In Stereo


Why do we expect disabled people to be nice?

Why do we expect fat people to be stupid, young people to be rebellious, and old people to be complacent?

How many smart fat people and dumb thin people do you have to meet before you realise there's no correlation?

Or doesn't it even work like that? It's quite possible - even common - for a white person to show no racism at all to actual black people they know...but to be casually racist about black people in the abstract.

Why do we expect "crazy" people to be bigots...but expect people with "mental health problems" to be tolerant - even wise and serene? Sometimes a name change really does make all the difference - between a negative stereotype and a positive one.

All the christians I know are fairly decent people - they just believe an invisible magic man in the sky will change the laws of nature for their convenience if they ask him hard enough. All the atheists I know are fairly decent people - they just have different delusions, sometimes about vitamin pills or the dignity of manual labour.

But all the batshit insane, hate spewing, deeply ignorant and fuckwitted people I meet on the internet...call themselves christians. And the ones who take them down with evidence and logic call themselves atheists.

Now, two thoughts:

(1) It's quite possible to hold an image of a group of people in your head, know it's not accurate, not treat the people as though the image were true, but still have the image.

(2) Some stereotypes are personal and idiosyncratic, stemming from individual experience.

For instance, there's an absurdly (wonderfully) large number of curry houses in this town, and the staff are almost all Bangladeshi - often from the same family.

There's a particular way they tend to behave to customers - smiling and welcoming, but somehow timid, almost camp. Result: that's how part of me expects everyone from Bangladesh to behave, though it's not a shock when they don't.

Of course, there are always people who like to tell you they're much too advanced to have national stereotype in their heads, and anyone who does must be a racist, and one step away from being a fascist sympathiser.

Leaving aside the illogic of that reasoning...I don't think I believe them. If they've lived for a year in Bangladesh and met lots of different kinds of people there, maybe they don't have a cartoon in their heads for that country. But what about Pakistan? Or Afghanistan? Or Iran?

Finally, sometimes I like the stereotypes people have of me. And sometimes I play up to them.

I'm European, so I'm sophisticated (but only if you're American). I'm British, so I've got the accent of a thousand supervillans from a lot of really corny films. I'm English, so I'm eccentric. And gay.

Though if I were disabled it seems I couldn't be gay anymore - but I might be nice.

8 comments:

  1. Yay! etc...

    "Why do we expect disabled people to be nice?"

    Because it'd make a nice change.

    "Why do we expect fat people to be stupid?"

    Because they are.

    Oh. It's not a quiz, is it? Silly me.

    You know christians? Ooooh! I've met loads of people who 'call' themselves 'christians', but the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

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  2. Why do we expect "crazy" people to be bigots...but expect people with "mental health problems" to be tolerant - even wise and serene?

    If you expect people with MH problems to be tolerant, wise and serene, then, i can tell you from personal experience, you are in a vanishingly small minority. Most people expect us to be smelly, stupid, manipulative, and dangerous.

    Especially after they've met me... ;o)

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  3. Well you do sound like a supervillan...

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  4. Don't forget to tell us about wearing a monocle, drinking tea and eating crumpets, and wearing top hat, discussing cricket matches and the Queen, and looking at your pocket watch to tell the time!

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  5. Why do we expect disabled people to be nice?

    For the sake of humanity, let’s hope I’m never in a wheelchair as I will be angry and run over innocent people’s feet as I charge down the sidewalk.

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  6. @T&P: I've met loads of people who 'call' themselves 'christians'

    Me too. Some of them called themselves "straight" too.


    @Aethelread: If you expect people with MH problems to be tolerant, wise and serene, then, i can tell you from personal experience, you are in a vanishingly small minority. Most people expect us to be smelly, stupid, manipulative, and dangerous.

    Well, there's more than one stereotype of the "person with mental health problems". There's the longtime homeless alcoholic, missing most of his teeth and half his memories, muttering incomprehensibly about people who hurt him 30 years ago, and shouting at random passers by - usually in a glaswegian accent.

    But there's also the waiflike young earth-mother-goddess in the diaphanous white dress - somewhere between Hamlet's Ophelia and Kathy from Wuthering Heights.

    I'm probably thinking of the "recovering" stereotype - full of maxims about "one day at a time" and "there's good days and bad days but I'm getting there".

    I'm sure you've heard the term "blessed lunatic" or "the blessed ones". Refers to the idea that the insane are those who saw god before they were born - so it mangled their minds, but gave them wisdom and insight beyond ordinary people, so their speech is like diamonds scattered among broken glass. The remarkable mixed with the shattered.



    @Eroswings: Don't forget to tell us about wearing a monocle, drinking tea and eating crumpets, and wearing top hat, discussing cricket matches and the Queen, and looking at your pocket watch to tell the time!

    Absolutely old bean. Wot ho!

    You must never ever go up to the forth floor. I used to have a wife you know, but unfortunately she dissappeared and whatever strange noises you hear at night, it's definitely not her up on the forth floor, no definitely not.

    I used to have a butler too, but he found employment in Gotham, with the Wayne family.



    @David: Well you do sound like a supervillan...

    Humph. Just because I'm writing this from my secret base, under a volcano on a remote island. Soon the whole world will regret calling me a supervillain...Bwahaha!




    @MJ: let’s hope I’m never in a wheelchair

    You'll just get the houseboys to carry you around on one of those chairs the pope used to use.

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  7. all the batshit insane, hate spewing, deeply ignorant and fuckwitted people I meet on the internet...call themselves christians. And the ones who take them down with evidence and logic call themselves atheists.

    Anonymity seems to bring out a person’s true nature.

    I find myself behaving different around people based on their expectations of me. For instance, my boyfriend thinks I’m a mix of sex kitten/gourmet chef so I spend a lot of time satisfying his appetites. When I worked for the church I was perceived as a model of Christian womanhood. Various people would describe me as “quiet”, “organised” and “out of her tiny little mind”. I am all of these and yet none of these.

    I think we quickly label those we meet so we don’t have to really get to know what they are really like and risk shattering our stereotypes.

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  8. @Anoynmous Female: Anonymity seems to bring out a person’s true nature.

    Well, you and I are both anonymous online.

    I don't have the strength or patience to be what people want of me, plus it's usually unclear just what they want anyway. I've been told this make me both lazy and confrontational - at the same time.

    I think we quickly label those we meet so we don’t have to really get to know what they are really like and risk shattering our stereotypes.

    Indeed. Heaven forfend that we discover we were wrong about someone.

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