Why Are Stereotypes So Powerful

Stereotypes are ever present in our society.  No matter where we go people are just judging each other based on previous notions of what they believe to be true about an entire group of people.  This was evidently shown when we read "Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?" in class.  In this passage the author starts by talking about how "the stereotype of of female talkativeness is deeply engrained in Western folklore and often considered a scientific fact."  This idea was sparked from a statistic printed in a neuropsychiatry book saying that "a woman speaks about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000" and the general public chose to believe this for over a decade  He later on disproved this idea by conducting her own scientific experiment and statistical tests. This made me think about how once a stereotype is in place in our society it is very hard for it to be broke, even when evidence is shown to prove it untrue.  As I stated in my previous analysis of "There Is No Unmarked Woman," stereotypes exist in the first place because they act as almost shortcuts in getting to know a person.  They may be completely wrong, but by stereotyping someone you have an idea of what they will be like even before you have spoken a word to them.  Now this shows a possible reason as to why people don't like to change their stereotypes even when presented with evidence that refutes it.  Similar to electrical current, humans like to take the path of least resistance and by using stereotypes they can skip past many of the parts of getting to know someone.  By trying to change or get rid of preconcepted stereotypes people would have to make an effort to first get rid of those ideas from their heads and then actually make an effort to look at each person in society as a completely different identity that can't be fully classified into groups.  To paraphrase, what I am trying to say is that humans stereotype because they are lazy.

Why Do Marks Matter

In class this past week one of the passages that we read was "There is No Unmarked Woman" by Deborah Tannen.  In this piece Tannen talks about how there is a standardized appearance for men so that they do not stand out from the crowd, but women do not have the ability to do the same.  Tannen believes that no matter what a women does, says, or wears she will always stand out.  In some ways this can be bad as Tannen explains "some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business."  At the same time however, being marked can have its benefits.  For example, in a job interview it is your objective to try and stand out to the employer so they think of you first when looking through the potential candidates for the job.  By marking yourself it is easier to stand out in a situation like that and it gives you a higher likelihood of success.  Some people may wonder why these marks exist in the first place.  Marks are very similar to stereotypes in that they allow the observer to get a quick overview of the person after just a brief encounter.  They may not always be true but in many cases learning something insignificant about a person after meeting them is better than knowing nothing.  These marks can tell you how to deal with a situation like if you see a guy with a lot of tattoos, they might be a criminal and you may want to stay away from them.  This may not be completely true, but due to your prior knowledge you know that this man is potentially dangerous.  For all you know that man could just be a guy who likes tattoos as well as taking care of his 3 kittens at home,  This is just one example of why marks are useful but should not be what you base your entire opinion of someone on.