Social stigma  

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Social stigma is severe social disapproval of personal characteristics or beliefs that are against cultural norms. Social stigma often leads to marginalization.

Examples of existing or historic social stigmas can be physical or mental disabilities and disorders, as well as illegitimacy, homosexuality or affiliation with a specific nationality, religion or ethnicity, such as being a Jew, an Italian, or a Gypsy. Likewise, criminality carries a strong social stigma.

Stigma comes in three forms: Overt or external deformations. Examples of this are physical manifestations of anorexia nervosa, leprosy, disabilities. Second, the known deviations in personal traits. For example, drug addicts, alcoholics, and criminals are stigmatized in this way. Third, "tribal stigmas" are traits of a race, nation, or religion that constitute a deviation from the normative race, nationality or religion. For example, Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

See also

Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Social stigma" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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