I'm familiar with prejudice. Prejudice is a result of lack of information and/or experience. People with prejudices usually do not realise they are prejudiced since it is all that they and the community around them know or have experienced the world around them.
Like a housed person, someone who is not nor has ever been homeless, living under the assumption that all homeless people dropped out of high school, started drinking, using drugs and living on the streets. That's prejudice. More life experience, whether it is volunteering at a shelter and talking directly to the homeless or by becoming homeless at some point in life, is the only way to dispel prejudice against the homeless.
Bigotry on the other hand is more of a sort of classism. Being on a higher level or upper echelon of society than others who are not like oneself. Whether by race, religion, gender, sex, sexual orientation, income, geographics and many other diversionary tactics. Every prejudiced individual is not a bigot, yet every bigot is prejudiced. One must believe oneself to be above the other religion, race or other labels and base this on the very few facts and/or experience one has in regards of the other religion, race or other labels.
For example, a sexual bigot believes they are on a higher level than those who are not of their sexual orientation and bases this on the few facts and/or experiences they have with other sexual orientations and/or sexual minorities. A straight individual believing they are better than gay, bi or asexuals due to assumptions of promiscuity of gays and bisexuals or sexual dysfunction of asexuals. A gay individual believing they are better than straights, bisexuals or asexuals due to belief of rampant reproduction of straights and bisexuals or sexual dysfunction of asexuals.
One can be a gender bigot where one gender is placed above another or where both genders are raised above those who are physically transitioning and affirming their gender. There are gender bigots, racial bigots, religious bigots, nationality bigots, reproductive bigots, as the lists go on and on. The use of a stereotype or one bare individualistic fact to raise oneself above others.
Hatred, in some cases, is the seeming change of certain personally held facts about another and the sudden realisation of similarities between individuals causing intense fear. For example, two uber macho individuals who have the similar likes and dislikes yet different sexual orientations. One holding personally held facts about gay individuals only to realise there are very few differences. If there are so few differences, then how do you prove you are different? How do you set yourself apart? Some choose distance, some believe everyone is different, some become victims of random violence, others situational violence, while others choose intimate terrorism.
Situational violence is a mutual occurrence. Cause and effect. One person says something, another responds, and it escalates to where both become violent. Random violence though, is just that, random. One vulnerable stranger randomly selected for violence to prove something to oneself or society. Intimate terrorism on the other hand is about control. Control over every aspect of a person's life. Reparation therapy is a form of intimate terrorism of a child from a parent, an individual from a family, or an individual from a community and/or church.
Intimate terrorism is about isolation and control. There is no one to talk to. No one to trust. No one to share with. No one to entrust all of yourself with. No feeling of emotional safety. No love. No hope. Only isolation, pain, distrust and fear. No psychological escape until you begin to sink into the very depths of utter desolation and despair. Where it feels as though you have even deserted yourself. Even thoughts are bullying, derogatory and spiteful. Where death feels as if it would be better than the non-life one is already living. Yet, the cage is based on a prejudice. Self-prejudice. The constant distraction of benevolent jailers is meant to keep one from finding the cracks in the foundation and digging out from under the despair, fear and self-loathing.
One day, you begin to use the facts you have been given about yourself as questions. When we begin to answer them in our own words instead of those we have been given do the locks on our prison finally begin to open. A friend once asked me about prejudice, bigotry and slavery. I responded with a story regarding my family. My family won freedom from slavery generations ago, yet we still were the caretakers for generations of our former masters after slavery ended.
When, as children, we were found in straight-forward equal conversation with one of our former master's generations our elders chastised us and reminded us of our place. That we should not approach this person with disrespect. Let me explain something. In order to be anything, slave, social minority or equal, one must believe that is what you are. It is all psychological. As a child, I saw myself as an equal thus I conducted myself as an equal and no matter who told me I was not, that was their belief not mine.
Physical chains are made of materials that disintegrate with time. They erode in the wind, rain, sleet and snow with the seasons. Mental chains can only be placed and removed by the individual who wears them. As Pinocchio said "There ain't no strings on me."
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