Link: Category structures and oppression

shweta_narayan has posted some useful and interesting thoughts on category structures and oppression, starting with the idea that, for most people, a robin has more bird-ness than an albatross does. Weirder, apparently people think that an albatross is more like a robin than a robin is like an albatross; intuitively, I would have thought that "A is like B" was reflexive. And if you ask people
"is this a bird?" they'll say yes faster about a robin than about an albatross or an emu.

That's interesting when it's robins and eagles and albatrosses, or whether 4 is a "better" even number than 4,278, but it extends to different groups and kinds of people. And it may be part of why people "just happen" to think of white men more often than nonwhites or women when they're looking for contributors to an anthology, or speakers at a conference, or candidates for city council.