Steriotypes and Boylovers.
Submitted by Altima on December 29 2000 21:32:50
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I thought I'd kick this off, even though I'm tired and it's 2:30am, but at least I have a point to make (I check the board daily, I've just been quiet because for some reason, here I don't post just for the sake of posting something). OK here goes: The first thing that living abroad taught me is that you should never ever trust steriotypes. After all, do you think that all Canadians are boring? All Britains are pompous? All Irish are drunks? All Americans are fat and tasteless? Certainly not but that is the picture painted of them by various societies. Do you think that those statements are true for a majority of those groups? No way. The thing here is impact. I'll make a non-hypothetical example: A few years ago, [won't mention company name] brought over a team of irish engineers to a facility in New York State. There were about 50 of them, and the facility was around a small town. About 15 of them went drinking one night and drove home. One of them remembers being pulled over by the traffic cop and upon producing an irish driver's licience the cop said "Damn, not ANOTHER one..." Less than half of the team drank during their stay, but the ones who did gave the locals, and the local authorities, the assumption that the Irish are uncontrollable drunks. The well behaved ones weren't really accounted for because they made no impact. I guess that's a long way of making a quick point. Boylovers who actually care for the well being of boys won't make as large of an impact as pedophiles who manipulate and abuse young people. Another factor being that boylovers are, without question, a minority group. The majority can and will make assumptions and few will challenge them. I don't know solutions, I'm too tired to think of something to suggest, but I think I've pointed out the problem. |
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