History Main / OnceAcceptableTargets

Related to amputees above, those with physical and mental disabilities are treated much, ''much'' better today than they were in the past. In the early days this would be limited to calling attention to or lightly poking fun at the condition. However as media became more edgy slurs against the disabled grew to the point where in works such as ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' they were basically a CatchPhrase, oft repeated as a insult. Awareness for mental health grew and such terms were pushed back to be used by the vile villain or, on very rare occasions, the darker AntiHero. Today the word is all but gone, having virtually disappeared circa 2014 and only heard now really on trollish forum posts.

* Believe it or not, Literature/TheBible averts the victim blaming--as early as the BC era! Deuteronomy 22 states that a betrothed virgin should only be killed if [[YourCheatingHeart she willingly sleeps with a man who is not her fiancé]], and even then the man who slept with her must die too. If the virgin was outright ''raped'', [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil only the man must be executed]]. And of course, a man enticing an unbetrothed virgin to sleep with him resulted in a ShotgunWedding.

The Furry Fandom has ever been an odd one in the public eye whenever it dipped into it. First gaining traction in the late 80s as a hobbyist group for cartoon animal fans and artists, it steadily grew in popularity and notoriety as the internet and media began to pick up on them more. For years they were seen as strange eccentrics and harmless enough folks which, when they came into focus (especially after the ''disastrous'' rainfurrest conference) they made an easy punching bag for whoever wanted to mock these weird people who wanted to dress and act like animals. This came to a head when the ''{{Series/CSI}}'' episode "Fur And Loathing" came out, which depicted furries as an out-of-touch sex cult who genuinely thought they were animals trapped in a human body and dressed up in their fursuits to have wild, drug-fueled origies. To many people who weren't already in that sphere, it damaged the Furry Fandom's reputation for years. And not missing a beat to find a new internet punching bag, sites like [=SomethingAwful=] and [=4Chan=] immediately picked up with the furry hate and more or less declared war on the fandom, doxxing and trolling furries for years.

Popular opinion began to shift however around 2010 when the furry fandom began to network more and more as internet saw more and more ease of access and widespread usage, and people began to realize that the Furry Fandom, a place that celebrated differences and creativity, was a major safe space for members of the LGBTQ+ community meant that it saw an explosion of popularity and people identifying as furries. This combined with their former opposition in the aformentioned image boards either growing up and realising what they were doing was awful [[note]] combined with one of the [[TheAtoner repenting]] creators of the anti-furry movement on SA confirming the furry hate was their way of continuing to abuse LGBTQ+ people when it was becoming a social wrong to do so, see at the top of the page[[/note]] or getting bored and moving on to new targets, combined with an incident in Midwest Furfest 2014 in which someone tried to pump chlorine gas into the convention's air ducts [[EveryoneHasStandards horrified everyone]] generated a massive deal of symapthy for furries and served to help turn around their public image.

** Equally odd, a windstorm that has straight-line winds doing almost as much structural damage to buildings as a tornado would do is called a derecho, so if you hear your weatherman use that word, '''[[DontAskJustRun take cover immediately]]'''

* Many midget wrestlers like Wrestling/{{Hornswoggle}} and most recently, El Torito, have proven a challenge, even joining the Wrestling/RoyalRumble through Wrestling/{{Fandango}} had the embarrassment of being eliminated by the latter.

Nowadays, changes in the economy caused a massive change of views towards people that work at minimum wage jobs. With high paying jobs dwindling and requirements for a good job going ever higher, along with money becoming harder to acquire, many people now work at least two minimum wage jobs to make ends meet and are not picky on which job they are willing to work at. Employers are more likely to keep a minimum wage worker employed if their skills are proven as a valuable asset to the company while customers are more sympathetic towards minimum wage workers (with many customers being a minimum wage worker themselves). Anyone that tries to make fun of people that work a minimum wage job will usually get scorned at by others on the basis of economic hardship can hit anyone and working at a minimum wage job isn't shameful as long as said person is working hard to provide for their families.

Whether or not trans people are or are not acceptable targets tends to vary depending on the work, the creators and the audience that the work is intended for. However, increasing media represenation of non-cisgender people during the 2010s has gradually led many people to see the mocking of trans or non-binary people for their identities as being in very bad taste. While, at some point in time, it could be assumed that any depiction of this group in any artistic media would be solely hostile, it is now increasingly common for trans and non-binary people to be portrayed sympathetically, and for the people who mock or harass these groups as being Acceptable Targets themselves, as a result of their bigotry.

For a very long time, members of the various Orthodox Christian churches were seen as evil by Catholics.

* Japan, too. The average Japanese person has had very little interaction with black people, or foreigners in general, and tends towards xenophobia. Still, you think they could do a Google search.
** Weirdest thing is, when this was popular, they didn't think it was silly. They thought it was COOL.
*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qe4AZRkFYE This YouTube video]] about the "B-''gyaru''" (short for "Black ''gyaru''") subculture pretty much sums up the point.

