Stop generalizing people please
Heya! This blogpost was written based on a title I got traded by dabi!
If you wanna know about the how/why behind that, you can read the post I made that started this whole thing.
Generalizations: it's one thing I see way to frequently, be it on the web or irl.
Sometimes they're seemingly harmless, like saying that "all germans are punctual". Sometimes... Less so. (Like oftentimes when it comes to trans people)
I mean... To some extent i get it, right. It's easy to generalize people, to put others into boxes. It's easy to make assumptions. For example, when you keep seeing videos of trans people being seemingly unreasonable, it's easy to start thinking of all trans people as overly sensitive. It's much harder to form an actual opinion, to go out and meet a trans person, to have a productive conversation. To try and see things from another perspective.
It's easy to get weirded out by something you don't quite understand. It's easy to make sweeping statements when you have yet to form a nuanced opinion. But this stuff hurts people. Some generalizations do that more than others, obviously. "Germans are punctual" is not on the same level as "trans girls are perverts". But no matter what, it always stings at least a little bit. Even "positive" generalizations can be used to hurt people, by placing expectations on them that they then have to conform to if they want to be considered a "Real German", for example. Placing conditions on identity is bad a idea.
Generalizations are the cause of so much hateful rhetoric surrounding trans people, or gay people, or really any other minority. Putting people into boxes makes it easier to view it as an "us vs them" thing. It's much harder to be face to face with a trans person and spout hateful rhetoric than it is to just get mad at the nebulous concept of "those trans degenerates". Generalizations make it easy to dehumanize people. To forget those groups are made up of individuals, of real people that are not much unlike you. It's easier to pin blame on some nebulous group. That's why good representation is important, because it makes that much harder. When you see good trans representation in media, it becomes much more difficult to reconcile the image of "the evil woke mob" with that. Because the people you're generalizing are... Well, people.
To be clear, we all have and do make generalizations, have assumptions. It happens. It's important to not use them as an excuse to hurt people. To allow ourselves to question our assumptions.
So, be mindful of how you talk to others. It's easy to make assumptions, and hard to realize that you are making assumptions.