Life, explained...

[j4]

In case people haven't already seen this:

http://www.aldaily.com/life_explained.jpg

(I want this on a t-shirt, captioned "SWITCH HITTER".)

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

So, more often than not, if I were to walk upto someone random I'd lay money they probably thought like that.

I'm confused now about what you're referring to. I suspect if you were to walk up to someone random and ask them "Are women more complicated than men?" then there's a chance that they'll answer "Yes". But if you don't mention it, but instead after talking to them for a while ask them if they think of you as being like that, then chances are they've been talking to you for quite long enough to figure out that you're an interesting person rather than a two-dimensional stereotype.

To be honest, I've observed that most people tend not to include the people they actually know into the stereotypes that they hold. My [paternal] grandfather has a tendency to express fairly racist viewpoints from time to time (he actually said once that "wogs start at Calais") -- but as for his Italian friends, his Spanish friends, his Jewish friends ... well, they're his friends, aren't they? That's different. They're not "foreigners" or anything like that, they're people he knows and likes.

Now I know this is inconsistent, and to be honest if you actually forced him to think about it he'd probably acknowledge it too -- he's certainly not stupid. The problem is, it's easy to let the stereotypes be absorbed into one's background thinking, and then they're often not examined too carefully -- while in the meantime one gets on with living one's life as a reasonable adult, basing one's opinions of people on the people themselves rather than the stereotypes.

It's like... [awooga! awooga! crap analogy alert!] ... I "know" Windows is evil, because I hang around with linux/unix geeks, and this is Received Knowledge among such people. But on a day-to-day basis I get on with using WinNT at work, because that's what's there, and by and large I don't really notice it to be honest.

Does that make any sense?

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