Institutional mimicry happens when a system imitates care, inclusion, or reform to protect itself from criticism — without making meaningful changes. These terms help decode what’s real and what’s theatre.
Simulating Inclusion Without Sharing Power
When systems claim to center lived experience, but retain all the control — treating participation as decoration, not direction.
Public Inclusion, Private Exclusion
Offering tokenistic roles or visibility while keeping decision-making power behind closed doors. Inclusion as branding, not equity.
Writing Equity into Applications Only
Framing a project as inclusive in grant documents to secure funding — then delivering something inaccessible, gatekept, or performative.
Compliance Without Care
Meeting technical accessibility requirements without emotional, cultural, or practical relevance. Inclusion that checks boxes but misses the point.
Changing the Language, Not the Structure
Rebranding a service with inclusive words or new graphics while leaving the original exclusionary design unchanged.
A collection of protected semantic frameworks written by lived-experience authors. Each glossary holds the line against pattern theft, narrative laundering, and coercive rewording.
These terms defend the metadata of lived experience in digital systems.
View Entries →The core terms that scaffold SSA™ and uphold protocol-layer authorship.
View Entries →These terms unpack how institutions weaponise the language of inclusion while reinforcing control.
View Entries →