Prejudice and the Unmarked/Marked Mindset
This piece is being simultaneously released as both a video essay (which you can watch on YouTube via that link) and a written essay (which you can read here). If you appreciate it, please consider supporting my work on Patreon.
In a previous video, Celebrity, Sublebrity & Parasocial Relationships (a feminist analysis), I detailed the underappreciated parallels between the harassment sometimes experienced by celebrities and many women’s experiences with street harassment. And at the end of the video, I suggested that there were further connections with what I have personally experienced when people are aware that I am transgender.
While these are obviously different experiences with their own dynamics, they all share the fact that certain subgroups of people (celebrities, women, trans people) are deemed “public spectacles” who seem (in observers’ eyes) to be “asking for” attention. In my recent book Sexed Up, I refer to these as “phantom invitations,” as they exist solely in the mind of observers rather than stemming from the targeted individual (who, far more often than not, would prefer to be left alone).
In a separate video, Do Trans People Reinforce Gender?, I talk about a pervasive double standard within feminism, where trans people have been routinely accused of “reinforcing” the gender system or gender stereotypes, whereas nobody ever accuses the cisgender population of doing the same thing (even though many cis people do!). Analogous “reinforcing” claims have also been made about lesbians, bisexuals, and feminine people, but not their heterosexual or masculine counterparts. In other words, the former groups—all of whom happen to be marginalized—are being singled out for undue attention and scrutiny, while their dominant/majority counterparts escape analogous critiques and questioning.
So what is going on here?
Well, I’d argue that all these phenomena stem from the same human cognitive bias, which appears to underlie most if not all forms of prejudice. Once you recognize it, you will see it everywhere. Historically, it’s been called “markedness,” but in my writings, I refer to it as the Unmarked/Marked mindset.
I’ve detailed many facets of this mindset in three previous essays: “How Double Standards Work” (which is Chapter 14 of my 2013 book Excluded), “He’s Unmarked, She’s Marked” (which appeared in the 2020 anthology Believe Me), and “Unwanted Attention” (which is Chapter 3 of my 2022 book Sexed Up). In this essay, I will be drawing from these past writings to create a brief overview of this cognitive bias.
What is the Unmarked/Marked mindset?
Here’s how I described the Unmarked/Marked mindset in Sexed Up (pp.78-79):
Human beings are comprised of countless different traits—aspects of our physical bodies, personalities, histories, social roles, experiences, behaviors, interests, desires, tendencies, and so forth. Most of these traits are “unmarked” in our eyes, meaning that we view them as mundane, unsurprising, and not particularly noteworthy; they seem “normal” to us and thus are taken for granted. In contrast, other traits are “marked”—they strike us as “remarkable” for some reason or other. What makes a trait marked? Well, it depends entirely on the individual, their background, and other situational factors. If you’ve lived your entire life in a small town but then travel to New York City for the first time, everything about the city—its scenery, inhabitants, the way locals talk and act, etc.—might strike you as “remarkable.” However, if you grew up in New York City, all that would simply be the backdrop of your life, and it would be unmarked. For me, having grown up in a straight suburban household during the 1970s and ’80s, the first time that I went to a transgender event or a gay bar, everything about the experience seemed absolutely “remarkable,” whereas nowadays, such people and settings seem normal and natural to me.
While we may each have a different sense of what is or isn’t marked, the one thing that holds true is that once a person is marked in our eyes, we will unconsciously be driven to pay them extra attention and scrutinize them disproportionately. We will likely perceive them as conspicuous, fascinating, unnatural, abnormal, questionable, suspect, or some combination of these qualities. This explains why we treat certain people (those we mark) as though they are “public spectacles,” and why we may feel as though they have “invited” us to interact with them or remark upon them. Because marked individuals seem “striking” to us, we may also want to know how they came to be, or why they do the things that they do, and this may lead us to question them (in both the “ask questions” and “view them as suspect” senses of the word), and to attribute underlying causes and ulterior motives to them.
