Sorry for the awkward title but at 2am I can’t come up with anything clearer than that. The idea for this thread is very simple: what are some prejudices, opinions, thoughts and the like that you developed as a kid (or teen) that even though you know you’re wrong about, from time to time you still catch yourself thinking?
I’ll give you an example of the kind of thing I mean, and it’s probably held by a lot of people here: when I was 13 or 14 and started seriously getting interested in music, I adopted a huge prejudice against anything on the radio or on TV. Basically, if there was a music video for it or they played it at a school dance, it wasn’t cool. That stuff no one’s ever heard but me, that’s the cool shit!
Of course, as I got older I realized how dumb it was to think this and there are enough obvious reasons why it’s dumb that I don’t really need to list them all out here - we all know that’s a stupid way to think. But even now in my early 20s, from time to time I catch myself falling into the old habit: a friend might send me a song and my brain for just a split-second thinks “Yeah, and how long have they been your favorite band? A week? How many album tracks can you name? Did you like anything off of the four albums they had before their first hit?”.
It’s amusing and a little disheartening to think that habits like these can stick with you so long after you know you’re being a moron even considering them. But there’s a good example to start us off. What are some of yours?
People with a certain ‘look’ are trashy. Low intelligence, low values, trashy.
I cringe when that thought occasionally pops into my head, but every now and again it persists. I know it’s factually wrong. I know it’s also wrong in a ‘that ain’t right’ sense. But every now and then it rears up and I hear my brain say something horrible. And it gets selectively reinforced sometimes, which is maybe what keeps it around. I know where it came from - I can hear the judgemental tone in my mothers voice in my head. Ugh, now I need to go brain clean. Efforts must be doubled to get rid of it.
Having sex without being married is wrong. On an intellectual level I think that’s ridiculous but I can never quite shake the feeling anyway. I was raised Catholic.
Russia is a cold flat grey wasteland where the people are miserable and stand in queues in the snow for hours just to buy a couple of carrots. The buildings are grey and utilitarian and even people’s clothing is dull and muted.
I KNOW the above is ridiculous, I’ve known it was ridiculous for the greater part of my life, but I still get a sort of momentary jolt or disconnect when I see a photo of a Russian city with what looks like happy, healthy people walking down the street, or of rivers and mountains and presidents fishing for salmon.
I was born in 1959 - no one ever sat me down and told me any of that (that I can remember anyway) but subtle propaganda is very effective.
Something I’ve run into a lot lately is my long-ingrained belief that hippies are generally dirty, jobless, maybe even homeless, cigarette smokers. I recently moved to a small city in New York that’s got a huge hippie population, and my little unthinking prejudices have been repeatedly proven wrong. That’s just one of the reasons I love it here so much
That a white person shouldn’t look at black people.
You see, when I was in 3rd grade, I was on a field trip for school. I was just looking out the window of the bus minding my own business when the teacher said, “Don’t look at that car. Those people might shoot you!”
Of course, I know that is ridiculous, wrong, absurd, etc. And of course I’m not afraid of being shot.
But now I still sometimes reflexively look away if I happen to peer into a car with a black family in it or whatever.
Jesus, I’ve never told anyone about that before, might as well post it on an internet forum.
I’ll bet it’s a pretty common phenomenon to think of something as a “woman thing” mainly because one’s mother did it and one’s father didn’t, or a “man thing” because vice versa.
Although I’m having trouble thinking of an example from my own experience that isn’t also a more general male/female tendency.
Australia is nothing but the outback, Russia is Red Square surrounded by frozen tundra, Africa is all veldt, etc. Basically, the shortcuts that televison shows and movies use to establish areas that aren’t the USA are firmly wedged into my brain.
