Complexity, stereotypes, and variation (spun off from "relationship dynamics" thread)

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Feo Takahari, Jan 24, 2016.

  1. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    You've done this twice now - Telling me I'm wrong but not saying why or how, just saying 'Well it's not worth even arguing with you!'. That is a cop out. You have a keyboard. Tell me why I'm wrong.
     
  2. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I think they (often) are, yeah.

    (Edited to add the "often".)
     
  3. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    No, I'm not going to argue with a strawman - that's pointless. And I'm not going to argue with someone whose posts are full of insulting dogwhistle jargon.

    You're an expert on liberals, right? You know exactly what we think and why we think it, and you've already decided we're self-righteous, etc. So what could I possibly say that you haven't already heard and dismissed?

    For future reference, if you want someone to actually engage with you and discuss ideas, it's generally a good idea to not start with a string of insults. You know?
     
  4. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    Have the courage of your convictions.

    You're a writer for gods sake; how can you be so easily put off from expressing your view point?

    Oh and, just to make this nice and clear - I know a lot about liberalism because I am a liberal. I am not arguing against liberalism. The liberal point of view is 'more speech'. Liberals trust that everyone is free to write the story they want to see with the characters they want to see. Liberals would stand up and defend even poorly written dross replete with racist stereotypes because we trust the free market of ideas to prove that depiction wrong. The liberal point of view fundamentally rejects censorship in all but the most extreme circumstances.

    I am arguing against the progressive view point. Progressives are not liberals. They are collectivists and authoritarians who see the world exclusively through the marxist lens of oppression and victimhood. These are people who think state power should be used to force people to make different life choices until everyone makes the same choice and everyone is thus equal. That is what I oppose, and I'll be happy to tell you why that's so.
     
  5. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    You're pretty new to this board - trust me when I tell you that I don't have any problem expressing my viewpoint.

    I do have a problem wasting my time.

    You may want to look up the difference between "liberal" and "libertarian" at some point, though.
     
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  6. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    If you're going to make up your own definitions of words, shouldn't you make up the words, too?
     
  7. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    The truth is that there are some black men who are violent. It doesn't need to be true of the group - obviously it's not - but the 'warping' part is taking that fact about a specific instance and generalising to the group. Just like not all bankers are arseholes, and not all women are bad at maths.
     
  8. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    I think there's more of a feedback loop here than you're giving credit for. I'd agree that racism is the underlying problem, but when racist stereotypes are being propagated that shapes peoples' worldview. Some racists did become racists because they were told that black men were violent, and black people were more likely to be criminals, and Syrian refugees rape women by the thousand.

    I mean, yes, if you got rid of racism you'd get rid of the racist stereotypes. But I think sometimes symptoms are worth treating too.
     
  9. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    Well, that's kinda like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? Racism and stereotype kind of "birth" each other, I think.

    As for positive stereotypes - they are less harmful to the person being stereotyped, maybe. The stereotype that I might be good at Maths, obviously practice kung-fu and probably own a Chinese restaurant business hasn't hurt me, per se. But stereotypes nonetheless reduce a person as well as an entire culture group, which I can't see as a good thing.

    "Positive" stereotypes may also backfire - the stereotype that women are natural nurturers have ended up with women also labelled as irrational and emotional, women as gentle but that also makes them weak. The positive stereotype that girls are better at languages might be to the detriment of boys developing equal skills in languages. After all, many more women used to be in computing until personal computers were advertised as a "boys" thing - so our constant expectation and praise of girls to do better than boys could result similarly for boys. It's already known that girls who are told at the beginning of school that they're as good as or better than boys at maths in the end actually do come out better, whereas girls told they are not usually come out behind. The positive stereotype that mothers are more important to their children and naturally love them more has led to a higher likelihood that women are given custody of their children, even when they are unfit, leaving the fathers desolate.

    Stereotypes mean you're not judged as an individual with your particular skillset and personality, but that something might be more likely to be given to you, taken from you, or done to you because of these stereotypes.

    Sometimes the stereotype could benefit you (in the case of mothers getting custody of their children), but it may not necessarily be fair or to the good of all parties concerned, and likely that another group somewhere is affected negatively for no reason at all for it. More usually though, stereotypes are negative rather than positive.

