The Quick Sand of Stigmas
How being mislabeled changes your interactions with others
Dehumanize the group, and you have completed the work of dehumanizing any single person within it.1
In her book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson describes the stigmas used to dehumanize entire groups of people. “A caste system,” she writes, “relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable.”2 She traces the foundations and consequences of three caste systems that stand out in history:
The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement.3
Stereotypes and stigmas can be found throughout our lived experiences. They’re all around us but are not always visible. In this post, I focus on the stereotypes and stigmas endured by victim-survivors and those who speak truth to abusive power. I’ve found that stigmas significantly influence the interactions of victim-survivors and truth-tellers. Being stigmatized for using your voice is like struggling in quick sand. You hope when you speak up that you’ll be supported by solid ground, but instead are labeled and discredited, and suddenly find the ground beneath you giving away, with each attempt to find a footing only sinking you further down.
I want to first give you some definitions and foundational concepts related to stereotypes and stigmas. Then, I’ll present three aspects of interacting with others when you’ve been stigmatized that I believe are helpful to understand.
What is a stigma?
The Greeks used the word stigma to refer to bodily signs that communicated to others that the bearer of the stigma was someone to be shunned and avoided - a disgraced, polluted, and blemished person. Society uses stigmas to categorize people and to control interactions, rights, and privileges.
In his book, Stigma, the late sociologist Erving Goffman described a stigma as an “undesired differentness” from what others define and come to anticipate as normal.
By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances. We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class.
Goffman made the point that you can possess an attribute that is stigmatized when around one group of people but not while with another group. For example, H.G. Well’s short story The Country of the Blind describes how a man with sight stumbled upon a remote society of people who had been blind for fourteen generations without any contact with the rest of the world and as a result had no conception of what it meant to see. It’s a fascinating story of what a society defines as normal and what happens when that definition is disrupted.
Stigmas are formed by stereotypes: unfair and untrue beliefs that people have about others possessing a particular characteristic. A stigma, writes Goffman, “is really a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype.”4 It’s created when a perceived negative attribute meets the stereotype of what a normal individual should be. You don’t have stigmas without first having stereotypes.
Victim-survivors who are stigmatized receive questions like, “Why didn’t you say something sooner? Why bring this up now? Why didn’t you just leave or fight or say no?” as well as any number of references to why the abuse might have been deserved, justified, and brought upon themselves. These stigmas are based on victim-blaming stereotypes that send messages to others that discredit the truth-teller.
You might be condemned and stigmatized for bringing abusive behavior into the light as a way to discredit you to others. They might say you are confused, misguided, and inflicting harm with your story-telling. Perhaps they suggest you want money, revenge, or attention in an effort to ensure your voice isn’t taken seriously. It is painful to be placed into a category of another’s design and choosing and then, once labeled, dispossessed of all that is true about you and given a stigma.
Here are three realities to help you understand and prepare for interactions when you’ve been stigmatized.
You don’t always know you’ve been stigmatized.
Discovering the stigma changes future interactions you have with others.
Stigmas are like quick sand: challenging them can lead to further mistreatment.
First, you don’t always know that you’ve been stigmatized.
An illustration of a sudden revelation of a stigma and its effects is told by a blind girl, as presented in Goffman’s Stigma:
I think the first realization of my situation, and the first intense grief resulting from this realization, came one day, very casually, when a group of us in our early teens had gone to the beach for the day. I was lying on the sand, and I guess the fellows and girls thought I was asleep. One of the fellows said, “I like Domenica very much, but I would never go out with a blind girl.” I cannot think of any prejudice which so completely rejects you.5
Similarly, I’ve spoken with victim-survivors, advocates, and whistleblowers who met with people in power while trusting in good faith that their stories and personhood would be treated with dignity and respect only to discover later that leadership had always viewed them as inferior or as threats to be managed. This realization resulted in a betrayal of trust and feelings of rejection as hidden stigmas were revealed.
The betrayal is not just in the stigma, but in the fact that the stigma was kept hidden and any acceptance and expressions of concern were merely part of a strategic performance. The prevailing attitude reveals itself to be one of disbelief and non-acceptance, even if that mentality is not openly expressed. You’d be better off knowing about the stigmas up front so that you at least know what another thinks of you and can be better informed during future interactions.
Stigmas are based on negative stereotypes formed by unfair and twisted beliefs. Naming the deception once it is revealed can lead us to the truth that’s being distorted, and once the truth is straightened out, we can see it more clearly and experience its freedom. Supportive relationships during this process can help us counter the lies contained in the stigmas and perhaps even address them on our behalf.
Second, discovering the stigma changes future interactions you have with others.
How do you speak and act once you’ve experienced being stigmatized? Do you go along and feign agreement? Do you try to ignore it? Do you avoid those who have stigmatized you (if that’s even possible)? Do you resist it?
Part of the challenge is that you might not know which category others will put you in until you interact with them. You may not be prepared to respond in the moment, so you do what you must to survive the exchange.
