ABSTRACT
Deviance refers to "any behavior or attribute for which an individual is regarded as objectionable in a particular social system . . . anything that violates prevailing norms" (Glaser 1971). There are many different kinds of deviants. People who are criminals and people who are mentally ill are considered to be deviants. The line between who is deviant and who is not changes dramatically over time and place. But always, a community tends to show its most degrading side when it attempts to deal with those whom it has labeled deviant. Historically and sometimes today, we lock them up, run them out of town, humiliate them, torture them, deprive them of basic human rights, even kill them. Once we have decided that a person or a group is deviant, we build up a complex and convoluted system of legal tenets and ethical justifications to demonstrate that grave differences exist between the way we, as a social group, treat deviants and the way they treat us. One of the most obvious differences of course, is power. Whoever has the most power determines who is deviant and what should be done about their deviance.