Because people mistakenly view unmarked individuals as “normal” and “natural,” and marked individuals as “abnormal” and “unnatural,” I often use clothing in my examples of this mindset. After all, no item of clothing is inherently “natural,” as it’s all designed and manufactured by people. Plus, we all understand that no article of clothing is inherently “normal,” as what we wear before going to bed is different from how we would dress if we were running out to do errands, or competing in a sporting event, or if we were to attend a wedding or costume party, and so on. And obviously, different types of clothing are considered “normal” in different time periods and cultures, but not others.
In Excluded, I provide various examples along these lines, but here is a shorter passage from “He’s Unmarked, She’s Marked” (pp.54–56) that not only illustrates the questioning and critiques that marked individuals are often subjected to, but also highlights how unmarked individuals are deemed “unquestionable” and “unassailable”:
Imagine the following generic scenario: many workplaces have an unstated dress code regarding what clothing is considered appropriate. So long as your clothing choices fall within those standards, you will likely not garner any undue attention or comments—i.e., you will be unmarked in that setting. Now, what would happen if, one day, you just so happen to wear something that falls outside of those norms, something that marks you—perhaps it’s a tiara and gown, or tattered clothing, or something else entirely. What would likely happen? Well, I’d imagine that your co-workers would be unsettled by your choice of dress, and they would almost certainly bombard you with questions (“What possessed you to wear that?” “Where did you even get that outfit?”). And some of these questions would probably sound like thinly veiled accusations, or attempts to project ulterior motives onto you (“Are you trying to sabotage the company? Or get yourself fired?”). In other words, these are not innocent questions; rather, they are attempts to call your judgment, intelligence, rationality, decency, etc., into question. And if you were to complain about being questioned in such a manner, your pleas would likely be viewed as unreasonable because, in the minds of your co-workers, your marked manner of dress had provoked their questions. From their perspective, you were essentially “asking for” any negative attention you received.
Now, imagine a reciprocal situation. One day you show up to work wearing typical clothes that fall well within workplace parameters (i.e., you are unmarked). What would happen if a colleague came up to you and began rigorously interrogating your clothing choice? Well, you would probably find their behavior to be confusing or disturbing. And it wouldn’t just be you—onlookers would likely be aghast as well. Virtually everyone would agree that you were unfairly targeted and treated and that it was your colleague who was acting irrationally and out of line. In other words, just as marked traits and individuals are deemed “questionable,” their unmarked counterparts are regarded as “unquestionable”—beyond doubt or dispute.
A drawback of these clothing examples is that people are likely to view these incidents as avoidable if only the person in question had made a “better choice” by wearing the “right clothes.” However, there are many cases in which people are marked because of aspects of their physical body, personality, history, social status, and so on, that they simply cannot “change out of” as one can do with clothing. This is generally the case with most marginalized groups.
How the Unmarked/Marked mindset contributes to marginalization
I have written a lot about how the Unmarked/Marked mindset plays out for LGBTQ+ people, so let me use that as an example here. Like most people, when I navigate my way through the world, I find that people typically presume that I am heterosexual and cisgender. This isn’t because of anything that I’m doing. Rather, it’s because these groups are unmarked—viewed as universal and the default—so people simply assume that everyone they meet is going to be heterosexual and cisgender unless they are provided with evidence to the contrary.
In other words, when we talk about LGBTQ+ people being “closeted,” or “passing” as straight, or having to “come out” to other people, none of these concepts would even exist were it not for the Unmarked/Marked mindset.
And if I am in a situation where I decide or need to come out to people as bisexual or transgender, they will often act surprised or disconcerted or sometimes dismayed—that is, they will suddenly view me as “remarkable” to varying extents. Occasionally they will treat me as though I’m outright “exotic” or “alien.” And of course, they will sometimes subject me to all kinds of questions, some of which may appear innocent (such as “when did you first realize that you’re bisexual?”), others skeptical (such as “how can you be sure that you’re really transgender?”). But importantly, I have never once been asked analogous questions when presumed to be heterosexual or cisgender!
