Stereotypes Are Superfluous Generalizations - Essay Example

The rhetoric surrounding senior citizens in terms of stereotypes include such things as they are ‘forgetful’, ‘childish’, ‘bad tempered’, ‘frigid’ (women), ‘dirty old men’, ‘cantankerous’, and ‘stubborn’.  Stereotypes assigned to tattooed people usually involve bad images such as ‘promiscuity’, ‘aggressiveness’, ‘drug addicts’, and ‘toughies’ or ‘louts’, and they are very much associated with ‘bikies’ (a bad element who ride motorbikes). Feminists inspire numerous stereotypes that continually change as they go in and out of fashion. The derogatory stereotypes generally relate to women who are ‘ball breakers and ‘lesbians’ because they strive for equality with men. Many women do not identify themselves as feminists because of fear of reprisal created by stereotypical connotations attributed to them (Weibust & Miller, 2007). Politicians are considered ‘liars’ and ‘benders of truth’, ‘manipulative’, ‘liners of their own pockets’, and ‘full of their conceit’. They are probably the most highly stereotyped group of all and the only group that invents stereotypes against each other using negative rhetoric against their opponents. These stereotypes, according to Graham, Nosek & Haidt (2009, p. 3), ‘go far beyond cliché jokes … and often include the claim that the other side is immoral or downright evil’.   Such stereotyping is based on suggestions and conditions that are not validated; in other words, they are founded on arguments based on fallacies of reasoning in that they assume that all senior citizens or all feminists for example, can be attributed with all the assumed qualities as suggested within the stereotype; whereas in reality what may be true for one member of the group may not be true of others. This false reasoning is usually based on experiences by individuals about another individual within a group, this experience then mushrooms via word of mouth and the media. Although there may be some founding truth to the stereotype it can usually only be attributed to individuals not a group as a whole.   As already stated, most stereotypes are fueled by the media which tends to focus on derogatory and negative stereotypes, but there are also positive and even neutral stereotypes attributable to the four groups mentioned above. Not everybody feels the same way about each group and thus stereotypes although probably universal are not necessarily accepted by every individual. Senior citizens, for example, are also stereotyped as ‘wise’ and ‘good teachers’, feminists as ‘ground breakers’ and ‘movers and shakers’, tattooed people as ‘individuals’, and ‘radicals’, and politicians as ‘reformers’ and ‘trail blazers’.    The information provided in chapters 4-6 has given me a new insight into how people perceive others and how most people accept what is written or said by others without question, or understanding how their arguments can be manipulated. I am guilty of such ignorance and admit that I am easily swayed by the media, but now having read these chapters I realize how fallacies of reason can flaw reality and that use of rhetoric can manipulate my emotions and thus persuade me to accept the argument being presented. I accept my biases and prejudices that have been based on stereotypical overgeneralizations of particular groups of people. With this new understanding, I will endeavor to be more critically aware of what I read and watch in the media and hopefully, I will be less gullible, and with my new realization that negative stereotypes and the rhetoric that goes with them are based on false assumptions and fallacies I will be less biased. Read More