Why is that on the internet, people assume you're a male from America, but if you're a vegan on the internet, people assume you're female?
Why is that on the internet, people assume you're a male from America, but if you're a vegan on the internet, people assume you're female?
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The politically correct bien-pensants always fail to recognize that stereotyping is a form of inductive reasoning. If you see something repeatedly, but not necessarily without fail, you form an opinion, which is layered with a degree of truth. A subset of the human race, based on ethnicity, inclination, or geography, will spring to mind after reading each of the following words: financier, migrant worker, male flight attendant, NASCAR driver, sprinter.
I'm sure most of us immediately conjured similar images. Yes, it is unfair to impose a group characteristic onto an individual, but we did so nonetheless. To belabor the obvious, each of us is an individual, not a group. When the stereotype is proven fallacious for an individual, move on.
We're not confused about why we do it. We're aware that doing it has negative outcomes.
No amount of prolix explanation excuses even the act of stereotyping.
It may be impossible to avoid stereotyping entirely which is why people practice not doing it. You call this "politically correct". I call it "behaving decently".
No amount of prolix explanation excuses even the act of stereotyping.
It depends on why and how you use stereotypes.
Prejudice only properly refers to judgments formed without consideration of the available information.
Prejudging is legitimate when we do not have all the relevant facts of an object or subject, having to resort to inductive reasoning in order to try to induce and predict its individual characteristics.
It's all about trying to make new information about someone or something, so we can economize information.