Sometimes people are not content to simply ask questions, but rather they seek to answer those questions themselves. An example of this that I discuss in Sexed Up is the seemingly endless litany of proposed “causes” to explain why people become transgender. To name a few of the more common ones: faulty parent-child dynamics, chemicals in the environment, being abused as a child, influenced by pornography, or duped by some kind of “transgender agenda.” Or maybe we’re seeking out attention, or an alternative lifestyle, or maybe it’s a symptom or byproduct of mental illness, or a sexual fetish. Or perhaps we’re “really gay or lesbian” but transition in order to better fit into the straight world.
That last one is particularly ironic given that all of the previous imagined causes I just recited have also been proposed to explain the existence of gay people!
Now over the years, countless scientists and activists have painstakingly pointed out the many flaws and contradictory evidence regarding these proposed causes, yet they nevertheless keep coming back, like zombie theories that are impossible to kill. On top of this, brand new proposed causes are constantly springing up—see for instance the recent invention of “transgender social contagion” and how people keep promoting this idea despite over a dozen recent studies refuting it.
So why do all these proposed causes relentlessly “stick” to LGBTQ+ people, yet nobody outside of academia ever wonders what causes people to become heterosexual or cisgender (which is frankly something we don’t fully understand)? Well, this is how I put it in Sexed Up (p.80):
The marked individual is viewed as having “something” that an unmarked person does not. As a result, this “something” may seem to “taint” every aspect of the marked individual (their actions, opinions, etc.), whereas unmarked people appear free of any such contamination. Furthermore, this “something” that marked people have is also “sticky” in that all sorts of things will tend to glom onto them, such as questions, comments, critiques, assumptions, stereotypes, attributions [such as motives and causes], and so on. In contrast, their unmarked counterparts will remain relatively free of such presumptions and allegations.
Now obviously, different marginalized groups will face different assumptions, questions, stereotypes, and so on. They each have their own history, are institutionalized in different ways, they face different stereotypes and other obstacles, and so on. I am most certainly not trying to flatten those differences here. But I do believe that recognizing these tell-tale signs—that marked groups tend to be singled out as remarkable, questionable, abnormal, unnatural, etcetera—helps provide us with a better understanding of how prejudice works and how it often arises unconsciously from this mindset.
The Unmarked/Marked mindset and social justice movements
Essentially, the Unmarked/Marked mindset creates an uneven playing field, where marginalized groups will perpetually face undue attention and scrutiny, and have all sorts of assumptions, stereotypes, and attributions projected onto them. So how might a marginalized group escape this uneven playing field? Well, a first step that all marginalized groups seem to take as they begin to articulate the prejudice they face is to explicitly name the unmarked group.
So instead of being taken for granted as “normal” or “natural,” we describe the corresponding dominant/majority group as cisgender, or heterosexual, or white, or able-bodied, and so on. This performs a vital function: Instead of the marked group being singled-out for scrutiny, it makes it clear that there are two groups at play—for instance, transgender and cisgender—both of which are legitimate things to be. The only real difference is that there is a set of double standards (or an “ism”) that leads one group to be interpreted and treated as less legitimate than the other.
Of course, unmarked groups tend not to like being explicitly named in such ways. When I first started using cis terminology in my 2007 book Whipping Girl (back when that language was still obscure), I did so because I found it to be nearly impossible to adequately describe many of the double standards trans people face without simultaneously pointing out that there is a dominant/majority group (cis people) who are viewed very differently and do not face the same obstacles. I found that some people reacted quite negatively to being labelled “cis”—they felt “singled out” by term, as though I were “marking” them—when in actuality, I was simply trying to decenter a previously existing unmarked/marked binary.
While decentering binaries is necessary work if we wish to challenge marginalization, there are occasions when some activists attempt to “flip” the binary in question, such that those who belong to the dominant/majority group are now viewed as inherently questionable and suspect. Such a maneuver tends to have little effect within mainstream settings (for example, my attitudes toward cisgender people have very little sway in a world where my opinions are already deemed illegitimate because I’m transgender). However, they can have an impact within certain activist settings, particularly those with separatist leanings. In my essay Cissexism and Cis Privilege Revisited—Part 2: Reconciling Disparate Uses of the Cis/Trans Distinction, which appears in my book Outspoken but can also be found online, I discuss how such “binary-flips” or “reverse discourses” sometimes play out within activist communities.
