A semi-rant on making assumptions and judgments.
I feel like there's so much pigeonholing and stereotyping and just so many assumptions being made these days. I'm not totally perfect myself, so I do judge people sometimes, when I really shouldn't, but I really really try not to make generalizations and stick with stereotypes.
It's so annoying when someone has a certain experience with a group or whatever, and then forevermore, if you're part of that group, that's how they see YOU. I dunno, everyone who goes "how dare they stereotype people, they're all a bunch of [fill in the blank]" is pretty much being hypocritical. And it's even more annoying when people take it a step further, and say "These people are saying something I don't like/agree with, which makes it stereotyping or hate speech or something else equally negative, and therefore they're all a bunch of idiots and don't have brains or hearts or whatever other organ whose absence makes them appear like the bad guy."
Granted, some people have earned that reaction, however inappropriate it may be. Some people do/say things that ARE stupid, whether in fact or just presentation, and some people are just plain mean. That doesn't mean everyone who shares an opinion with those people is equally responsible.
One of my biggest issues right now is how Christianity is being treated. It irks the heck out of me that people STILL say that we're trying to take over the world and suppress people's rights and whatnot, when we're quickly becoming the minority and losing rights of our own. Yeah, Christianity has some major dark spots on its history, because of the sheer number of different sects there are to screw things up. But just because one group of people is a bunch of religious fanatics who do crazy and stupid things in the name of God, it does NOT mean that EVERYONE who is Christian is the same. We may have a few similar core beliefs, but that doesn't make us the enemy automatically.
I know that I believe things that offend a lot of people, because they think I'm believing it out of hate or meanness or something, and they don't try to understand where I'm coming from. It hurts me that people project their expectations onto me for no good reason other than that it's comfortable to believe whatever you want about other people no matter what they do. I mean, I believe things that lots of people disagree with, but that doesn't mean that I point at everyone else and say "You're stupid, wrong, and you're going to hell." I don't. I don't agree with what people say, but I ALWAYS try to understand where they're coming from. Part of the reason I believe so strongly in what I do, is that I've looked at all the different sides of things and I've found what makes sense to me. I'm not just blindly following whatever the heck someone else tells me to believe. I choose to believe this stuff.
Does that make me a bad person, that I stick to my beliefs? I don't think it does, but I can't convince everyone who wants to think differently. I might think the homosexual lifestyle is wrong (and notice I say lifestyle, not just plain "gays are bad;" if you feel like screwing everyone in sight because you naturally have an active libido, is it okay to do that? not every natural aspect of ourselves is good), I might think that abortion is wrong (because it's taking a life, and yes, I do think that while birth control is iffy, women should definitely have the choice to prevent pregnancy if they want; I just think that if you do NOT want a baby, you should be extra-specially careful, and if you don't want one that badly, then take the measures you need to do to ensure that, whether that means getting your tubes tied or abstaining from actual intercourse--don't kill the baby just because YOU don't want to deal with it. Put it up for adoption, let it live the few short hours it has if it's deformed, whatever, but give it a chance at life), I might think that if women have a family and don't NEED to work, they shouldn't, because children benefit from consistent parental attention and love at home, and most women, if not all, are more naturally inclined to nurture children than most men (again, if not all). Well, I know a lot of people disagree with all of these beliefs. But what most people don't do is take the time to listen to how I say it. Did I say gays are evil and should all go die, or that they're all just pretending to be gay cuz they want attention? No, I didn't. Did I say women should just pop babies out and suck it up even if they don't want to? Nope. Did I say women are inferior to men, and therefore they shouldn't bother working because that's a man's job? No, I did not.
But that's what people HEAR, because they WANT to. That's what I'm ultimately getting at. We ALL should be able to believe whatever we want, and not be thought poorly of for it. I don't think less of anyone for their beliefs, no matter how much I disagree. That's their choice. They can believe what they want, and I can believe what I want. That doesn't mean that I'll stop trying to share my beliefs, and I won't stop trying to make them a reality, but it's a fact of life that if two people have conflicting beliefs, they can't both win. They can both lose, but otherwise, it's one person wins and the other loses. I know, compromise and all that, but what an effective compromise is, is either where both people settle for less than what they are happy with, or else where they CHANGE what they are happy with to work with the other person. So, in that sense, their beliefs are no longer conflicting.
Anyway, that's my semi-rant: Don't judge people based on their beliefs. Agree, disagree, hate the belief itself, but leave the individual out of it unless they ask for it. Not everyone who is different is automatically bad. People say that about race and sexual orientation, well, what about everything else? If I believe in a different god from you, am I a bad person? If I have different societal values, am I like the bubonic plague, come to steal lives away?
Doesn't that just sound silly?