This is why stereotypes are so mystic…
Isn’t it funny when we talk about stereotypes? Seriously… Have you ever thought that the way we are, does not necessarily have to be connected to biological, cultural, or political things?
As usual, I have a long short story about how I came up thinking about what I am writing. This time, I was celebrating the birthday of one of my Ukrainian friends, and then this guy shows up in front of everybody and says something like, “ you are a musician right? Why don’t you play something that everybody will like?” I did not care much about the situation, this has happened before and I have had no problem with it at all. Nevertheless, this time, the guy says “I do not like this track and I am sure a lot of people do not either.”
After all, I am a music producer, I make music… That does not mean everybody will like what I do or what I listen to. I deeply believe that the concept behind this situation is what makes stereotypes so funny. Society tends to believe that there are laws set in stone behind certain parameters. In Sapiens by Yuhul Noah, the author talks about an imagined order that humans created in order to function as big societies as we do nowadays. He also did the biological and social comparison of women over time and this is the chart that the book shows:
This is not some kind of sexist article about women and their rights… But the chart clearly shows how the cultural tag of a woman has or does not have some behaviors or traits that change over time. This does not only happens to women but to everything. There are no biological rules that tell us how to be. We as a society defined what everything is through languages and myths. For example, that I am a musician, does not mean I will play music everyone will like. It is like saying that every musician knows what music everybody likes. If we can state that then we might as well state that every chef knows how to cook a meal that everybody likes, and I personally do not think so.
So what is it that makes stereotypes funny? Well… Could be that they are funny because they are so volatile, that you cannot identify whether you are stereotyping, or being stereotyped by political, cultural, or even personal perspectives. Going general, we could just say that unconscious bias gets in the way but we also have to admit that unconscious bias needs a background and information to be generated.
In conclusion, there is nothing objectively set in stone, which means that stereotypes are just every individual's point of view of certain conditions, that can be shared by a wide variety of other individuals. In other words, stereotypes are intersubjective opinions of people's experiences.
