I’m confused. Toolie (ETA: er, not just Toolie, anyone, really), are you saying that terms such as:
[ul]
[li]biker[/li][li]biker chick[/li][li]deadhead[/li][li]democrat[/li][li]dork[/li][li]emo kid[/li][li]fag[/li][li]fratboy[/li][li]good 'ol boy[/li][li]jock[/li][li]kike[/li][li]nerd[/li][li]neanderthal [/li][li]nigger[/li][li]quimmer[/li][li]redneck[/li][li]republican[/li][li]rock star[/li][li]tree hugger[/li][li]wall streeter[/li][li]yellow belly[/li][/ul]
(list alphabetized to avoid whining)
are all equally harmful to the members of the respective groups? Are all equally harmful to society? Should be purged from our vocabulary? Are meaningless?
Or are you saying that while some stereotype-connoting words are useful in a vocabulary to convey ideas and meaning, it’s silly to equate their overall impact with other, similarly functioning words?
Look, I was dirt-poor in college, especially since I had decided to go the no-loans route. I was working what amounted to two full-time jobs spread among four employers, plus carrying a full class load, and I had zilch for spending money, and at the risk of sounding like a Monty Python skit… “White Castle? Luxury!!”
But why in the world would I resent those that didn’t have this problem? I envied them, sure, but that wasn’t negative; it was simply the fact that I wished I were in their (very expensive) shoes. But what – should they overwork themselves for some ridiculous reason of parity with me, when their families had money and mine didn’t? If the situations had been reversed, I would have LOVED to be able to go to school without wondering if next semester’s tuition would be earned by the time next semester started. What’s wrong with having the luxury of not worrying?
Unless you and I are using “resent” in a different way. I envied their financial ease and wished I had it, but to my way of thinking that’s not resentment. “Resent” implies, to me, a hidden (or overt) wish that they lose their privilege, or suffer some consequence because of it. Never did I think that. I thought, to the contrary… hell, I DREAMED of the day that I would have a job that was well-paying and I could have similar unconcern about finances.
I didn’t resent it, but I did mention it. Specifically in Fraternity meetings when a rich kid might say that we should raise everyone’s fees by $100 to pay for a better level of party. I happily stood up and said bullshit to him, on the grounds that I was scraping pennies from the parking lot to pay for books.
That is the problem - on the outside you might have assumed that everyone in my house had cash. The reality is that we represented the campus in terms of income / aid / etc.
I’ll second this. When I first started with my current employer, my immediate supervisor and his subordinate buddies were all a bunch of 30-somethings who, judging by their behavior had not progressed much past high school/college. It quickly became clear that these guys placed a higher priority on being “cool” than on being “productive”. Conversation was almost always about “last night’s party”, the workplace social dynamic revolved around games that involved punching people and farting, musical preference appeared to be dictated by whatever the Top 40/hip-hop station was pushing as “cool”, etc. Meanwhile, I’m all, “Fuck this, I’m here to make a living, not to prove how “cool” I am. Also, I finished junior high school 26 years ago.” When the opportunity arose, within 30 days of my hire, to transfer to another department, I cheerfully jumped at the chance. It was interesting to note that when that supervisor moved on to a different employer, his “cool” buddies all disappeared/slithered away very soon after. Suddenly, their “coolness” wasn’t enough to carry their slacking asses.
The way I’ve seen the term used, it has a connotation of “group think”. IOW, these are the guys who would jump off a cliff just because “everybody else is doing it”.
If you’re so interested in data, then why do you persist in playing the “Nuh-uh, still not convinced. Try again!” game in GD? It’s profitless and annoying when trolls and crackpots do it, and I know that you fall into neither category. You want data, hie thee to a university library that has a decent collection in the social sciences, and start poking around in the literature. Or at a bare minimum, ask an appropriate question in GQ and see if any useful information is posted.
Regarding your skepticism about “gratuitous assertions” about fraternity members cheating more than other students, spending five minutes on Google Scholar turns up research that seems to indicate that there is in fact evidence to suggest that this assertion is correct. (I’m not going to post links–if you’re curious, you can look it up yourself, which is what you should have been doing in the first place.)
And like emmaliminal and I have both suggested, it would likewise be productive for you to come up with an operationalization of the criteria that would lead you to decide whether or not the stereotype was warranted.
Fraternities are not a feature of our university system here (with, perhaps, the exception of a small number of people in a small number of Oxbridge colleges, as alluded to above) and one wonders how they ever emerged ?
I thank you for your suggestion that I get myself to a library and begin research, but you seem to forget that it’s for the proponent of a proposition to offer evidence to prove his point. It seems to me fairly evident we start from the proposition that all insults are unearned, and the offeror of the insult must have a reason to support the insult. In simpler words: if I insult you, it’s not up to you to prove my insult false; it’s up to me to prove my insult is merited.
So, too, here.
Now, again there’s a request for “what kind of data” would support these. There’s been a variety of accusations thrown about. They all cheat, helpfully offers Diogenes the Cynic. What sort of hard evidence would support this accusation? Rates of honor code violations and punishment doled out to fraternity members against those imposed against the general student body would be one way to support this claim. A study, with controlled variables, that shows admission to cheating higher among fraternity members, would be useful if such exists.
What isn’t useful? “I know that on my campus, everyone knew the Sig Alphs had a file cabinet with all the tests.” Or the documentary film offered up by Villa above – hilarious, but not evidence.
But I’ll also be more than willing to accept other data – this isn’t an exhaustive list. What isn’t valid is recitations of individual stories, notoriously subject to confirmation bias, to “prove” any of these points.
Well, I’ll happily agree that not every liberal is a treasonous coward who hates America and wants to see our troops die overseas.
And not every gay man is a child-molesting pedophile just waiting for the ACLU to force the Boy Scouts to accept him so he can begin butt-fucking prepubescent boys in perfect safety.
Right?
Or… is there some … I don’t know, some discordant note, some connotation there… something off base? You tell me.
I’ve worked in companies like that. I found it wasn’t so much that they were slackers as they substituted “relationship” for “competence”. You’re just as likely to get ahead by hanging out with the boss in a strip club as you are being competant at your job. Sometimes more likely. We were at some boondoggle or another and one of my guys was going on about how great it was. I’m like “there is zero business purpose to fly all of us out here to spend a weekend getting drunk and hooking up with each other.” He’s like “But it’s a great way to network with people from other offices.” to which I reply “tell me the names and home offices of three people you met on this trip.” Of course he had no answer and immediately became defensive.
And that’s the problem with trying to apply fraternity culture to a business environment. It’s too easy to get caught up in your own bullshit about how great you are.
Kind of like a Rickroll, but with nuance and thought.
Maybe not the best example of a thread where you raise question x – which generates a bit of confusion until ideas start to get worked out – while underneath it all is a relation to issue y.