---
title: "Protected Characteristics & Hate Speech Typology"
description: "Defining protected characteristics, criteria for hate speech classification, and distinguishing ideas from individuals."
---

## Directive Objective
Protect all community members from identity-based denigration, attacks, exclusion, or dehumanization based on core protected personal characteristics.

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## 1. Scope and Policy Coverage
Hate speech is defined as any attack, incitement to hatred, violence, or systemic exclusion targeting individuals based on **protected characteristics**:
- **Race, Ethnicity & Color**
- **Nationality & Immigration Status**
- **Religion, Faith & Religious Practices**
- **Sexual Orientation**
- **Sex, Gender & Gender Identity**
- **Severe Disability, Medical Condition, or Neurodivergence**

### Prohibited Behaviors
- **Dehumanization**: Comparing protected groups to animals, insects, diseases, or inanimate objects.
- **Inherent Inferiority Claims**: Asserting genetic, intellectual, or moral deficiency of a protected group.
- **Segregation & Expulsion Demands**: Demanding that protected groups be banished, silenced, or segregated from channels.

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## 2. Exclusion Boundaries and Scope Limits
- **Critique of Corporations & Governments**: Vigorous debate regarding multinational corporations, national government policies, or geopolitical states is permitted, provided it does not demean citizens based on ethnicity or nationality.
- **Ideological & Theological Debate**: Academic discussion of religious doctrines, philosophical systems, or political theories without dehumanizing individual adherents.

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## 3. Moderator Response & Enforcement
- **First-Time / Ambiguous Offense**: Immediate warning, message deletion, and temporary mute.
- **Explicit Slurs / Dehumanization**: Immediate server kick or ban.
- Configure AutoMod with regex patterns for protected identity slurs.