Not all harm looks like harm. This glossary names the patterns that dress control up as kindness — and use cheerfulness to erase discomfort, truth, and dissent.
When You’re Only Welcome if You Smile
The enforcement of “positive vibes only” in spaces where real harm needs to be named. Often used to silence lived experience or distress.
Dismissing Pain with a Grin
Responding to someone’s hardship with upbeat clichés or silver linings that deflect from what they’re actually feeling or saying.
Forcing Thanks Where There Should Be Change
Insisting that people be “grateful” for crumbs of support — even when those crumbs are harmful, insufficient, or humiliating.
Talking Down in the Name of Comfort
Offering hollow comfort or oversimplified advice that ignores a person’s depth, complexity, or autonomy — often in a patronising tone.
Framing Obedience as Maturity
Suggesting that staying calm, quiet, or cheerful in the face of injustice is a sign of strength — rather than a forced survival response.
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.
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