this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Not if it causes anyone to treat people as anything besides the individuals they are.
Ever?
There are many defenses for generalizations but they're all based on ethical laziness. For example, there is a growing number of people who dislike people from Russia due to them being in the news, something I probably don't help. It would be one thing to speculate to oneself, to wonder if Russia is the Florida of the Asian world for a reason, or that maybe their ethnicity lost the lottery when it comes to mentality, but to put this into practice on a general level and exhibit scorn to people "just because" they're Russian is wrong. It is unfair to anyone affected by a general opinion that they're treated based on association if they go against the grain, and being a good person just stops being incentivized. It's the mindset that gives us Hatfields and McCoys, or, in Russia's case, chronic crime families because Russia itself often punishes whole families for the crimes of a few family members, which I'm sure has no bearing on the sudden power of the Russian mafia, wink wink. Nations, spiritual groups, genetic groups, fandoms, you name it, people always think it's good to generalize them and it helps nobody. It's simply a form of assumption.
If I walk into a train station and there's a person in a red ball cap openly carrying a firearm I'm going to be extremely comfortable with my decision (as a man wearing a skirt) to sit far fucking away from them. They might be an absolute darling of a human being but generalizations are quite useful for assessing risks since we can't know everyone.
We should be extremely careful in the generalizations we make but generalizations are a useful tool for our safety.
I wouldn't discourage you, though perhaps this is because that's not exactly the same thing. Like I said, generalizations aren't bad to keep in mind. The seat you choose on a train is your discretion, and a stranger with features indicative of someone who might give you a hard time is a fair thing to gamble against. But you wouldn't be generalizing them themselves. I too am LGBTQ+ (via asexuality) and would jump at the opportunity to avoid many seeming incels or radical feminists (to use two examples, and not judging radical feminists themselves, many just clash with the sphere of asexuality) if I were choosing something like workmates, but I wouldn't do anything to verbally single them out based on things about those individuals I have not confirmed, such as making inclusion harder for them. In fact, if I had to choose either "innocence" or "guilt" as an emergency default, I'd choose innocence.