Naming the unmarked group also allows us to reframe the discrimination faced by marginalized groups in terms of them *not* possessing white, or male, or straight, or able-bodied privilege. Discussions of privilege are yet another thing that unmarked groups tend not to like, and admittedly the concept is sometimes misused in the aforementioned “binary-flips” and “reverse discourses.” But those exceptions aside, the concept is pretty simple: If you believe that a marginalized group faces certain disadvantages as a result of prejudice, then it makes sense that the corresponding dominant/majority group must experience reciprocal advantages.
You may have come across various “privilege checklists” (for white privilege, or male privilege, and so on) describing some of these advantages. While these checklists all differ from one another in their specifics, if you go through them, you will find that many said privileges involve *not* being subjected to undue attention and scrutiny, or *not* having to face all sorts of assumptions, questions, and stereotypes. In other words, many of these privileges stem directly from *not* being marked.
Unfortunately, whenever a marginalized group makes significant progress in challenging the prejudice and discrimination they face, there will usually be some kind of backlash. Often these are highly coordinated and well-funded efforts—in the new Afterword to the 3rd edition of Whipping Girl, I describe the various factions who all came together about a decade ago to organize and foment the anti-trans backlash we are now living through.
Even though these backlashes are active and concerted efforts, they are rarely ever portrayed as such. Rather, those in the unmarked group will typically imagine them to be “natural reactions” to perceived “overreaches” by the marked group. This can be seen in the all-too-common trope of “activists gone too far,” and accompanying sentiments that they “had it coming” because they were acting “out of line.” By now, these dynamics should be familiar: No matter what actually takes place, the marked group will likely be viewed as “inviting,” “provoking,” or “asking for” the backlash. In contrast, the unmarked group’s actions will be deemed “unquestionable”: an understandable reaction to whatever the marked group supposedly did.
Other phenomena stemming from the Unmarked/Marked mindset
The Unmarked/Marked mindset also provides insights into three other phenomena routinely experienced by marginalized groups.
The first is intersectionality: the way that different forms of marginalization can intersect with and exacerbate one another. In Chapter 7 of Sexed Up, I describe three non-mutually exclusive pathways that can contribute to intersectional marginalization: one involves overlapping or conflicting sets of double standards (elsewhere this has been called “stereotype amplification and dilution”). Another involves overlapping systemic or institutional practices. And the third stems from the Unmarked/Marked mindset. After all, given our tendency to perceive marked individuals as public spectacles, and as questionable, unnatural, etcetera, someone who is marginalized along more than one axis may appear doubly or triply conspicuous, or questionable, or artificial in our eyes.
The second phenomenon is double binds—these are the no-win situations that marginalized groups often face, where whatever course of action they take comes with significant drawbacks. In the accompanying video (around the 20-minute mark), I list a number of commonly occurring double binds that I discuss further in Excluded. I won’t go into them all here, but I will quickly highlight two examples.
I have already alluded to the “pass/reveal” double bind earlier: If people automatically presume that you are a member of the unmarked group by default, you can continue to “pass” as such, although this involves having to hide or repress parts of yourself. Alternatively, if you “come out” then people will often treat that as a big “reveal” that may lead to unwanted questioning and sometimes even accusations of “deception.”
Another common double bind is “accommodating versus angry”: If people are paying you undue attention and scrutiny because you are marked, one option is to accommodate it by patiently answering all their questions and addressing all their concerns—I can tell you firsthand that this can be endlessly frustrating and exhausting. Alternatively, if instead you take issue with said attention and scrutiny—even in a polite or nonconfrontational manner—people will often interpret your reaction as “angry” and consider you to be the one who is “acting out of line.”
Within marginalized groups, intra-community debates will often arise characterizing one side of the double bind as the “appropriate” or “righteous” response, and the other option as “contributing to” or “reinforcing our oppression.” But such proclamations ignore the fact that both options have significant drawbacks. Furthermore, the double bind is impervious to our responses, as it exists first and foremost in the minds of those who mark us. The only way to truly escape these double binds is to dismantle the Unmarked/Marked mindset.
