. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case.

Discrimination is an action or behavior (including verbal)—usually negative—towards an individual or group of people on the basis of the prejudice. This is where the bad happens. Employment opportunities foreclosed. Inequality in lending practices. Lack of access to educational opportunities. Denial of goods or services (e.g., refusing to make a wedding cake for the wedding of a gay couple). Hate crimes.

A classic example of prejudice leading to negative behavior:

So, one big question for you as a writer is what your character does as a reflection of his/her prejudice.

Although prejudice is an umbrella term for all sorts of -isms (as seen in the image above) it is also a subset of attitudes. And prejudice includes all three components of an attitude: cognitive, behavioral, and affective—how one thinks, behaves, and feels about a person, object, or act.

But before you can write realistically about a prejudiced character, you need to decide what function the prejudice serves for this character.

Cognitive adjustive: Lacking other information, one accepts stereotypes and/or prejudiced views as a way of knowing how to think and behave with a stranger.

Social normative: Holding attitudes—including prejudice—that allow the person to fit into a group or social setting. This might be family, gang, town, workplace, social class—any group the person wants entry to.

kkk chicago — [Source: Creative Commons]

Ego-defensive: The person is basically insecure and adopts a prejudice to bolster feelings of self-worth. If a person has perceived lacks or failures, one way to feel better about oneself is to develop negative attitudes toward a whole group of people who, by the nature of who they are, can be viewed as inferior.

So, do you want your character to change? Depending on the function served, prejudice may be more or less entrenched. If it is based on lack of information, education and factual data will result in attitude change. Sometimes it’s as simple as getting to know members of the group. If it is based on group membership or conformity, changing reference groups will lead to attitude change. For example, moving to a different part of the country, changing schools or jobs, marrying into a family with differing attitudes, etc. The ego-defensive function is the most difficult to change. A person might suppress expression of deeply held biases when they are socially unacceptable (i.e., politically incorrect) but allow them expression when the atmosphere is right. Hate speech, hate crimes, and the rise of white supremacist groups are examples easily tracked online.

The ego-defensive function is highly robust. Prejudice serving this function is immune to factual evidence to the contrary, simply not believing the data. If, somehow, the facts cannot be denied, then one or more other groups might become targets of his/her prejudice. Eliminating prejudice for such people often involves psychotherapy because the cause is rooted in self-esteem, self-concept, and other deep psychological needs.

Often prejudice is negatively related to the mental health of the prejudiced person. For example, racism is a symptom of lack of psychological integration, self-esteem, and inner security. Similarly, sexism is unhealthy. Psychologists looked at 10 years of data from nearly 20,000 men and found that those who value having power over women and who endorse playboy-type behavior, and who hold traditional notions of masculinity (such as self-reliance), were more likely to experience depression, stress, body image issues, substance abuse, and negative social functioning. So if your character’s prejudice is racism or sexism, consider giving him/her some of these other characteristics as well.

Last but not least, consider how your character’s prejudice might bring him/her into conflict with others.

westboro rally richmond — “Costume-clad kazoo players and drummers jubilantly respond to the Westboro Baptist Church.” [Source: Style Weekly]

Bottom line: Prejudice is a rich resource for writing your characters!