* The aforementioned experience of Japan with black people was [[{{Allegory}} allegorized]] in Kenzaburo Oe's "Prize Stock", which depicts a rural Japanese village in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII capturing a downed American fighter pilot, only to discover that he's black. Having never seen - or even [[OutsideContextProblem conceptualized]] - a black person before, the village people are at a complete loss at what to do with him.

In the UK, Poles are stereotyped as Plumbers.

In Flanders and the Netherlands, from the period after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII until about the 1970's speaking a Dutch dialect instead of ABN (''Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands''; something that translated in English means ''General Civilized Dutch'') was almost universally unacceptable. Teachers back then even hit kids with a ruler if so much as a single ABN word of an ABN phrase was spoken in the exact same way as in a Dutch dialect and a lot of festival events and political parties were made to promote the use of ABN. The reason why people have become laxer about it is because over time plenty of successful songs were created in those same countries that were written in Dutch dialects. The term ABN was also deleted and they talk nowadays about AN (''Algemeen Nederlands''; meaning ''General Dutch'') to coincide with the change in perspective.

In popular works that have Once Acceptable Targets as only part of the work, the offending parts of the work are often changed to suit modern tastes. For example, in Gilbert and Sullivan's ''The Mikado'', the original lyrics to the song "As some day it may happen" contains racial slurs that modern audiences will not appreciate. The lyrics are therefore changed so that the overall play can be shown without the distraction of the slurs.

A form of [[{{Hypocrite}} misogynistic]] / [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming victim-blaming]] wherein a victim of sexual assault was accused of "asking for it" by the way they dressed or behaved. Women in the 1920s and 1930s were regarded as [[DefiledForever pariahs]] for having been raped, and this is still the case in many countries. Throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st, the continued rise of feminism has led to an increasingly accepting attitude towards women by men, and western society now near-universally sides with the victims, and thanks to social media, many cases involving a person or organization's sympathy with rapists and/or antagonization of victims spark national attention and an online crucifixion of the party in question.

At one time (generally from the 1600s up until the late 19th-early 20th century), actors, singers, and other entertainers were often viewed in a very negative light. Originally this was likely due to the fact actors traveled, showing up then leaving to never be seen again, and made a living off of pretending to be things they weren't. This idea had consequences ranging from the banning of Maypoles and other light-hearted festivals to the picketing and boycotting of theaters and the refusal by English rulers to authorize or endorse playwrights.

Whether your parents were subjected to a particular ritual before your birth isn't today a matter of much moment. For most of Western history this was not the case. Historian Maggie Secara [[http://elizabethan.org/compendium/40.html points out]] that in Elizabethan times you legally ''could not own property'' if you were illegitimate, could not hold public office, and could not ''marry''. This discrimination continued into modern times, often framed in terms of the illegitimate child's "right to a name": Creator/GeneStrattonPorter's 1904 novel ''Literature/{{Freckles}}'' is largely based around the notion of the hero's supposed bastardy, and on his use of the name "Freckles" because he has no "right" to any other. It wasn't until 1927 that the law in Texas was revised to remove the word "ILLEGITIMATE" from birth certificates. As late as 1959, Creator/RobertAHeinlein based a story around the notion that an "Unmarried Mother" would do everything she could to conceal her--and her child's--status.

For a long time, portrayed as either [[TheSavageIndian deadly savages]] or pathetic fools. Today, if American Indians feature in a story set in the past, they will usually be [[NobleSavage noble savages]] dressed in BraidsBeadsAndBuckskins; in a modern setting, they will tend to yearn for the old days, and often deliver AnAesop on environmentalism. Either that, or [[MagicalNativeAmerican they'll be connected to the spirits and the ways of the world]]. Or they're poor and live in a trailer, or work high-rise construction if it's an urban setting, they are popular assumed to never have a fear of heights. Casino ownership is increasingly prevalent in modern works.

For a long time, portrayed as either [[TheSavageIndian deadly savages]] or pathetic fools. Today, if American Indians feature in a story set in the past, they will usually be [[NobleSavage noble savages]] dressed in BraidsBeadsAndBuckskins; in a modern setting, they will tend to yearn for the old days, and often deliver AnAesop on environmentalism. Either that, or [[MagicalNativeAmerican they'll be connected to the spirits and the ways of the world]]. Or they're poor and live in a trailer, or work high-rise construction if it's an urban setting. Casino ownership is increasingly prevalent in modern works.