    How prone we are to stereotypes may be also just part of our personalities. I do have a tendency of saying "The Brits this" or "The Czechs that" or "X is more English than me" etc. Once my English friend asked me, "What makes you say someone is more English than another? Is it actually the case or is it just what you perceive to be Englishness?" It's an insightful question - and I don't know the answer yet. Likely, or definitely, a mixture of reality and my own perceptions - but to what extent does each govern my views, now that would be interesting to find out. I think this might reflect in my own writing - despite being very supportive of gender equality, my women always come out extremely gendered :ohno: I blame a lifetime of watching anime.

    I find my characters are often very similar, because I am always writing what I would find attractive, what I would relate to, how I would react. It's how I portray emotions and I've been told my portrayal of emotions is very sincere and realistic - possibly because I draw from my own well here - but this leads me to always write characters who would agree with me.

    My sister is the kind of person who hates stereotypes of any form - she doesn't like any kind of generalisations. For every person I could find that justifies my stereotype, she would find another that defies it. She isn't a writer - more of a musician - but I think if she was a writer, her characters would likely be far more diverse than my own. She walks through this world with much less judgement on those around her than I do - she simply observes. I lack that depth of observation.
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2016
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  10. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Yeah, that's where imagination kicks in.

    You imagine yourself in the shoes of somebody confronted with difficult attitudes or realities from your own, and imagine what it would feel like to live their kind of life. Then create your character as an individual human being, not as a member of a group.

    Solid, detailed research coupled with an ability to see things as others would see them is what helps a writer transcend stereotypes, I reckon. You still deal with issues that confront the entire group, but it will be with an individual reaction, not an assumed group reaction.
     
  11. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    But I don't think that's enough of a truth to be significant in forming a stereotype, is it? I mean, some black men are violent. Many more black men are not violent. But obviously one of those "truths" gave birth to a stereotype while the other one didn't, even though it's dealing with larger numbers of the group in question. So I'm not sure about the "there's a grain of truth to stereotypes" idea unless we also say that there's a grain of truth to every other inaccurate idea - like, if someone says "The Earth is flat" we'd have to say, "well, sure, there's a grain of truth to that - there are places where the world is flat..."

    It feels like too much of a stretch to be in any way useful when trying to understand stereotypes (or geodetics!)
     
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  12. Hubardo

    Hubardo Contributor Contributor

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    I saw the film Tangerine a couple nights ago. It was a live screening and the writer/director was there. He's a white guy. The film is about two African American transgender sex workers in Los Angeles. When I saw he was white, and male, and cisgendered, I found some of the film troubling. I know that trans women of color are often stereotyped as sex workers, and are harassed by police at a far higher rate than white trans women. So this was in the back of my head.

    Then after the film, when he talked about his process in writing and directing the film, I got some perspective. He spent several months having conversations with actual people in that part of town. He and his co-writer jotted down tons of notes from personal stories at the local LGBT center in West Hollywood. The women playing the characters in the film, were two women actually from there area, acting out stories they told him about. I was humbled to realize that I was offended by what I considered to be stereotypes, but what were also lived experiences of actual people.

    That all said, this is a great resource. You can get lost in all the articles and FAQs and stuff.
     
  13. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    On its own, maybe not, but there's a whole cultural context as well. I mean, some white men are violent too. I don't have stats to hand but it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume it's a broadly similar proportion in both cases. But there's rather less of a 'white men are violent' stereotype, because there's no cultural bias against white people here. If the media are more likely to report instances of black men being violent, people see black men being violent a lot more often, and start to make the black men-violence connection.

    As to whether it's useful in understanding the stereotype itself - eh, not sure. I think it's useful in understanding how they spread and stick, though - I mean, @ChickenFreak's right that stereotypes can be created as a kind of propaganda, but the propaganda techniques are the same whether the stereotype you're trying to spread is 'black men are violent' or 'black men can fly'. No-one's ever going to see a black man fly, because none of them can. Finding instances of black men being violent is rather easier, so that starts to confirm the idea.

