Mobilizing stereotypes and structural vulnerability

Definition

Leveraging the target's gender, immigration status, psychiatric or substance-use history, sexuality, race, criminal record, or other structural vulnerabilities to undermine credibility with the target and with third parties.

How it operates

Appeals to stereotypes about hysteria, instability, foreignness, or criminality. Statements that no one will believe the target because of a protected or stigmatized characteristic. Claims that institutional actors will side with the abuser on the basis of those characteristics.

Function

Recruit existing inequalities and institutional biases so that the target's reports are pre-emptively discounted.

Harm

Isolation from potential sources of support and the conversion of structural vulnerability into a silencing mechanism.

Why this is coercive control

Accurate, non-weaponized discussion of relevant history offered without the purpose of discrediting. The conduct here recruits existing inequalities and institutional biases so that the target's reports are pre-emptively discounted.

Constructed example

“Go ahead, call the cops. Who do you think they'll believe, me, or the one with the hospital record?”

Fictitious. Written to illustrate the behavior. Not a case.