After posting a miniature version of this post (really just introducing the ideas/thought process) on my Facebook Page, I'm happy and unsurprised to see that those who responded basically already get what I'm going to say here. Happy, because that's great! Unsurprised, because they're people who watch my videos and hear me talk about this stuff a lot, so it's really a "preaching to the choir" situation. Nevertheless, I hope some of this provides food for thought and gives a little more background.
For a quick recap, I mentioned that I get comments on my YouTube videos saying things like "Wiccans all think ____" or "Witches are all ____" or even "All Pagans ____". These are coming from someone outside whatever group they're commenting about. But then what gets me is that in the same comment, they'll talk about their own groups in a much less generalized way, talking about the diversity and variety that can exist in their group. This is something that happens a lot. We have a tendency to see our own groups as diverse and able to be different from one another while still part of the same group, and to see groups we aren't in as being made up of people who are all the same as each other (and very different from us).
There's a term for this in prejudice psychology: outgroup homogeneity. Our outgroups (groups that we do not identify with/that we are not a part of) seem like one big, homogenous group of people with no variety. We generalize them into people who all act, think, believe, or look the same. But since we know the groups that we are part of, we know how different they can be... because they're made up of real people... whose personalities and quirks we know well. And accept.
There's another side of this, which is dissociation. Or, related to this, we sub-type.
When members of our groups do something we disagree with, we might dissociate from them, saying they're not representative of the whole group, or aren't actually members of the group at all. (And sometimes this is true.) Or we put them into a sub-type. Sub-typing is one of the reasons stereotypes persist as long as they do, because when one stereotype is revealed as not actually being true of the whole group, we just add a sub-type! Instead of saying "Hmm, this must not be true," we say, "Oh this is true of the group, but this individual is part of this sub-type, over here, which is different in these ways..."
Human beings love stereotypes so much that we'd rather create more, smaller, more specific ones, than admit that a stereotype can't possibly be true of a whole group. We are silly.
So let's talk about outgroup homogeneity and generalization for a bit.
As many of us know, stereotyping & feelings of prejudice are things that are natural to human beings for many reasons. They help us in some way, otherwise we wouldn't continue to do it! This is called the functional approach to stereotyping & prejudice: the idea that stereotypes and prejudice serve a function, or multiple functions. Different functions have different sources, and different methods for reducing them, so knowing which function is at play makes a difference in how you approach reducing it.
If you'll notice, we don't typically refer to "getting rid of" stereotypes/prejudice. This is because we know that on some level human beings will always be doing it--and that has to do with the functions it serves (which I talk about in my Pagans & Prejudice workshop, but is perhaps too tangential even for this post). But this is why we say "prejudice reduction". We're looking at how to reduce its frequency, severity, and so on. That sounds a lot more doable than getting rid of it all at once, right?
Let's go back to my specific example with these comments. People say things like "All Witches think ___ about my group, but MY group is not all like that. We are really like this, but Witches don't realize that. They all think we're ____." This hypothetical commenter sees their own group as diverse--allowing that maybe SOME people in their group are whatever it is they're talking about, but they're NOT ALL like that--while at the same time grouping all Witches together as ALL believing that everyone of this other group is the same. To which I might say, well, in my experience as a Witch and knowing lots of Witches, I know that some Witches do believe that about your group, but not all of us do.
Of course not. And we all know this. On a certain level, we all realize that we cannot accurately generalize a whole group, whatever that group is. All Witches, all Muslims, all Milennials, all Whovians, all whatever. Can't be done. We know that, because we see it in practice with the groups we're a part of and know well. Therefore it should follow that we can't do that about other groups, either. And yet, it doesn't seem to follow for a lot of people... We still keep doing it. Stereotypes persist.
Stereotypes persist for several reasons, and I don't want to go too much into that kind of stuff (I talk about it in my Pagans & Prejudice workshop, which I will get around to putting online at some point, but it's definitely too much to go into now), but I will say that knowing why we do it, or even just starting to think more about it, helps us to become more aware of when we're doing it, which helps us begin to reduce it.
For me, one of the things I do is just try to catch myself when I find that I want to say "All" of some group does/is something or other. If I stop to think for a fraction of a second, I remember that the thing I'm talking about really can't be said to apply to EVERYONE in that group. So I ask myself, what do I mean to say? And how well do I know this group? How much is what I'm saying really characteristic of the group as a whole? Based on my answers to those questions, I'll change what I'm saying, usually something as simple as changing "all" to "some", "most", or "many" depending on how prevalent this thing (whatever it is) really is, and how well I think I know the group that gives me reason to think I can actually make such a claim.
In reality, I never know a group I'm not in as well as I know a group I am in. And because the groups I'm in tend to be extremely varied, such as Pagans... How well do we even know the groups we're in?
So usually I go a step further and get more specific. Instead of saying "All Pagans" for example, I might say "Most of the Pagans I know," "many of the people who watch my channel," or I might allow a very specific "all" such as "All the Pagans I've worked with" IF the thing really does apply to EVERY ONE in a specific group I can actually speak to.
I don't know a single thing that I feel I can authoritatively say about "All Witches" except that they practice Witchcraft. And you know some Witches out there would even try to argue that.
I did a video on the "Principles of Paganism" from the book "PAGANISM: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions" wherein Joyce & River Higginbotham shared seven things that, through their research, they found to be the core beliefs tying together ALL Pagans. I asked my viewers who identify as Pagan for their thoughts, and only one of the principles was debated as far as I could see, which was our beliefs (or lack thereof) in the Afterlife. So, there's that. We've tried to come up with things that are true of All Pagans. It's not easy! The best we can usually say is "most".
Until next time, thanks for reading!
Blessings~
-C-
No comments:
Post a Comment