    (Also, I think, why the 'flat Earth' idea never really stuck. It's obvious the Earth is round to anyone who goes somewhere high. No-one ever thought that until we got to the Victorians and people started being rich enough to be idiots, and even then it was a laughed-at fringe theory)
     
  14. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    If you consider the free exchange of ideas in a quest for ultimate truth to be a waste of time then you cannot be a liberal. Hell; telling me I'm wrong just because you said so means you cannot be a liberal. That is an authoritarian view point.

    If you are so strong and firm and forthright in your beliefs, don't you owe it to yourself to articulate them just one time? Not even to counter-point mine and to offer an alternative idea to other people who be persuaded by one single unopposed view point?

    And actually you might want to look up the difference between 'liberal' and 'libertarian'. Libertarianism grew out of the J. S. Mill school of classical liberalism and in the modern world these are two movements that stand for the same thing. Individual people stand for different ideals of liberty but the underlying ideas of being founded on personal, individual freedoms is exactly the same and the classically liberal idea is always more speech, always against censorship and always defending to the death your right to say it.
     
  15. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I surely do appreciate you looking out for me like this, and giving me an opportunity to give myself what I'm owed. You're a prince.

    "Classical liberalism" is not the same thing as being a liberal in the modern sense. So if you're saying you follow the ideals of classical liberalism, and those ideals are synonymous with libertarianism... you're not a liberal in the modern sense. As @ChickenFreak suggested, if you want to make up definitions of words, you should probably either make up new words or at least make it clear you're not using them in the way other members of the modern world use them.

    All that said... do you even know what you're asking me, anymore? You want me to tell you... what, exactly? My views on stereotypes? I think I've expressed them pretty clearly in two different threads in the last couple days. What is it that you want to know? Why I think you're wrong, as an individual? No, I won't bother. I like discussing ideas, not individuals.
     
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  16. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I agree, the stereotype is a product of the cultural attitudes rather than the characteristics of the stereotyped group.

    ... I'm not sure if we're disagreeing about stuff, or just sort of building on each other's ideas...?
     
  17. Feo Takahari

    Feo Takahari Senior Member

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    @Hubardo: On another site, I saw someone post about reading a noir story where the main character was a lesbian. When they thought the author was a lesbian, they found it empowering, but when they realized the author was a man, it seemed exploitative to them. Most responses to the OP said they were overreacting, and I suspected that as well. The story is either exploitative or it's not, and if they found it so convincing that they thought a lesbian wrote it, it's probably fine. (On the flipside, it's entirely possible that a sufficiently cynical and cash-hungry lesbian could write a story that exploits lesbian stereotypes for a straight male audience.)

    @LostThePlot: I skimmed back through the thread, and I didn't see any appeals to force by anyone other than you. Some folks might be opinionated, maybe even to the degree of "do this or else you're a bad writer and I will be snide and obnoxious to you," but I don't think you're going to find a lot of jackbooted thugs on a creative writing site.
     
  18. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    Aha but, the pen is mightier than the sword. :D
     
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  19. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    Agreeing on general principles, I think. Maybe disagreeing on the amount of truth you'll find at the bottom of a stereotype.
     
  20. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    <takes a deep breath and dives into this thread>

    OK. I'm not black, a woman, nor am I LBGT+, so I'm not gonna speak like I know what it's like to suffer under stereotypes lobbed at those groups. All I can do is listen when they speak. I can, however, speak as a half-blind, hearing-impaired man. IE, a disabled person.

    Now, what do we know are stereotypes for the broader disabled communities?

    • The mean, angry, bitter disabled person who takes his/her anger out on the abled because the abled can do things the disabled person can't.

    • The helpless disabled person whose sole existance is to be the ‘petting dog’ for the abled character. Want to show readers that your rich, upper-class character is a good person? Have him/her tend to a disabled character ranging anywhere from giving them money to letting them stay at your character's home.

    • The helpless disabled person whose sole existance is to serve as an inspiration. The blind-deaf child learning to speak for the first time. A crippled kid races his fellow two-legged racers and wins, etc. The deformed girl wins the beauty pageant and the head cheerleader and her group eat lunch with her while the football players hang out nearby, commenting on how much guts it took her to step into the center stage. The entire point is the disability, and how if he/she could overcome it, so can we abled people.

