No - the perspectives I offered/you quoted are not rooted in subjective experience.
Biologically, women
have a higher concentration of fat cells than do men, on average between 6-11% more. To my other point,
men are innately physically stronger than women. This is owed to increased production of testosterone.
It's just science, blue.
Both points are true. (Although I think then she's suggesting that, if true scientifically, they're no longer stereotypes.) I think there is confusion, though, because I've seen people argue vehemently that such statements ARE stereotypes... including this guy:
ConstantlyImagining said:
Stereotypes typically involve taking what one sees as a general pattern in a demographic group- whether observed first hand or otherwise- and erroneously apply it to every member of said demographic group. All stereotypes are wrong- both logically and,in some cases, ethically. For example to say that men are stronger than women is a stereotype and thus wrong.
However, if one were to say that men are generally stronger than women, then that may be considered a proper generalisation and thus accurate and further more ethical. The nuances between a stereotype and a generalisation, produced by adding words or phrases that denote the pattern as general- in the case of a generalisation-, alters implications and connotations of the statement almost entirely as it takes into consideration the possibility of instances or variables that lie beyond what is the norm.
So in these instances the difference between a stereotype and a generalization is the inclusion of qualifying phrases that signal a generalization, rather than just offering what can be assumed to be a generalized truth?
If the statement is "all stereotypes have some truth", then I don't think this absolute is likely. The common can be controlled and do vary. Perhaps stereotypes can only go from 0% to 80% reliable.
Stereotypes are born of the inability of normal people to think probabilistically (most is not all). They're never wholly true, but they're generally mostly true, and thus useful regardless.
if a person takes stereotypes as facts then it indicates ignorance. Stereotypes are based on generalizations and as such have only probability value.
Yes, basically that's it -- they're not statements of fact that are either/or true, they're statements of seeming probability (at best). I've learned the hard way that many people in this world do not assign probability to statements in order to "weigh" their veracity, instead they turn them into erroneous binary statements because keeping probability sliders in mind is just too complex. To me, I just assume in my head (because I already attach a probability slider) that the statement "men are physically stronger than women" is just a general truth, because I know exceptions to the rule (i.e., the ends of the bell curves overlap)... but it's obvious that the
center of the bell curves for both genders reflect this statement to be generally accurate.
And stereotypes do have some practical value, as Morgan notes here:
"That snake bit me"
Ergo "All snakes bite"
Ergo "Must kill every snake I see"
outlived people who think like this:
"That snake bit me"
"I wonder if all snakes bite?"
"Let me just find another snake and check that..."
Totally. Fairness and/or accuracy wasn't the priority; survival and/or personal well-being was. Survival meant minimizing risk, not being "more accurate" and inadvertently walking the edge.
It sort of just sucks when the same methodology is carried out nowadays to repress or hurt others, a thought probably shared by the non-poisonous snakes in the above example.
Nowadays stereotypes seem to be a tool used by people who are unable or are afraid to operate in ambiguity of working with probabilities rather than rigid binary facts; they avoid their anxiety, at some else's expense.
Is (or isn't) it stereotypical to say that stereotypes are based on ignorance?
