Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Responding To Gender And Racial Stereotypes

The societal conditions created by multitudes of individual, irrational people, perhaps each of them with their own unique fallacies and expressions of emotionalism or assumptions, make it necessary for a sincere seeker of truth to consider some logical facts more thoroughly than they might have in other circumstances.  When it comes to sexism and racism, stereotypes denying or exaggerating traits of men, women, whites, blacks, and other "races" might spur on rational people to specifically reason out why having certain genitalia or a certain skin color is wholly unconnected with a given personality trait.  What if these stereotypes were never embraced, though?  The pushback that drew the attention of some people to how women are visual or how men are not hypersexual would never have been present.

If Eden had never fallen, if no community had ever embraced particular stereotypes of men, women, blacks, whites, and so on, there would have never been a pressing social need to emphasize that those particular ideas of sexism and racism are false--and this actually means that we have the opportunity to bask in the truths of individualism and despise specific manifestations of sexism against both genders and racism against all races all the more.  A rationalist living in the modern world might privately reflect or openly discuss gender and race while realizing that they might actually have a more intense concentration on the capacity of individual people for specific traits.

I might never have focused on the fact that men have emotional capacity that extends far beyond aggressive feelings or the fact that women are capable of competent leadership over either gender in the same ways that I do now.  Of course, anyone could still recognize these logical facts in a world that never saw anything other than sheer individualism as far as the treatment of different demographics goes, even if in a peripheral manner, but spending significant amounts of time reflecting on them specifically and discussing them with other people would never have been a societal necessity for rationalists and Christians.  No one would even need to focus on them in order to understand themselves better as a response to sexism and racism because no one would have assumed that they must act or experience things in a certain way because of their gender or race.

The more prominent appreciation of certain ways that men and women defy gender stereotypes of the ancient and modern worlds does not make even the slightest fallacious, sexist comment worthwhile because of the reflection it led to for some people.  Irrationality and sin are not justified by what good might be produced as a reaction.  However, it is worthwhile for sound thinkers to be aware of how some individualistic traits would have never needed to be explicitly described as disconnected from gender and race in conversations if their cultural background was different.  Thinking about this can even deepen the appreciation of those individualistic traits all the more.

It is worth mentioning the potentially comforting fact that even if someone would not have dwelled on certain truths of egalitarianism does not mean that they would have believed in any idea that contradicts those truths.  If I had not been born into 1990s America, perhaps I might not have had the same thorough focus on some aspects of my existence and personality that disprove sexist Western stereotypes about men, but I could not be thoroughly rationalistic if I believed in something that contradicted the fact that gender and personality or talent are not connected.  I simply would not have needed to look to some truths about what gender does not dictate in the same way that I do now.

No comments:

Post a Comment