The psychological process of perceiving or treating a person or group as less than fully human, reducing empathy and enabling harmful treatment.
From 'de-' (reversal) + Latin 'humanus' (human) + '-ization.' Removing someone's humanness in one's perception.
Dehumanization is seeing people as less than human — it's behind the worst atrocities in history. It shuts off empathy and makes cruelty feel acceptable.
Dehumanization has been weaponized historically against women, particularly in slavery, colonialism, and gender-based violence, where women's humanity was systematically denied to justify exploitation. The term's application reveals gendered patterns: women are dehumanized through sexualization and objectification, while men are dehumanized through militarization and criminalization.
Use this term with awareness that dehumanization disproportionately affects women and marginalized groups. Center the actual experiences of those dehumanized rather than abstract rhetoric.
Women's resistance to dehumanization—from enslaved women's documented testimony to feminist theory on objectification—has shaped contemporary human rights frameworks, though this intellectual labor remains underattributed.
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