Yeah, that one trips me up. My favorite example of me being smacked in the face with my own prejudices comes from a few years back, at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences. It was Summer, and there were a lot of kids there. One family, in particular, looked like White Trash Central Casting. Mom had the full on Tammy Faye Baker clown make-up. Dad and on both had the most ludicrous mullet imaginable. This was understated by comparison. Both were wearing matching sleeveless NASCAR shirts. The rest of the families at he museum were all typical SF Bay Area Yuppies. As soon as I saw White Trash Family, I was instantly all judgey. “I bet that kid’s a real terror,” I thought. “I feel bad for the docents who are going to have their hands full keeping that kid from wrecking the exhibits.”
But after seeing them a couple times around the museum, I realized something startling. White Trash Family had the best behaved kids by miles. The other kids were mostly running riot while their parents sat around reading their phones. WTF stayed with their kids, made sure they kept their hands off the exhibits, and actually talked to them about what they were looking at.
Say what you want about thir fashion sense, but those were some awesome parents.
I read an article about Wolfgang Mozart, when I was too young to put it in proper perspective. I came away disdaining him for being immoral, and, even to this day, I like his music less than I know I really should.
Also, when very young, a preacher told me that “God is always watching.” Now, today, fifty years later, as a rational adult and also as an atheist, I still go about my daily business with the conscious attitude of being watched. It isn’t a sensation of being watched, just the intellectual approach that “someone is watching.” I know it’s wrong, but my mind has never been able to expunge the thought.
This reminded me of one. An ex-fiancee (praise be that he’s “ex”!) opined constantly that “real” manly men didn’t drive little cars. Manly men drove big pickups and jeeps and Crown Vics. He did make exceptions for Corvettes and other expensive sports cars. Otherwise, small cars were just too girly. I admit I did absorb a bit of this, and it’s taken years of conscious effort to overcome the idea and mentally emphasize its association with his general jerkishness.
My husband harvested some sumac and made an infusion of it to drink. I was so unhappy about it, despite intellectually knowing it was okay, that he threw it out and has never made it again.
I know what you mean. Sumac is a salad ingredient in my favourite salad at this one Middle Eastern restaurant. I remember the first time I read the ingredient list I had a bit of a start when I saw “sumac” listed.
Males who smoke cigarettes are homosexuals. When and where I was a teen, only girls smoked cigarettes … at least the tobacco ones. That plus the image of the Marlboro Man gave me the impression that a man smoking was a signal, the same way that wearing an earring in the right ear was. Nowadays, both of those signs are unreliable.
Both my parents have quite a large birthmark in the same spot on the small of their backs. My little sister has it too! Weird, right? And funny, because both sets of grandmothers always thought it was poo when they were babies, and then my parents always thought the same about my sister! All three got their backs thoroughly scrubbed every single day as babies.
But when I was little I just thought that was normal. I don’t know if I couldn’t see the small of my own back, or if I just never thought about that. But I know I just thought everyone had a birthmark there, on some weird, subconscious level.
And now, if I see anyone who happens to have a similar birthmark (which is obviously really rare), there is a bizar part of my brain that identifies that as “the norm”. As if everyone else isn’t really a proper person.
I don’t think I’m explaining it very well. Mainly because it doesn’t make any sense.
That the unsolicited declaration that one is a Christian precedes a challenge or an insult. In the Appalachian region I grew up in, there is a lot of competition between denominations and anyone who blurts out his or her affiliation is preparing a setup explaining why he or she is a better person and more qualified to voice an opinion than the average Baptist/Methodist/Presbyterian/Lutheran/Catholic/Pentecostal or what have you. It’s some sort of attempt to find kinship with a stranger or claim some sort of superiority, neither of which is inherently ugly or different from any other brand of small talk, but I still prepare to flee when I hear it because I expect something judge-y or derogatory about * Others* to follow.
Even though I know many (most?) Christians declare their team in order to reassure me that they mean well and intend to adhere to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, I expect gossip, condemnation of others or the disparagement of a political affiliation to follow that declaration. And I hate my knee jerk reaction to that because I hold no similar prejudice against those of the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or atheist persuasion.
