Give Me Some Sugar
I've been noticing something. Just here and there. Maybe it's the existence of Men's Pocky, a less sweet version for those macho manly men who don't want to eat girly feminine..uh...chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks. Right. Or this helpful list, which will make sure you don't shame yourself by ordering something as revolting as a drink known
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While many stereotypes are completely bogus, and others are completely manufactured, many do indeed come from generalizations that are accurate. For example, "men are stronger than women" is a generalization that is (depending on how you define "strength", anyhow) accurate; if you take 1000 men at random, and 1000 women at random, and measure and plot their "strength" in some fashion (max bench press, say), you'll find that the mean result for men is higher than the mean result for women, and you'll probably find something like (say) 80% of the men are strictly "stronger" than 80% of the women. Obviously, some women are stronger than some men, and obviously an individual can work to increase their strength, but if one puts in enough intellectual effort to understand what a generalization really is, there should be no problem.
However, some people will take the generalization and make it a "hard and fast axiom", because to do so requires less thought than to appreciate the subtleties of the generalization. It can then easily evolve into a stereotype. For example; take a job that requires a certain amount of strength, such as a firefighter. Moving with heavy equipment, hauling heavy hoses around, hauling heavy bodies around (rescuing victims), and so on, are critical parts of the job. So even if we had as gender-neutral a culture as possible, you'd probably still see more men than women becoming successful firefighters, primarily due to the strength issue.
But intellectually lazy people just say stuff like "Women can't be firefighters, they're too weak." They aren't willing to put enough thought into concepts such as (a) some men aren't strong enough to do that work and (b) many women certainly are. And this stereotype has built up enough inertia that efforts in the last few decades to open the gender barrier to this career have been fraught with difficulty. Even 30 or more years after many fire departments were integrated, one still hears far too many stories about women being abused, harassed, assaulted, and otherwise forced out of the profession, all because a certain proportion of meatheads can't be arsed to rub two brain cells together and rethink their stereotypes.
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But whether that generalization actually existed or not, the same intellectual laziness led to the stereotype. Instead of "Everyone should eat a nice healthy balanced diet," you get bullshit like "Meat is for manly men!" and "Bon bons are for the delicate little flowers we dress up and put on the shelf for display at home." Or whatever.
And, of course, all those stereotypes lead to abuse directed towards anyone who doesn't fit the norm. Whether it's a woman trying to be a firefighter, a guy who likes to bake and has a sweet tooth, an African-American who stood up for himself 50 years ago and wasn't either a thug or an Uncle Tom, or a person who doesn't see gender as binary and doesn't choose to hew to either set of stereotypes, intellectually lazy people see their "maps" of the world threatened by these "weirdos" who would rather be true to themselves than true to false axioms. And when someone feels threatened (especially when they're too intellectually lazy to think about why they feel threatened), they lash out.
Sigh. Anyhow. Why do I always go off on these orthogonal rants? tl;dr - I agree, the stereotypes are bullshit, and I wish people would put some fucking cerebral effort into living their lives.
And I like white chocolate, but only occasionally; my peak preference is probably a semi-sweet/bitter-sweet in the 40-50% range. And I like to bake. %-)
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The backlash against people who prove that stereotypes aren't set in stone will never stop depressing me.
Baking is pretty fun, though. Cooking and baking have helped me retain what sanity I have left.
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(I must confess, I'm a lot like this. But I may be a little autistic; I try to grok people, but I suck at it.)
I'll have to read Lolita someday; of all the things covered in that book, I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to look for this in it.
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Most of them see themselves as characters, as well. It's intellectual laziness, as arthur_sc_king says, but there's also a fear of the unknown.
Even highly intelligent people who seem enlightened fall into this trap. I think some of it's just the fallout from living in a complex world in which you have to abstract a lot in order to get things done. That said, there's a reason I tend to avoid most people.
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Well, there you go.
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I think it's sort of analogous to how, culturally, the only real ways to be "smart" are to be good at math or chess.
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