For example, throughout my childhood I stuttered and had difficulty pronouncing my r’s, s’s, and l’s (which find their place in many everyday words!). I frequently found myself in the difficult position of having to manage the stigmas others put on me. I learned, first and foremost, that not speaking could spare me some torment. A similar experience is told in Goffman’s Stigma:
We who stutter speak only when we must. We hide our defect, often so successfully that our intimates are surprised when in an unguarded moment, a word suddenly runs away with our tongues and we blurt and blat and grimace and choke until finally the spasm is over and we open our eyes to the wreckage.6
I also learned which words to avoid and how to restructure sentences and swap out terms to make the task easier, which required constant wariness. This vigilance when speaking is also described in Goffman’s Stigma:
We have many ingenious tricks for disguising or minimizing our blocks. We look ahead for “Jonah” sounds and words, so-called because they are unlucky and we envy the whale his ease in expelling them. We dodge “Jonah” words when we can, substituting non-feared words in their place or hastily shifting our thought until the continuity of our speech becomes as involved as a plate of spaghetti.7
One of the tragic consequences of stigmatization is the loss of the dignity and personhood that gives you the freedom to be yourself when around others. Victim-survivors and all those who speak truth to power encounter dilemmas they wouldn’t otherwise be confronted with if not for the stigmas. To wear the mask or not wear the mask? To speak of your experiences or not to speak? To dissent or go along? These dilemmas can bring anxiety to interactions, even if during those interactions there are no statements openly made about the stigmas placed on you.
When a culture or community mirrors these prejudices toward victim-survivors then the stigma is compounded. In a study involving 22 in-depth interviews of victims of violent crimes, Judith Herman observed:
This view of the victim as a diseased person, inflamed by toxic rage, compounds the stigmatizing effect of the original crime. As long as the victim is regarded in this demeaning manner, the community vindicates the perpetrator by adding to the victim’s shame.8
Furthermore, when a culture or community mirrors these prejudices toward victim-survivors then those with untold traumas might choose to keep their stories to themselves and receive a false acceptance from individuals who are prejudiced against persons who share a story similar to theirs. In other words, unchallenged prejudices and stigmas can have a silencing and isolating effect on those who have similar stories. This is seen in the destructive organization when people observe how individuals are stigmatized after speaking up about abuses of power, and although they might share the same concerns, now keep those views close to their chests out of fear of sharing a similar fate.
We can all challenge statements that reinforce stigmas and myths about abuse and victimization. This requires awareness and education to bring change to a victim-blaming culture by challenging the stereotypes. For example, a common myth is that the victim-survivor is speaking out in order to get some kind of revenge. Yet the study conducted by Judith Herman found that victim-survivors are motivated by desires like safety for others and acceptance from a community. An excerpt from one of her interviews illustrates this:
I’m wondering, if I don’t expose him to church authorities, is that harboring him? Maybe, but I just can’t do it from a place of vindictiveness, because that would be destructive to me. Exposing him is not just about getting him fired or punishing him. It’s more about protecting the next generation. The revenge motive makes it seem like I need to lash out because I’m still bleeding, and I’m not. What’s interesting is that when it comes to other people’s perpetrators, I want them to suffer because I feel greater outrage on behalf of others who have been violated.9
We need to be willing to learn what is true so that we can identify myths when they are being repeated and respond with reasoned and evidence-supported claims.
Third, stigmas are like quick sand: challenging them can lead to further mistreatment.
Further complicating your situation is the possibility of things getting worse for you if and when you address the stigma. You might feel defeated and stuck, as if everything you try just makes things worse for you and you’re standing in quick sand. When responses to victim-survivor stories are steeped in stereotypes, then any resistance to stigmas might be used as justification for the need to treat the truth-teller as threat. If you’ve been labeled overly emotional or sensitive, then any show of emotion might be taken as sign of being too emotional. Speaking out might result in being marked divisive or critical or contrarian or insubordinate or distrustful, and the more you dissent, the more you find the stigmas are being reinforced.
An illustration can be found in destructive leaders who force change upon followers and then blame any change failure on the inability or unwillingness of followers to accept change. In these scenarios, those who are stigmatized as unable to change are put in a bind as any further resistance to imposed changes is seen as justification for being labeled unable to change.
Support is needed when we find ourselves in the quick sand of stigmas. We can talk with others about the stigmas that have been placed on us. A trusted friend or professional can provide a space for us to name the stigmas, discuss how they are shaping our interactions, and give us some tools for surviving the quick sand. We can also find peer support from others who have had similar experiences and can identify with the stigmatization.
Through supportive relationships, awareness and education, and confronting stereotypes and stigmas, we can help create a safer and more just future.
For those of you who have spoken truth only to be stigmatized and discredited by those around you, know that you have been a light in a deep darkness, a voice in a deafening silence, a stream in a dry desert, a path in a dense forest, a heartbeat in a dead body. You have been shunned when you should have been cherished. May you find places where you thrive.
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Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. New York, NY: Random House. P. 141.
Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. New York, NY: Random House. P. 142.
Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. New York, NY: Random House. P. 17.
Goffman, E. (2009). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. United Kingdom: Touchstone.
Goffman, E. (2009). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. United Kingdom: Touchstone. P. 33.
Goffman, E. (2009). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. United Kingdom: Touchstone. P. 84.
Goffman, E. (2009). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. United Kingdom: Touchstone.
Herman J. L. (2005). Justice from the victim's perspective. Violence against women, 11(5), 571–602. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801205274450
Herman J. L. (2005). Justice from the victim's perspective. Violence against women, 11(5), 571–602. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801205274450