The third phenomenon is what I’ve come to call “invalidations”—these are tried-and-true ways of delegitimizing people, of knocking them down a peg. In Excluded, I discuss a number of invalidations that are routinely projected onto marginalized groups. Perhaps the most common one is the trope of mental incompetence, in which the marginalized group is portrayed as irrational, delusional, confused, mentally inferior, and/or incapable of making decisions about their own bodies and lives. Another common invalidation is sexualization: being nonconsensually reduced to one’s real or imagined sexual attributes to the exclusion of other characteristics—my book Sexed Up delves into how this form of invalidation impacts all marginalized groups, albeit in different ways.
Obviously, these and other invalidations—such as being viewed as inherently immoral, unhealthy, ill, anomalous, inauthentic, and so on—are accusations that we can make about virtually anybody. But the thing is, as with previously discussed stereotypes and attributions, these invalidations tend to “stick” more to marked groups than unmarked ones. Indeed, I make the case in Excluded that these invalidations, along with other hallmarks of being marked, can serve as “red flags” that alert us to when marginalization may be occurring.
In this same chapter of Excluded, I made the case for a somewhat novel strategy for countering prejudice, which I call a “bottom-up” approach. Here’s what I mean: We normally think of prejudice occurring in a “top-down” manner, in which a specific subgroup of people is singled out for marginalization due to a particular ideology or “ism.” This typically leads to identity-centric approaches to countering prejudice—where women organize to combat sexism, people of color organize to combat racism, people with disabilities organize to combat ableism, and so on. This can be a fruitful approach and has clearly led to significant progress, although it also has some downsides too, which I address in both Excluded and in my 2023 Moving Trans History Forward keynote talk, which can be found on YouTube at that link.
The bottom-up approach I propose is intended to be complementary to the top-down approach, emphasizing the many parallels that exist between different forms of marginalization. That way, even if you don’t know much about the marginalized group in question or the “ism” that oppresses them, you might still be able to recognize (and potentially counter) prejudice whenever you see tell-tale signs of it. The Unmarked/Marked mindset can play a crucial role in this approach, which is why I have come to center it in much of my activism.
Not all marked groups are marginalized
Finally, while all marginalized groups are marked, the converse is not true: People can be marked without being marginalized per se. For instance, if you are famous, you will likely be subjected to all sorts of undue attention and scrutiny (as detailed in my Celebrity, Sublebrity & Parasocial Relationships video), but it’s because others view you as special in some way, or superior to other people. In other words, such marked individuals are glorified.
Other marked individuals may be viewed more neutrally. For instance, if you walk down the street dressed as a pirate or as Chewbacca, you may garner other people’s attention, but not because they view you as inherently good or bad. Rather, you simply strike them as unexpected or distinctive.
In contrast, some marked individuals are viewed as illegitimate or inferior to other people, as is typically the case for marginalized groups. Rather than being glorified, these groups are stigmatized. I have a lot to say about stigma in Sexed Up—about how it is often viewed as contagious, contaminating, and can evoke feelings of disgust in observers. A briefer discussion of it can be found in my aforementioned Moving Trans History Forward talk (around the 38-minute mark).
While not every person belongs to a stigmatized group, almost every single one of us has experienced being marked in some way or other, at least in certain settings. After giving presentations about this topic, I’ve had audience members come up to me afterwards sharing how they could relate to the unwanted attention and questioning because they are especially tall, or speak with an accent, or have an unconventional job, or possess some other trait that observers tend to view as marked. To be clear, these individuals weren’t claiming to be “stigmatized” because of these traits. But recognizing potential parallels between our own experiences and those of others provides an opening for us to better understand and empathize with the predicaments that marginalized groups often face. It also helps us better understand unconscious prejudice and double standards more generally.
I will have more to say about this and the Unmarked/Marked mindset in forthcoming videos and essays that are already in the works. So if you’re interested in being notified about those as soon as they come out, please subscribe to me here and/or on my YouTube channel. And as always, please consider supporting my work on Patreon.