Othering

Othering can be translated as making someone the other and is a significant part of identity processes. Othering is a mechanism of exclusion, which is determined by the fact that a group of people makes itself the standard and distances itself from another group of people, because they supposedly do not correspond to the standard. The consequence of this is the distinction between an Us and the Others, who are diametrically opposed to each other. Defining the Others within this mechanism is particularly important because the We can only persist if the Others serve as its basis of legitimacy. Thus, Othering provides the breeding ground for racism, sexism, transphobia, rejectionism, anti-Semitism, antiziganism, homophobia, and so on.