Inspired by this thread, I’m getting really tired of gender generalizations and stereotypes. They’re not particularly funny, they’re not particularly true, and they’re not helping the cause of men and women just treating each other like human beings. I understand that the thread referenced was supposed to be just a bit of fun, but I don’t think it’s funny. Hey, if stereotyping women is funny, how about blacks? Let’s do blacks next! Or maybe Jews? How about gays? And for the record, I would be as cheesed-off if the thread had been stereotyping men. Also not funny.
I’m tired of seeing it in the media, too - every other commercial has some twisted stereotype of women or men or both. Women are not all-powerful, all-knowing bitches who always get their way and cut a wide swath whenever they’re feeling hormoney. Men are not idiot men-children who can’t do anything right without a woman telling him how to do it.
Am I over-reacting to a harmless thread? Maybe, but I see it as a symptom of a trend that we, in my opinion, would do well to squelch.
There’s a commercial on the radio here that they tote out every few months. It involves a woman calling an automotive repair place - it might be Midas or one of hteir competitors. She’s talking to a guy about getting some work done on her brakes, and they really play up the “we’re so friendly that even a WOMAN can call us!”
The kicker is when she says in this vapid-beyond-idiocy voice “My husband says my car needs expensive metal break pads! Can you do that?”
They lost me with that line. The whole “let’s show a woman being dumb about her own fookin’ car” thing just drives me nuts.
Generalizations need not have a kernel of truth. The stereotypical female driver is a hazard, but women pay less than men on car insurance because they have proven to be safer drivers than men.
Similarly, women don’t all go goopy over red-and-pink, lacey, Valentine’s Day-romance, long-stemmed roses, diamonds (blood stones!), etc., and I suspect not all men collect power tools and Radio Shack gadgets.
bzzzt. that’s a logical fallacy. Women pay less in general because the mistakes they make in general cost less to repair. The ‘female drive is a hazard’ generalization was not used to determine insurance rates.
Poor female drivers, in my experience, are distracted. Poor male drivers are actively aggressive.
Since it’s the pit, here’s a specific: I was engaged to a woman who’s mom had a ranch in Texas. They used the phrase nigger-rigging as a description of the repairs performed by their help.
Looking at the results, it’s an accurate term. Now, if you want to call it a result of race or education, or resources, go ahead. But it was an awful term that happened to be rather descriptive.
That trip was a real eyeopener. The small town still had buildings with ‘Colored’ entrances…they were bricked over, but the painted sign was still legible.
OK. My response is in really poor taste but furthers the point on generalizations. I have a wife, two kids, a bun in the oven and I do not collect power tools or get turned on by tractor pulls. I like to read. I can fix some things but I do not find it intuitive. My wife does that stuff.
I understood the OP in the linked thread to be a slight at guys who believe that women are breasts on legs. The thread then moved to stereotyping women after post 6. I thought it would have sooner but shrug
I use nigger rigging, also red c*nt hair as a term of measurement and mighty white of you, though when I am being obviously sarcastic i will call nigger rigging ‘afro engineering’ and instead of saying mighty white of you, i will say ‘rather caucasion of you’ but I really havent come up with a good sarcastic measurement term.
I dont use them in mixed company [female/male, not caucasion/negroid mixed company. Most women dont like or pretend to be botehred by coarse talking. Having spent my formative years working in indstries dominated by men, I guess my ‘settings’ are more male than female in a lot of ways.] They are words, used in the past and exist. Language changes in usage [and sometimes in a very short time] and if I am having a ‘gay old time’ it doesnt mean I am having a lesbian encounter, I am out having fun [though I will confess to a little healthy exploration in my youth.]
Are you saying the repairs were shoddy and the repairs were done by “niggers” and therefore the stereotype is that “niggers” do shoddy work and therefore there is truth in the stereotype?
I don’t want to hijack the op too much, but…I’m of the opinion if you can’t use the phrase “nigger-rigging” or “red cunt-hair” in front of black people or females, doesn’t that mean it shouldn’t be said?
I would not call anyone a nigger even tho I grew up in that environment simply because I would not call my black coworkers a nigger to their face (or behind their back). I would think they would be highly offended and lower their opinion of me if they knew I was one way to their face and another way behind their back.
I can’t say that I never did, I just decided it wasn’t the thing to do.
But hey WTF… carry on.
Within the bounds of my example…yes. Your statement is If A and B, then C…in fact its more like If Some A and Some B, then SOME C. Generalizations are NEVER 100% accurate. :rolleyes:
If, on the other hand, you can’t seperate your opinion of me and the example you asked for, I can’t help ya.
Had the shoddy work been performed by another racial (or sexual, or gender) group, and been performed repeatedly enough to generate the term, it would be a different kind of ‘rigging’.
An example was asked for, and example was given. I’ll not defend the term as it’s not how I was brought up. But for a certain segment of the population it accurately describes a situation. (That segment being the racists that coined the term, and the group they were describing.)
Do you feel Demographics are equally innacurate and wrong? It could be demonstrated that the difference between a generalization and a demographic would be ONLY one of officially gathering statistics.
A salesman, with decades of experience in selling cars, can make generalizations based on his or her experience. Does it make them any less valid?
I’ll never figure out why some people (men, women, black, white, et al.) have this inexplicable need to seek out that which they deem insulting and feign regret upon discovering it. Refusing to ‘mouse-over preview’ and skip by threads that, at first hunch, appear insulting to you can either be defined as morbid curiosity or some kind of electronic martyrdom where the intent is to stamp out ignorance where it probably never existed in the first place.