Category Traitor: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Blood-traitor is next to Mudblood in my book."''|'''[[Ax Crazy|Bellatrix Lestrange]]''', ''[[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows|Harry Potter]]''}}

Branding someone a [['''Category Traitor]]''' is usually [[Serious Business]]... at least for the character who does it, even if the narrative doesn't agree -- theagree—the accuser can be portrayed as justified or at least as a good kind of bigot, but can also be portrayed as a [[Strawman Political]] or someone doing [[Activist Fundamentalist Antics]]. In either case, being branded as a [['''Category Traitor]]''' might cause [[Internalized Categorism]]. In [[Internal Subtrope|cases where the accusation itself is an obvious strawman]], this trope can be called [[Straw Traitor]]. A [[Cultural Rebel]] is especially prone to being branded as a [['''Category Traitor]]'''.

'''[[No Real Life Examples, Please]]'''. And no [[Audience reactionReaction]] examples either:. Only examples where one character is in-universe accused of betraying his category. Whether or not the accusation is portrayed as justified is worth mentioning, but not relevant to whether or not it counts as an example.

* In ''[[Digimon Tamers]''] the Devas and their master consider any digimon who partners with a human (or for some, who have ever been partnered with a human) to be traitors to their kind.

* In ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'', the humans are invading the planet Pandora. Destroying the environment and escalating their hostility against the native Na'vi population towards genocidal proportions. When the human protagonist lives among the aliens as one of them - using the titular Avatar technology - he begins to sympathize with their cause and ultimately decides to become a Na'vi and help them fight his fellow humans. [[Colonel Badass|Colonel Quaritch]] accuses him of "betraying his species."

* In ''[[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]]'', Indy accuses Mola Ram of betraying Shiva - a deity that ''neither'' of them worshiped. Mola Ram was a priest of Kali, [[Hijacked by Jesus|who in this particular setting seem to be the evil half of a black and white dualism, locked in eternal battle with the good deity Shiva]]. Jones never explained his reasoning, but one can assume that he felt that Mola Ram was obliged to worship Shiva because he was Indian.

* In ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'', the "radical republicans" are implied to have betrayed the white race, especially with Stoneman himself having an extramarital affair with a black woman - leading him to give power to the evil mulatto who later try to rape his daughter.

* ''[[The Turner Diaries]]'' is built on this trope: The base premise is that being white without being a Nazi is a crime, the [[Moral Event Horizon]] of "betraying" your race.

* In ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'', the [[A Nazi by Any Other Name|Death-Eaters]] consider wizardry to be in the blood. They also feel that [[No True Scotsman|all "real" wizards are obliged to be "loyal" to "their own kind,"]] and thus despise Muggles, as well as wizards with direct Muggle ancestry (who are derisively termed "mudbloods"). Wizards who are from pureblood backgrounds, but don't hate Muggles and Muggle-born wizards, they refer to as "Blood Traitors."

** In an interesting look at things, even wizards who aren't Death Eaters often have negative opinions on wizards who are a little too interested with Muggle affairs. Arthur Weasley is implied to be passed up for promotions (and subsequently means by which to provide better for his family) because of his unnerving enthusiasm for anything Muggle-related, which even the Minister Of Magic sees as disgraceful. Dumbledore also gets some grief for reading Muggle newspapers.

** Occurs in the Trial of R. Kelly where Tom is accused of being a self hating black man because he's married to a white woman. However, he's accused of this by the white defense attorney.

* In ''[[Fiddler Onon the Roof]]'', the protagonist Tevye (a good Jew in a really conservative society, who is struggling with [[Troubled Sympathetic Bigot|his prejudices and social pressure versus the emancipation of his daughters]]) considers his beloved daughter Chava to be past the [[Moral Event Horizon]] simply for wanting to marry a guy who isn't Jewish. Of course, [[It Makes Sense in Context|it makes sense]] [[Values Dissonance|in the historical context]] of pre-revolutionary Russia, given the tension in that time and place between Jewish and Christian communities (who often violently harassed Jews or forced them out of their homes, and we see both in the musical). And considering that Chava had to [[Converting for Love|convert]] to marry a Christian man, it makes sense for the devoutly Jewish Tevye to see it as a personal betrayal as well.

* Played with in ''[[The Wotch]]''. At the beginning of the feminist arc Anne gets mad with [[Gender Bender|at the moment Sonja]] because she reminds her that he IS a man, and not "a woman that sometimes is a guy" as Anne was saying.

* ''[[Slightly Damned]]'': Kieri, an angel, is considered a traitor for her companionship with Buwaro, a demon. One particular [[Knight Templar]] attempted to kill her too after she merely protected Buwaro. It is uncertain how other angels, particularly her brother, will react to the fact that {{spoiler|Buwaro and Kieri are now dating.}}

* In ''[[American Dad]]'', Terry is angered that Greg is a member of the [[Gay Conservative|Gay Republicans]].