Redressing Everyday Discrimination: The Weakness and Potential of Anti-Discrimination Law

This book examines the harm that ‘everyday’ discrimination can cause and proposes ways in which it can be redressed. Extreme forms of demeaning representation, such as violent pornography and incitement to hatred, have been significantly addressed in law.

Everyday images and messages – in advertising, tabloids and on television – that ridicule, demean and denigrate people – are, however, widely perceived as ‘normal’, and their criticism is regularly trivialised. In response, this book draws on critical and feminist theory in order to forge a theoretical analysis of the harm created through everyday discrimination. Arguing that anti-discrimination law can and should be extended as a tool to offer protection against the harm inflicted, the book goes on to consider its limits – and its possibilities – for redressing this discriminatory practice.