My Dear Hard Drive

We all belong to groups. Me for example, I am a woman, Barbie-collector, dog-person (or more specifically a spaniel-owner), nerd, photo model, fashion designer, migrant, wife… There are a lot of stereotypes to go with all of those groups. I’m in luck for not being blond and big breasted, I suppose, as that would give me a whole new stereotype. I even believe some of these things do come with a generic personality or even a body type (where you wouldn’t think it does). However I like to see these stereotypes as positive challenges rather than something I have to constantly “battle” against. Let’s take men and their attitudes towards women for example.

Let’s say I’m chatting with someone to get help with a php-script I’m working on, and find that my adviser is assuming I don’t know much about what I’m doing because I’m a girl, maybe. Do I take this as an insult towards my intelligence? Nope. I think it is a fair assumption to make that since I’m a girl I haven’t been involved with computers ever since I learned to crawl, and also most people, male or female, don’t know much about php. Instead I use language that indicates the level of my knowledge, and use the fact I am a girl to my advantage; If I don’t know something I’ll just say “you’ll have to excuse me for not knowing that, I’m just a girl you see. ” Do I downplay other women by saying that? Possibly, but I’m sure you girls can do your own fighting, and once most of us know what php.ini is, men can stop treating us as if we didn’t know.

Same thing with dating guys. I command to be treated as an individual. The way I do this is by not getting insulted every time a guy makes a reference to women who are bad drivers or who are too clingy or what ever. Let’s face it, there are a lot of women who drive really badly. I can handle my car, and the fact that other women can’t is an advantage to me and I can impress guys by knowing what a solenoid is. Most guys don’t know what a solenoid is and even though I have learned things I know mostly from guys, what sets me apart from other women is that I pay attention and I am interested in such matters. This in itself is impressive to most guys and what ever stereotypes people may have about women I take them as “they’re talking about the others, not me.” (Until they come up with a stereotype I fit in. Like girls like pink. I love pink, but since that’s true, it is not going to offend me.)

But knowing about guy stuff doesn’t mean you have to stop wearing pink and collecting Barbie. In fact, that’s just an attractive contrast to most guys. Femininity is a turn on as long as it doesn’t mean a complete shut down of the masculine side of things. I can watch AFL footy enjoying it tremendously while styling the hair of a Barbie. These things can go hand in hand if you allow them to.

I think one of the biggest flaws of a woman is to be touchy and easily insulted. Same goes with any group that gets insulted for every little thing that is said about them, like lets say black people who take offence every time someone mentions anything about black people, true or false. People who take themselves and their group too seriously are quite difficult to hang out with, and the last thing people want is to spend time with someone who is easy to offend. (It is because you have to throw your sense of humour out of the window and constantly be aware of what you say and how you say it so that it can’t be taken the wrong way. It is stressing and tiring.) There is one more advantage of treating yourself as an individual; it gives you a reason to do so with others as well. I swear I have never believed “All men are pigs” or anything similar, because to me each man is an individual to be found out. Sure, I have made generalisations of the like “Finnish men are hard to talk to” but at the same time I know that there are some Finnish men that are really easy to talk to.

Generalisations are sometimes often useful but they should not be treated as a fact. Each individual should be compared to the generalisation and decided where they are different, because it is very rare that a person will fit a stereotype in every aspect, and it is very rare that a person doesn’t fit any stereotype in any aspect. Also we need to be aware that some stereotypes are complete rubbish (like all black people steal) while some can be more accurate like “most men are not good at picking up women”. And it all starts by realising, that if you decide for that person what he’s going to think about you before you even give him the proper information about you, how is he ever going to know the real you? And if you think you can’t make men (white people, or the people who’s country you’re living in) change their mind about you, what does that make you? Someone who can’t let go of a prejudice, maybe?