    • The disabled person whose sole existance is to teach us horrible abled people how to be tolerant to each other. A classic example: a person of color befriends a blind person because that person can't see them (literally) as anything other than a human being. (See The Cay where Timothy, the blind boy, learns to not be racist to his black mentor figure. There's even a moment where he touches the man's back and observes that ‘he felt neither white nor black...’) Another example is the horribly deformed person and his/her blind companion. The idea is that we abled, not-deformed people are so shallow and horrid that we need a blind person to teach us to see the human being behind the deformities.

    • The butt of a joke. It's not they themselves are joking about their own disability, but the rest of the cast/storyline is joking about it at their expense.

    Now, it is indeed true that you'll find individuals that embodies t/he stereotypes. An interracial friendship where the white friend is blind, and it started way back in a chance encounter during the Jim Crow era, and they were the talk of the town. Or a rich politician grows a heart and adopts a child who has autism and sponsers autism awareness groups. Or the bitter disabled guy who hates how his friends can do things he can't. Or someone who was recently crippled learns to overcome it and retain a sense of normal life. Yes, within the larger disabled group (encompassing all disabilities), you'll find these people. But they're not all like that.

    The reason stereotypes exist is because they're born on a half-truth. You'll find certain people within a particular group doing certain things. The key is that not every single last one of them fit into the stereotype.

    Focus on the individual, learn their own personal story.

    I could say more, but I'm getting tired now.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2016
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  21. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    @LostThePlot Okay, to be clear this idea that liberals or progressives just want to censor everything is just silly. First of all, you're generalizing a lot of people, mate. Second of all, you really think a political view called "liberal" is going to be authoritarian? You know who's authoritarian? Trump. Trump has authoritarian leanings. And he's the opposite of PC, he's a media disaster in any intelligent, decent audience. Now, I also would like to request you don't make arguments that look juvenile. Continuing to play the "authoritarian" card without respect for the border between law and order and actual oppression is ignorant. Technically, anytime we stop anyone from doing anything, no matter how awful or stupid, we are oppressing some degree of freedom. Nothing authoritarian about something unless it's going too far. Not every choice needs to be your right. As a socialist, I believe that freedom of opportunity is more important than freedom of choice. It's more important that the state provides things like healthcare and education than worrying about letting anyone say what they want. Some things, like aggressive incitement, shouldn't be said. now, stereotypes are different from vilification but you see my point.
     
  22. Ben414

    Ben414 Contributor Contributor

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    I'd add to what you said by also mentioning that they wouldn't be considered the same thing even in an academic sense. Classical liberalism, 2nd stage liberalism, and neo-liberalism all have distinct attributes. In a non-academic sense, what people refer to as "liberal" would include 2nd stage liberalism and, ironically, some attributes of classical republicanism.
     
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  23. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    Just to add to the part of “disabled person teaches us lousy abled people to be tolerant” in my post: it's also equally offensive to the person of minority and the deformed as well as they, too, comprise of the second half of this stereotype: The person that everyone hates because of whatever. Their entire point is to say, “I'm different because I'm something you consider very ugly, something that justifies my abuse, yet here is this blind person who sees me as a human being and treats me as anyone would want to be treated.”

    The biggest, and most offensive, usage of this stereotype is that the blind character helps us to be tolerant while the person of minority gives the blind character (usually a child) life lessons and morals before dying at the end.
     
  24. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Probably any time a character from a minority group is used as a prop to support the white male hero's journey, it's going to be a similar problem. "Magical Negro" "Girlfriend in an Icebox", etc. - all these characters deserve their own stories, not just to be supporting characters in someone else's story.
     
  25. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    I like to have all my major characters possess their own character arc, something to add to the overall story. Even if the camera-POV wasn't fixed on them, they're more than just token ‘Hey, I'm here because my author wanted diversity and stuff.’

    I actually have what I think is a neat inversion of the “Magical Negro” in one of my stories: one of my elderly white characters is the one who dishes out the life lessons and morals to my characters, black and white, and he does it in a snarky, blunt way. They're all...keenly aware of the absurdity of the world around them. :D Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I think it's also a satire of our world as well as a generic mystery-adventure story. Huh.

    ...Also...come to think of it...I have a white supporting character in my fantasy that dispenses the life lessons and morals to my colored protagonist. <snaps fingers> Coining a new phrase here: “Magical White Elder”. :D :p
     
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