What Happens When You Assume

I may have mentioned before that I’m a Steeler fan. This is causing me a lot of angst this season as they’re refusing to win games and making lots of really silly mistakes. Today’s game is no exception. Dropped balls, interceptions, turnovers that lead to touchdowns... At least James Harrison is still kicking butt and taking names. I love James Harrison.

I'm not this bad. I mean seriously...

Now I feel like I should clarify a bit on my fanship. I absolutely label myself as a Steeler fan. I watch every game with the only exceptions being when I’m busy for work purposes.  I own many different Steeler items (earrings, blankets, shirts, and of course a James Harrison jersey just to name a few). I recognize the names of the majority of the starters.

However, I don’t have every single player on the team memorized. I don’t know the nitty gritty details of the rules of football. Does this stop me from enjoying the game? Well of course not! What I find interesting though is that the common perception is that this is because I’m a girl. Apparently girls are not expected to know these things. Heck, we’re barely expected to be football fans beyond tailgating in college.

In my case, I don’t have all the intricacies of the football rules down because I decided it wasn’t necessary to know, and the refs are just going to interpret things however they want anyway (which inevitably stresses me out when they’re clearly being idiots). 

This leads me into an always interesting discussion – male and female stereotyping. Clearly, I am not going to explore every aspect of it today as the Steelers are still playing (I was going to say poorly but WOOT!! Woodley just made me eat my words) and I want to go to sleep at some point as well.   

Stereotypes will always exist. I’m sorry, they will. I think it’s just a progression of thinking. We naturally try to make assumptions about how the world functions. We use these assumptions to explain phenomena of nature as well as social situations. This can apply to a specific individual. I notice a friend has ordered cider beer multiple times in a night and I assume that’s their preference and start always ordering cider beer for them. I notice that a bunch of Texas hotels put information on church services near the front of their guest directory and I assume that Texans are more religious.

Maybe these assumptions are right, maybe they’re wrong. Now sometimes stereotypes are accurate. That’s why they exist, because there were at least a few situations and individuals that fit the bill. But they can be damaging.

I’m currently reading How Children Succeed. One of the sections I found very interesting in the book was about how identifying with a group can be both positive and negative. A positive is because it gives you a shared identity, which can help you connect with the other group members. A negative is that you then feel constrained by the group stereotypes.

The book described studies comparing the test score results for girls on math exams. When the girls first received positive messaging that intelligence is flexible and didn’t feel constrained by that good ol’ belief that men are naturally better at math, they scored better than the control group of girls. So stereotypes can be self-perpetuating. Because girls are supposed to be worse at math, they expect to do poorly and don’t try to their full potential, thus giving them worse scores.

Apparently this is what it looks like when flat.

My friend Jenn was just telling me the other week how excited she was when she took her car into the shop and they talked to her like a real person. She had issues in the past where they talked down to her assuming she didn’t know anything about cars. Now I’ve encountered this as well, but it’s never bugged me because I legitimately don’t know anything about cars. I have plenty of girl friends that LOVE cars. They can talk mechanics all day long. Me? Well, let’s just say that I’m the girl that didn’t realize her tire was flat back in high school. I called my parents saying it looked funny, and when they asked if it was flat I said “no, it’s just the bottom part.”

In one of my friend Erin’s posts we got on a side discussion about movies based off video games and how she doesn’t like that all the female characters stroll around with very little clothing. This is a valid point. If I was fighting zombies I’d be wearing tons of layers to help protect myself from getting infected. I think the issue is that when they make these games they assume mostly males will be playing them. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the stereotype is that gamers are male.

Just the other day I was talking to someone who I found out works for Blizzard. I immediately told them how mad their company makes me. They responded that this better not be another case of an angry girlfriend that lost their bf to WoW.

While this kind of made me giggle, it’s still the stereotype at work. If I had been a guy, they never would have made this assumption. Since I’m a girl, they assumed I wasn’t involved with Blizzard directly but just knew it through a guy. I actually played WoW for a while, and in fact I was referring to Blizzard doing ridiculous things to my account like deleting game subscriptions.

Where does this leave us? Well basically the same place we started. I can’t fix all the wrongs of the world with this little post. When I encounter new people I’m still going to be going against the same stereotypes.

But I can make more of an effort to not make my own assumptions about people. As my father always told me over and over growing up, what happens when you assume? You make an ass out of u and me (still true).

And if nothing else, we can all remember that these stereotypes DO NOT DEFINE US.