🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <gilligan.724135021@cs1.bradley.edu> gilligan@cs1.bradley.edu (Edward Henigin) writes:

>There are reasons that people hold stereotypes.

Ignorance, fear, close-mindedness...  And, of course, being too intellectually
lazy to distinguish between individuals when it's so much easier just to hang
a label on someone & be done with it.

>Partially from a lack
>of experience with the stereotyped party, and partially because the
>experience people do have with the stereotyped party tend to reinforce
>the stereotype (or change it if it's wrong, but usually, at the surface,
>stereotypes are pretty close.  Gay men talk with feminine voices.  This
>is a stereotype.  This has never been proved wrong to me.)
>

This is a lovely stereotype.  It's never been proved wrong because it's
untestable.  What the hell is a "feminine voice"?  I would guess that
your definition of a feminine voice is that which comes out of a gay
man.  I mean, I don't see that Rock Hudson's voice was any more feminine
than, say, Jay Leno's. 

And when you do find someone who doesn't fit your stereotype, you can 
always point to them as the exception that proves the rule, like the
"nice" Jew man who lives next door.  You know, the one who eats normal
food, and gives to charity instead of clinging to every dime for dear 
life.  When you see people like that you can almost forgive them for
murdering Christ.  You can convince yourself that he's not *really* 
a Jew, he just happened to be born to the wrong family.  Just like
women who are aggressive and successful are not *really* women, they
are castrating bitches.

<note for the sarcasm-impaired, I don't really believe the things written
in the above paragraph about women & Jews to be true>

And of course the engineers who have artistic sensibilities, they're not
"typical" engineers, they either fall into some sub-stereotype you have (like
engineers going for a PhD), or else they are some weird anamoly, and
are probably going into the wrong profession.

You might want to check out some of the recent work by Susan Fiske or Abraham
Tesser on the mental cost of stereotyping vs. individuating.  That is, if
you can take the time out from your busy schedule of squeezing three-
dimensional human beings into two-dimensional slots.

Jenny Gutbezahl, ENXX, Psychology Student, PhD candidate, woman, Jew, and
                 much, much, much, much more....
-- 
***************************************************************************
jennyg@titan.ucc.umass.edu is Jenny Gutbezahl @ Univ. of Mass, Amherst
****************************************************************************