Those who lack in the height department have been the targets of contempt, though the odds of having a child with Achondroplasia[[note]]always a heterozygous since a homozygous dominant will result in a fatality[[/note]] are 50 percent, even with a person without the gene since it's a dominant gene. Thanks to this, a person with Achondroplasia can have "normal" size child, even if the spouse has the condition too. However, in recent years, people with the condition have proven they shouldn't be taken lightly, and are often seen in many programs, including the WWE where wrestlers with the condition were able to take on those twice their sizes. On Spike TV, '''''Series/MANswers''', it was once believed a woman with dwarfism "[[http://www.spike.com/video-clips/kgw1zj/manswers-do-midget-hookers-charge-half-price offering guilty services]]" is half price when they're actually the opposite... It's twice as costly than a normal size woman due to the rarity.

As far back as recorded history can tell us, the Jews have suffered from negative portrayals in the media; and in particular, Jews have been AcceptableTargets in Christianity for longer than it's been known as Christianity. However, since a lot of screenwriters and pioneering ComicBook authors were Jewish, Jews have pretty much become ordinary people on TV; indeed, [[YouHaveToHaveJews most shows will have at some point have one character revealing their Jewishness]] to show how racially sensitive the writers are. Also, since many comedy writers are Jewish, even non-Jews have become familiar with Jewish culture through TV sitcoms and movies by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, among many others. These days, Jewish characters are almost guaranteed to be lawyers, doctors, accountants and other educated, white-collar professionals, and "Jewish" almost a tongue-in-cheek synonym for "good at his job". The horrors of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust also had their influence, to say the least. On the other hand, in the Arab world, Jews are still very much AcceptableTargets, largely thanks to the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict. ''Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion'' is taught as fact in Saudi schools.

* ''Series/CitizenKhan'' does much the same for Pakistanis in Britain; however the show focuses on the way pakistani-British people see both themselves and the Britain around them.

The US has a strong Protestant tradition, from the Mayflower onwards, and for much of American history Catholics were a small minority which was viewed with great suspicion. It didn't help, either, that most American Catholics were either Irish (see above) or natives of non-English speaking European countries, tossing xenophobia into the mix. Anti-Catholic sentiment peaked in the 19th century, when it was widely believed in many Protestant circles, and claimed in many pamphlets and "true confession" novels, that the Catholic church was a secretive Satanic cabal which practiced human sacrifice and was plotting to destroy American democracy. These sentiments have waned enough over the years that UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, a Catholic, was able to narrowly win the 1960 presidential election, for John Kerry to come within a hair's breadth of doing the same in 2004, and for Joe Biden to be elected vice president in 2008, not to mention that from 2009 (when the Catholic Justice Sotomayor replaced the Episcopalian Justice Souter), 6 of the 9 Justices of the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCourts Supreme Court]] have been Catholic,[[note]]As an aside, as of 2016 ''none'' of the Justices are Protestant: the three Justices who aren't Catholic are all Jewish.[[/note]] but even today there are a few holdouts convinced that the Church of Rome is evil. [[ComicBook/ChickTracts Jack Chick]] is probably the best known, but recent pedophilia-and-cover-up scandals have pushed the Catholic church back towards an AcceptableTarget in some eyes.

* ''Film/TheBirthOfANation2016'' serves as the SpiritualAntithesis of ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'': whereas the latter depicts the Ku Klux Klan as the heroes and the former slaves as the villains, the former -- made after a century's worth of civil rights progress -- is a paean to Nat Turner, who had led the most infamous slave revolt in the US.

* ''Film/TheBirthOfANation2016'' serves as the SpiritualAntithesis of ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'': whereas the latter depicts the Ku Klux Klan as the heroes and the former slaves as the villains, the former -- made after a century's worth of civil rights progress -- does the opposite.

While victims of rape on either gender is tragic, in practice, this mostly applies when the rape victim is female, and the rapist is male. For reactions towards male victim and/or female perpetrator counterparts, see '''Male Sexual Harassment Victims''' under Main/AcceptableHardLuckTargets, and the [[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale various]] [[DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale double]] [[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnFemale standard]] tropes.

!!'''Homosexuals''':

!!'''Black People''':

!!'''East Asians''':

!!'''Ethnic Indians and Middle Eastern people''':

!!'''Hispanics''':

!!'''Indians''':

!!'''Irish''':

!!'''Native Americans / American Indians''':

!!'''Poles and Finns''':

!!'''Russians''':

!!'''Swedes''':

!!'''Norwegians''':

!!'''Turks''':

!!'''Ukrainians''':

!!'''Catholics''':

!!'''Orthodox Christians''':

!!'''Protestants''':

!!'''Jews''':

!!'''Actors''':

!!'''Amputees''':

!!'''Animals''':

!!'''Bastards''':

!!'''Disabilities''':

!!'''The Left-Handed''':

!!'''The Military''':

!!'''Minimum Wage Workers:'''

!!'''Rape Victims''' (Female only; only when rapist is male):

!!'''Sports Fans''':

!!'''Nerds''':

!!'''People who speak minority languages or dialects:-'''