(August 23, 2017 at 12:55 pm)shadow Wrote:(August 23, 2017 at 10:19 am)emjay Wrote: There's also a flip side to that stereotype-distorting conformity that Khemikal has touched upon; rebelling against a stereotype... eg accentuating the opposites/differences to the stereotype. I'd say that's just as distorting of the actual picture, because by accentuating those opposite/different aspects, it creates new stereotypes that probably would not have been extracted by the passive stereotyping process of the brain on their own. Personally I'd guess that that sort of effect is in play a lot in the gay world, both for gay men and lesbians, because there are uber-masculine and uber-feminine stereotypes in both camps eg 'camp' and 'butch'. So if we assume that the original gay (male) stereotype was camp... after all, that's how it's always portrayed in old TV... limp wrists and mincing etc... uber-feminine... then the now existence of uber-masculine gay stereotypes might have spawned in rebellion against that.
That's really true. It's what bothers me about some affirmative action things like 'Women in STEM' awards. If you put false incentives on something (like women pursuing STEM) you're not going to have a natural proportion of people pursuing it. I think it can be different if one group is clearly disadvantaged, but for something like science it's not like girls have fewer opportunities to study it than guys (at least in Canada, I'm sure its different elsewhere).
I had to look that up to know what you were talking about. I guess these stereotypes affect society at every level, right down from people's aspirations... in terms of what they think they can do/what would be suitable... up to similar judgements based on these stereotypes, subconscious or otherwise, of what an interviewee can do at job interviews... such that fair or unfair... mainly unfair... someone who wants to pursue something that is not in line with gender stereotypes, faces an uphill struggle to get employment in those jobs. Such as 'women in STEM'.
As it applies to what you're saying, on the one hand 'equal opportunities' quotas and suchlike (eg the awards you're talking about) are most definitely not truly representative... of anything... but on the other, although there are equal opportunities for study, there is nonetheless this stereotype effect in play, so in that sense there is a real lack of opportunity. There was an interesting episode of 'Yes Minister' or 'Yes Prime Minister', can't remember which, (a British comedy about government... but one which Maggie Thatcher said was incredibly accurate about how it worked), that dealt with pretty much this exact subject; introducing a quota of women into the civil service against the backdrop of a very resistant old boys network that thought women had no place there. In that episode they fared no better in solving that problem than anyone else; quotas are distorting and condescending and so are the stereotypes that lead to them. In the end, the woman offered a job under that system, basically told them to stick it because she felt patronised. So the solution to the problem all round is still far from obvious... and perhaps the only real way of dealing with it is simply to accept the stereotypes and carry on regardless.
