My brother is a struggling artist – a cartoonist to be exact.  His work is somewhere between skateboard/graffiti art and the guys that do Tank Girl.  It’s amazingly detailed and completely subversive at the same time.  That being said he recently landed a contract doing cartoons for a workshop conducted by a government agency to illustrate the descriptions of coworker stereotypes that workers had come up with as part of an HR exercise.  I got a giggle out of most of them, as well as the descriptions that the government workers had come up with.  They were submitted recently and some of the work had come back as being discriminatory and needed to be reworked.  One of the stereotypes had been of a metrosexual guy who had been rejected on the basis of being homophobic and there was some mention of racism as well – I’m not sure if the group he’d drawn was not ethnically diverse enough or I think there may have been one or two stereotypes he had drawn as being Asian.  It raises the question, were the cartoons or the descriptions discriminatory and are there some forms of discrimination that are subtle and almost acceptable?

The metrosexual stereotype, does to some extent, play on our cultural insecurity with appearance conscious men.  This is actually more predominant in Australia than other western countries (for example Italy or Japan) as generally speaking most men are a bit rough and ready, suiting up only for work and special occasions (if at all).  Our gender stereotypes are so entrenched that it seems unusual to many Australians that a man should be concerned about his hair style, the cut of his shirt or his willingness to wear pink that when we see men that contravene this stereotype is irks us somewhat.  The metrosexual is something of a soft target in this area, and often the source or ridicule by many who are less comfortable with having what they consider to be the norm contravened.  For some reason, as well,  it seems to be more acceptable to pick on straight men who choose to be appearance and status conscious because to pick on a homosexual man for being that way is very much discriminatory.  But is the stereotype of the image-conscious straight man discriminatory or is it just bordering on homophobia?  This is actually a difficult one for me to answer because whilst it is normal to form stereotypes, ridiculing a stereotype or an individual based on the stereotype is actual bullying.

This brings me to my second point that some stereotypes do actually have a racial element in them.  Living in Australia today any one who does not dwell under a rock knows that every one from the same cultural or ethnic background is not the same, but we know that some particular stereotypes exist within particular groups.  As someone who works in auditing and with accounting staff, I find the majority of people in the industry are shy retiring, attentive to detail and neatly dressed.  Quite a lot of them are also Asian.  But I also know that not all auditors or all Asians are like that.  The bogan stereotype is almost categorically white lower class trash, the CEO is stereotypically white, over 55 and university educated.  When you think of taxi drivers there are two stereotypes – the crusty old retired guy who will complain to you like you’re a talkback radio host and the clueless younger guy who can’t get by without the GPS and who has been in the job (and the country) for all of two months.  Whilst being true to life, these ‘types’ are also like the metrosexual, they border on the discriminatory.  Unlike the metrosexual they do not exist because they grate against our cultural sensibilities, but because we find them often and they help individuals to understand who they are dealing with.  Stereotypes help us anticipate and make some assumptions.  Without them we could not function and we would be constantly finding ourselves making social faux pas and naively establishing potentially damaging relationships.  Social stereotypes, however also need to be coupled by some degree of flexibility, where we are happy to take people out of boxes or we think twice before putting them in one, especially when the association with the stereotype is unpleasant.  Also stereotypes are cultural.  When watching moves or reading stories we look for certain literary and visual clues to tell us what to expect of a particular character.  This saves the author (or director) time in explaining to us what a particular character is like or how we can anticipate their reactions.

So potentially discriminatory and damaging stereotypes are all around us and are even enshrined in cultural texts.  It is part of our culture so we can not blame an individual for adopting a culturally codified way of interpreting the world.  But can we censor them because of it?

Also stereotypes can actually be regarded as a form of pattern recognition.  Most of people know that when they see the series 1,1,2,3,5,8…   that the next number is 13.   The Fibonacci series is fairly common place, and even so the pattern is recognizable.  It is the same with people.  It is unwise to base our assumptions about a type of person on just one experience, but when it occurs multiple times, the intelligent person knows when to jump to the conclusion that a particular person fits in to a particular subset of characteristics.  This I think is important as well that these patterns are made based individual experience and a broad range of experiences.  We should not for one minute take media representations or the experiences of friends and relatives as true and correct for one minute.  And also individuals should always be willing to reshape the boxes they have formed for particular types of people.

On a more personal note I want to add that I am not one of these people that thinks that it is helpful or even possible to eliminate all forms of discrimination and stereotyping in society.  Imran Khan (who I actually rather like as a public figure) recently said in a post-Ramadan speech that to most Australians terrorism is synonymous with Islam (or was it vice versa?) and this echoed a study I recently read that most Australians do have negative stereotypes of people in the Middle East.  I don’t think that this is any accident, but based on people’s very real experiences of Islam.  We have seen, even in our own country, Islamic men discriminate against all women, and sometimes even prevent women from leaving their own home.  Those of us who have looked into the religion know that this attitude verging on hatred is enshrined in the Quran.  The Quran is also extremely anti-Semitic.  Generally I don’t associate with people that are sexist and racist, however I also know that there are some exceptions to this in Islam.  Khan himself married a Jewish woman (Jemima Goldsmith) and there are also some Middle Eastern countries that are more liberal in their attitudes towards women.  However until I find out that someone is one of the exceptions, I go with the rule.  This is to protect myself (eg from discrimination or harassment) and also because I don’t have the time or the energy to find every little thing out about every person that I meet.  There are also positive stereotypes that we all hold as well, but we also need to remember that there are exceptions to these positive types.

To be perfectly honest, I think that this is one for the legal field as that is where most actual discrimination is sorted out.  However there is some food for thought in where and when stereotypes are appropriate and helpful – which ones can and should be challenged and which ones are here to stay, why we have them, when they are acceptable and when they are less acceptable.