The Cowardice of Stereotyping

As a writer, I focus much of my attention on the flaws of the human character, and by extension, the bleaker bits of the human condition. The fragility of the human mind is my forte. It is my gluten-free bread and farm churned butter. It is, as they say, my wheelhouse. Every writer has a method of character development. Every writer has particular aspects of the character development process at which they particularly excel. For me, the mind of the character will often reflect a haunted spindle from which carefully woven woe may be expected. Much beauty resides in the phantoms of the mind. It is my wheelhouse, and I am very good at my craft.

But this isn't just another blog update detailing how much genius fits into my little mortal mind. This is something deeper and more significant to the umbrella under which we all huddle. This is about cowardice, ignorance, the easy path, and a general lack of wit, sense, taste, and finesse. This is about the epidemic of little tiny minds collectively creating myths and monsters out of everyday people. This is about character development and how the reading of characters, the writing of characters, the viewing of other humans, and the treatment of other humans, when rooted in wide accusations of social stereotypes is proof of one lacking in self-awareness, frankly hateful, and not very clever at all.

Let's run some field examples:
1: Girls in pink. Boys in blue.
2: Black male = Enraged criminal. Drug dealer.
3: White male = Upstanding citizen. Family man. White-Collar criminal.
4: White female = Excellent mother. Now or in future.
5: Black female = Prone to fits of unintelligible rage. Poor mother to many children only related by her genetic profile.
6: Fat = Lazy. Gluttonous. Disgusting. Undereducated.
7: Thin = Vain. Self-absorbed. Approval-seeking.
8: "Seeing a therapist" = Weak and fragile to the point of distrust and suspicion.
9: Homosexual male = Woman hating flower.
10: Homosexual female = Man hating thug.
11: Wealthy = Trustworthy, moral.
12: Impoverished = Scheming opportunists.
13: Christian = Correct in every aspect.
14: Atheist = Evil in every aspect.

I could go on.... but who with a functional mind would want to?

We see others, characters in the stories of our own worlds, in either our own way or the way we're told to. It is a stark and necessary choice. You could have possession of your own intellect or you could sneer or smile when it seems socially acceptable to sneer or smile. You could enslave yourself to the whims of hatred, the fleeting pointless extension of a collective wrong if you wished. But who would want to? Why should this happen if it serves no purpose beyond the ease of not thinking for oneself?
Does it affirm something? Is the distance placed between the person who believes "fat is gross" magically made greater by that sorry weak implanted thought and the thinker's own image problem?
It's a placebo loaded down with hatred.

It is my business to create characters and populate tales. It is not just my business, many others tread this path, but it is a part of the job that I very much enjoy. That said, there is little more that infuriates me so quickly as the thoughtless and careless use of stereotypes. (This is specifically a focus now on literature, although many deep examinations have been made of music, film, and society at large by more eloquent sources than me.) When a writer uses a stereotype as the sole basis of character explanation to a reader, it is an act of unmitigated perpetuation of prejudice. It is vile. It is dangerous. It shows their readership no respect. It lacks in every noble aspect of creativity and honestly, it is simply poor form and bad writing.

Black, gay, atheist, fat, or poor are not character flaws.

It's a rambling rant, I grant you that. But there is meaning here. There is no greater value in all the world than to see people as who or what they are when they are permitted to exist as themselves. There is treasure, vast and waiting to be claimed, in tolerance. People are characters, Love. They are characters which occupy your story. What you deem “wrong” in them does not make all those things you see “right” in you more real. And you, symbiotically, are also a character in their story.

A character beholden to some arbitrary expectation of what they ought to be, based on some overarching view of definition, is a failure. So too is a mind and a life.