othering

This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.

othering is the artificial dichotomy framing of two sets of people as "us" vs "them", something we should try to avoid or at least minimize on the indieweb per our principles (in particular plurality) and code-of-conduct.

A literal (theoretical? screenshots needed) example of this is when a site's profile editing UI has a gender menu with three options like "male/female/other", instead of a free text field, literally "other"ing anyone with a non-binary gender.

See Also

• monoculture projects may succumb to "othering" of similar projects, even though they may have similar broader goals!
• https://snarfed.org/2013-04-02_othering
• Procrustes and computers
• 2010-02-05 Sarah Dopp on Gender UI: Designing a Better Drop-Down Menu for Gender

  “Other” is a poor choice for a third option. Why? Because gender-nonconforming people are othered enough as it is.

• https://twitter.com/dorrismccomics/status/1139551726376292354?s=20
  • "" @dorrismccomics June 14, 2019