2010-05-23

Pride And Prejudice

It's sad that the majority of human kind is so narrow-minded. I don't know people from different cultures in person though, but it seems to me that every society has its own prejudices and assumptions. It is the way that human mind functions: we observe the things around us and our brain absorbs new information and connects it with our previous knowledge. Then, when in a new situation, we use our schema -composed of the previous experiences- to conclude what would be the correct thing to do. If we didn't suppose anything every day would be full of surprises. Say I wanted to buy an ice cream. I'd bought one the day before and now I'd want another. So I'd find an ice cream kiosk but I wouldn't know what to do if I couldn't be sure that buying an ice cream is basically the same thing every time. Without my schema I couldn't know even if I remembered how it was to buy that ice cream earlier.
And the point of this unnecessarily long description was to demonstrate how our prejudices develop.

Obviously it's a good thing we can rely on our previous experiences in practical, every-day situations but when it comes to relations with other people we should recognize our presuppositions and try no to let them bias us. It's often really hard to, firstly admit one's own prejudices and secondly to ignore them.
The word 'prejudice' sounds very negative to me but not every prejudice is offensive on purpose. They're just so deep in our culture that most of the time we don't even realise them.

One of the most irritating deep-rooted presuppositions is heterosexuality.
I'm certain that no-one means to offend the sexual minorities by supposing that everyone is straight. Well, maybe someone does but not everyone. Anyhow, I find it a little annoying when for example my relatives ask if I have a boyfriend yet. To be honest, I'd find it annoying even if they asked whether I had a girlfriend instead because I think my non-existing relationships are none of their business but that is not relevant now. Actually here's another extremely frustrating presupposition: everyone's after a relationship. As if being a single was just a temporary state before finding a partner and starting a family. Once again, I'm not saying I'll never want a house of my own with kids and a dog in it. It just feels really, very, extremely surreal right now.

Nonetheless, I'm quite positive that prejudices can be changed. I have recently came to notice that something in my own thinking has changed. When studying in probably the entire country's official lesbian school you see so many gay couples and get to know people who accept themselves the way they are. You learn it's not such a big deal really.
What I'm saying is that in my mind there's not such a clear supposition about peoples sexuality than there used to be. Practically, if any of my friends or even my sister or cousin told me they were gay I wouldn't be shocked. At most surprised, depending on who it was.

Or actually, I wouldn't be even surprised. Try me.

By the way, this is not me coming out of closet since I think I never was there. At this point when I'm most certainly non-looking for a relationship, I find it rather irrelevant to shout out whether I fancy boys and/or girls anyway.

And once again I'm too idle to read this whole text through whereupon there might be more or less incomprehensibilities and impossible word combinations there.

4 comments:

  1. thank god i don't have any relatives asking that. btw, you have come across the kinsey scale right? even though that particular study may not be the most reliable one, it is true that there aren't that many "pure heterosexuals" out there, never has been i guess. nowadays we're just all in the open with our sexuality what with sex selling us just about anything from clothes to food and all the "this is not porn, it's just a way of showing the characters feelings towards each other"-shit in movies and tv-shows.

    no one likes to be in the closet, it's cold and dark. decades ago it used to be even colder and darker outside the closet and so it felt like a nice place to curl up and weep for the society where your feelings made you equal to a criminal. today it's nothing like that. now when you're ready to accept yourself as you are, there's a whole lot of people welcoming you to your new life. when you can accept who you are and get the support from those close to you, nothing can stop you(well of course not nothing but you get the point:P). living in a lie hurts yourself and even those around you...

    ...now i'm starting to ramble and sound like i'm lecturing you. which i'm most definetely not doing, why should i? yeah, maybe i'll just go to sleep and take another look at this in the morning :)

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  2. Don't worry, lecturing happens when you have a lot to say and there's no-one to stop you ;)

    Despite the fact that there's plenty of faults in the world and in us humans, one thing that the western world can pe proud of is the increasing tolerability. Not only the sexually "abnormal" have at least some sort of freedom to be themselves but also other minorities have their rights taken into account. I'm a little sceptical how equal we all really are though but all in all things could be much worse.

    On the other hand there are too many people afraid to be who they really are. There are still societies where women are below men, homosexuality is a crime and only one religion can be practised not to mention the lack of general freedom of expression.

    I'd better stop here since my head's about to explode because of all those discriminated
    people.
    Why are we so scared of anything different?
    *bangs head against the brick wall*

    And now we take a deep breath and pretend there's only rainbows and flying ponies in this world. x)

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  3. Tuli näin jälkeen päin mieleen, kun eräs sattui tuossa kysymään, mitä miesrintamalle kuuluu... :----D

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  4. Hehe, joo x3
    No silleen se menee. Ei voi mitään.

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