Stigmatization Series: Stigma Power Motivations

Stigma Power is a hidden agenda with a strategic end goal. Stigma Power Motivations stem from a group of people who want to keep others controlled, oppressed and suppressed. Those targeted are selected for various reasons and due to various factors, such as not accepting the dominant culture's values and beliefs. Some examples of people and groups that utilize stigmas as a weapon include, but are not limited to:

A visual representation of stigma (domains & their respective themes). 

1. Abusive spouses and those around them with a collective mindset, such as their extended family and inner circles. Often times, abusers deem women and children as inferiors. They use manipulation to campaign and army build against their target while converting that individual's existing support group to gain them on his side and/or severing her ties with them. Such toxic people use lies, bribery, aggression and other control tactics in their arsenal if necessary -- including on the children.
2. The Legal Arena, with an existing and collective dominating culture, which clashes with your family of origin's culture. Outsiders. For instance, in a small demographic area, the lawyers, the judge who may come from the same law firm as the opposing lawyer, court experts paid by the opposing team, subordinates in the legal field who don't want to lose their job, may all embrace a colonial culture and mindset in a Family Law proceeding.
3. Villagers and small communities.
4. Organizations with their own subcultures.
5. Mental Health Institutions. 
6. White Supremist Groups.
7. Toxic Corporate work environments.

The following explains what the stigma power motivation is.

Stigma Power Motivation

"On the most basic level, it was never about mental acuity or
medical treatment;it was about exerting control over women’s lives
 and bodies—all under the guise of medicine...Their stories
also serve to highlight the chauvinism of early psychiatry,
which often punished women for breaking social norms."
Click here to continue reading article
How Victorian Women Were Oppressed Using Psychiatry.
 

The Stigma Power Motivation for an organization or institution is to keep you either inside the institution and under it's control or to keep you away from it (Link & Phelan, 2014). Sometimes, it is both. For instance, in the Saskatchewan Court of King's Bench, there is a cultural trend to keep healthy mothers inside the courtroom through various proceedings in order to ultimately keep them away from their children, who end up with their abusers. The mothers are then stigmatized in various ways. 

A common and normalized, classic cliche every abuser and abusive system uses to stigmatize women is by stating she has a mental illness. This is soooo 19th Century. 

Did you know that for centuries “being female” was classed as a mental disorder? Dr Jessica Taylor shares the surprising history:

Being female was literally classified as a mental disorder for centuries. Women had always been described by philosophers, scientists and physicians as defective, deformed, mutated versions of men. This is where the “male as default” thinking comes from, which plagues science to this day. Women were described as problematic, with a range of mental and physical disorders that men couldn’t (or wouldn’t) decipher. By the eighteenth century, one of the most common psychiatric diagnoses used to control, imprison, and violate women was that of hysteria. (Emphasis added by me. Click here to continue reading this Reader's Digest article entitled The Shocking History of Female Asylums.)

The following is described from Lunacy in the 19th Century: Women's Admission to Asylum's in United States of America by authors Katherina Pouba and Ashley Tianen:

Between the years of 1850-1900, women were placed in mental institutions for behaving in ways that male society did not agree with. Women during this time period had minimal rights, even concerning their own mental health. Research concluded that many women were admitted for reasons that could be questionable... Women with symptoms were later diagnosed insane by reasons such as religious excitement, epilepsy, and suppressed menustration. The symptoms and diagnoses presented, show that labeling of women as insane was done very lightly and was influenced by social attitudes toward women. Did these women truly need to be admitted to asylums, or was their admittance an example of their lack of power to control their own lives? Further research could raise additional questions such as a comparison of the rate of admittance between American-born and immigrant women. (Emphasis added by me.)

19th Century Reasons for Asylym Admission

Yes, you read that right. Thus, such allegations against women continue to occur in present day, predominantly in particular organizations, institutions, cultural settings and demographics. They are considered justifiable by the powers assigning stigmas to marginalized people, often times mothers who are continuously dragged into the legal arena as if in the clutches of a big leopard. 

However, many rational and logical people in the public in a wide demographic oppose such primitive practices. The majority should rule, not the tight knit subculture clawing to power using covert stigma strategies and outdated, outfits, of legal hysteria. Deaf leopards...

For instance, this occurs when it is proven that a father has attended an abusive men's program with various ailments, such as alcoholism, which is classified as an actual, bonafide mental illness. Such mental diss-orders and addictions is suppose to be a major negative in child custody cases, yet abusers "achieve" primary child custody. The public watches. It's like an Ancient row man arena. The trust in the legal system declines, but is blind to the eyes of those focused on their Stigma Power Motivations.

Remember: a judge is to have expertise in the cases he hears, such as Family Law where abuse is rampant. The lawyers must also be well versed in the law. When the collective legal arena supports and exercises their stigma power motivations, injustices occur. As such, it is also important to consider the following.

Stigmatization Is A Cultural Issue

Stigmatization is a cultural issue, which involves the demographic of the culture in concentrated geographic areas. Sociologist Pierre Bourdeiu noted that "Power is often most effectively deployed when it is hidden or "misrecognized"... I would include that it is blatantly and boldly minimized by the dominating group with the perceived power to label and stigmatize others as an act of assigning labels. The reasons for doing so include, but are not limited to:

The Sociological Review, The Stigma Conversations
Podcast series

• To assign you as an inferior in order for those misusing power to feel and feed their superiority.  

• To devalue you and reassign you a much lower value, position, etc, in order to demoralize you, particularly in a specific social context or role. The Cambridge Dictionary definition of devaluation is "the action of causing someone or something to be considered less valuable or important".

• To elaborate on the power of the stigma and demoralize you. Demoralization is an intentional process initiated by those in positions of power to strategically ensure that they make you lose hope, drive, confidence, enthusiasm, and justice for yourself and on behalf of other marginalized people. With this strategy, YOU become an example to others of what they can and will do before displaying you as an example.   

• To elicit a stress response in you, and in turn, deplete your emotion regulation abilities and the effect it has on your adverse mental health. This basically means that if you didn't have mental health issues prior, the powers that target you will ensure that they trigger stress in you, or for instance negative reactions from you, to ensure you fulfill their script, their label and provide proof for their spoof due to your response. In this way, they justify their stigmatization of you.

Saskatchewan has the second highest Domestic Violence (DV) or Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) rates in Canada. DV, IPV, stalking, harassment and various forms of abuse extends into the courtroom where abusers and abusive systems label and stigmatize women. There are many women in the demographic of Saskatchewan who are experiencing gross injustice in the Saskatchewan Family Law legal arena in 2023. Outside of Saskatchewan, what has become normal within the province as determined by the powers that be, is abnormal treatment by outside observers. Those in positions of power in the legal arena are viewed as being deficient by other professionals and the public in general.

Additional Sources:

Association for Psychological Science. April 16, 2018. The Science Behind Cultural Stigma.

Lancer, Darlene, JD, LMFT. June 5, 2017. The Truth About Abusers, Abuse, and What To Do. How to spot an abusive partner before it's too late. Psychology Today.

Link, Bruce and Jo Phelan. February 2014. Stigma Power. Science Direct: Social Science & Medicine, Volume 103, pages 24 - 32.