<p>Spain is experiencing a resurgence of hate speech, discrimination, and reactionary movements against women and LGBTQIA+ communities, a trend mirrored across Europe. Understanding how discrimination is interpreted—whether recognized, denied, or justified—is essential for advancing more equitable societies. This study explored how women and men perceive and explain everyday episodes of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. An online questionnaire presented three vignettes depicting these forms of discrimination, each followed by a Likert-type scale and an open-ended justification. The sample comprised 412 women and 219 men (M = 32.5 years, SD = 13.37). Open-ended responses were analyzed using the Constant Comparative Method. Findings show that recognition of discrimination was shaped not only by judgments of disrespect but also by whether the victim’s social identity was deemed relevant. Within the analyzed qualitative material, some participants framed the episodes as manifestations of structural inequality and objectification, whereas others denied or minimized them by invoking the absence of hostile intent, individualizing the behavior, or appealing to essentialist views of gender and sexuality. Across the qualitative subsamples, women more often adopted structural perspectives, whereas men more often tended toward situational or individualizing accounts. These results suggest that identifying discrimination is a socially embedded process shaped by context and by the interpretive frameworks participants use to make sense of everyday inequality. Implications are discussed for anti-essentialist approaches in education, community practice, and interventions addressing everyday inequality.</p>