The feat that prompted the question was the tiefling racial feat Monstrous Mask. It provides a +5 bonus to intimidate against all humanoids. I see that there are a bunch of categories for humanoids so perhaps it's simply talking about those, but is monstrous humanoid a category of humanoid in this context?
I would say no. My reasoning for this being that monstrous humanoid is a separate listed creature type from humanoid, so they are NOT the same thing.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/creatureTypes.html
That's where you can see that they are not the same creature type.
Alrighty then, I feel like some wording needs changed somewhere, whether in what abilities affect, or giving monstrous humanoids a different name cuz that is kind of confusing. Thx for clearing that up for me though. :)
is "humanoid"="monstrous humanoid"?
no.
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Monstrous humanoids should be called something like...
Monstrous persons.
Or Monsterfolk.
Monsterbros?
No.
Monstrous Bipeds?
... Except that would exclude things like centaur.
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The problem is that linguistically it is a reasonable assumption that all monstrous humanoids are humanoids, but not all humanoids are monstrous. By every linguistical standard this would be a clear indicator that Monstrous Humanoid is a subcategory of Humanoid in the same way that Elf is.
But rules wise that isn't the case only because they're listed as separate creature types. And we know that whenever we see the word 'Humanoid' in the rules, it is a reference to the creature type only.
Realistically, there shouldn't be 2 separate creature types, either something is humanoid or it's not. The only reason why we see that separation is because some designer somewhere felt that Monstrous Humanoids, as one of the most prevalent villains should not be affected by hold person until higher level. Even though some campaigns never even step foot into monster country making access to hold person as a balancing factor moot.
An elf is a Humanoid (Elf), and a giant is a Humanoid (Giant). If monstrous humanoid was a subtype of humanoid, it would have to be written Humanoid (Monstrous). But it isn't.
Humanoid and Monstrous Humanoid are two different types.
Yet another lack of clarity provided by the difference between in-game definitions compared to English.
It's more than just hold person. There are other spells that affect humanoids only; charm person, enlarge/reduce person, dominate person. Probably some others that I'm not thinking of.
As to why the distinction is made between humanoids and monstrous humanoids...I'm not sure why, but I also don't think they need to be folded together either.
I don't think the ability (referred to by the OP) needs to be changed either as humanoid refers to the humanoid creature type with a subtype (like humanoid(human) or humanoid (elf)) versus monstrous humanoid. That's a pretty clear distinction that is well understood by people with decent understanding of the rules.
People who know and understand that tieflings and aasimar cannot have enlarge/reduce person used on them (without something like Scion of Humanity) will know that this ability wouldn't work on things that are monstrous humanoids.