First of all, is there still discrimination? WTF is up with that, people, it's the 21st fucking century, you feel me? Discrimination and prejudice should be shit you read about in history books and can't quite wrap your head around, right? I mean, I've never been capable of understanding how it would have even occurred to people to be prejudiced in the first place. In the recent past, okay, people are surprisingly programmable. Or rather, robots are programmed, okay. People are indoctrinated. Which is bullshit, but whatever. Human nature, what can you do? So if one generation is prejudiced, they can indoctrinate the next generation to be too. Of course it's entirely illogical, it ain't based on shit. To take two people and say one is inherently superior to the other because of some cosmetic difference? WTF? I understand in the far distant past people had a very limited view of the world, and anything unknown could be scary, and almost everything was unknown. So whatever. People were stupid, and they dealt with it by... acting even stupider, I guess. *shrug* But in this day and age, there's no unknown in differences, cosmetic or otherwise. Okay, alot of people are still ignorant to one extent or another, but otherness is hardly novel, so there's no reason to be scared of it. And if you're not scared, then all that's left is outdated programming that's been perpetuating itself for thousands of years. You might as well be scared of baths or something, y'know?

So you can see, I hate discrimination. It's just retarded (which, btw, is a word I would never use to describe anyone who is developmentally challenged, but for concepts that I think are particularly ludicrous, now and then I will use the word). Well, can you believe when I first made this page I had like totally forgotten the subject of discrimination? Now that I've added a bit about that, I guess I can just get back to the page as originally written, about demographics & stereotypes...

Hate 'em. Look, this is really a page about how I feel about people. I have issues, to be sure. There's alot about the human race in general that doesn't make sense to me, that I may not like. But there's also plenty I do like about the species. So I'm not going to assume I'll dislike an individual. I might assume I'll be disinterested in them, because really, I don't tend to have much in common with most people. But at the same time, I know that until I know a person... personally... I don't really know anything about them. And so, it's always possible that if I did get to know them, I'd like them. It's most likely I'd remain essentially disinterested, but yeah, I could either like or dislike them. And, what's really annoying, I could end up both liking and disliking them. I absolutely hate that, confuses the hell out of me and... well, I could go on, but that's not the point of this page.

The point is this: People are people. I do not care one iota what color a person is, or what gender, nationality, sexual orientation, age, political party, social status, financial status, religion, anything. There's so many demographics, I probably can't remember them all to list here. But anyway, like I say, I'm equally likely to like or dislike anyone without regards to these factors. And there's something I loathe about humanity: having created a world in which it even occurs to anyone to care. Some people might list a lack of prejudice as a good thing, but I disagree. I don't feel that my not caring makes me a good person, I think it makes me a neutral person. Because everyone in the world should just naturally feel that way. Of course, other people might feel that lack of prejudice is a bad thing. That prejudice is good. And to those people I say: "Fuck you, I hate you, get the hell off my website, you're not welcome here, bitch."

In any event, people are people. I take people as individuals. Now we come to stereotypes. This is what I really hate. Nobody better bloody well tell me how I'm supposed to act based on where I'm from or what I look like or how old I am or any such thing. I don't really think of myself as white, just a person. I think of myself as American, but while I think I have the capacity for patriotism, I'm not at all nationalistic about it, and I'm offended by anyone who is. I can't imagine, for example, a much dumber statement than "my country, right or wrong." Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in that quote? Actually I don't know where it's from, who said it first, for all I know they intended it ironically... but I know that most people who say it these days just don't get it. But this isn't supposed to be a political page, either. While I'm on the subject, I'll mention that I'm independent, I don't want to be a part of any particular political party. This means I can always vote my conscience without worrying about anything I think is irrelevant. I could vote Republican or Democrat or whatever other party I feel like. I vote for whoever I think is the best candidate whether I think they stand a chance of getting elected or not. But damn if I don't keep digressing...

Ahem. First and foremost I think of myself as a human being. Well, that's not quite right, first and foremost I think of myself as me. And in fact I frequently have a great deal of trouble thinking of myself as human, but... if I wanted to lump myself in with any particular group, that'd probably be the main one that comes to mind. Hell, I don't even think of myself so much as a man... ignoring my Peter Pan syndrome and the fact that I'd be more likely to think of myself as a boy... but I mean, I don't think of myself specifically as male, except technically. Because for the most part, other than biologically, I don't think of men and women as being all that different. I think maybe in the past there's been a greater divide between the sexes, but that's slowly eroded over time, until now it's nearly nonexistent. In any event, I don't think of my female friends in any way differently than I think of my male friends. And I don't think of my male relatives differently than my female ones, either.

Not that there aren't some differences between men and women, I just don't know that I could possibly say what they are. Except that I don't really think they could possibly matter in any context other than romantic relationships. I am heterosexual, but I don't tend to feel that my only being physically attracted to women is the only reason that I expect I could only fall in love with a woman. Although part of me does worry sometimes about the Internet, I'm often unaware of the gender of people who like post on boards or whatever online, and I try not to make assumptions, but sometimes I do so unconsciously. And sometimes my assumptions might be wrong. So I think it's not necessarily impossible for someone to start falling for someone they think is one gender, when they're really the other. That could be... embarrassing. And confusing. But it goes more to my point that I don't think the sexes are that different, really. Still, I do like to think there's some undefinable difference...

But as for the differences people tend to define quite readily, I don't put much stock in them. It's stereotypes, and I hate stereotypes. I think really it's all about percentages. Any individual human being is capable of having any given personality trait or interest or whatever. Stereotypes come from what percentages of people in which groups display which traits. This is true for genders, races, ages, orientations, or any of those other damned demographics. And there's nothing wrong with someone conforming to a percentage, but there's also nothing wrong with not conforming. People should just be who they are and not worry about what they're "supposed" to be. I don't think you should be able to say a man is acting too feminine or a woman is acting too masculine. You shouldn't say a white person is acting black or a black person is acting white. For example.

These days, after all, the world is very much connected. People act according to what they know, what they're familiar with, what they see and hear around them. In days past, this made different groups rather insular, but today we have TV, movies, magazines, music, and especially the Internet. People anywhere in the world can be just as familiar with cultures from around the world as they can with the people in their own neighborhood... and of course, neighborhoods tend to get more and more diversified as well. For another example, bear in mind that many cultural things that were once considered "black" are now considered "urban," but that even that is by now pretty inaccurate. People in suburbs or rural communities have as much access to TV, Internet, etc., as anyone living in cities. So there's really nothing wrong or odd about people acting or dressing or talking a certain way... despite being in different demographics from that in which a culture originated. These days, who you are is more than just what you see around you, because there are far too many different things. People don't just grow up imitating what they see, they imitate what they like. And it becomes not just imitation, it becomes a part of them, which they have as much legitimate claim to as anyone else does.

Personally, my tastes, I like to think, run a bit of the cultural gamut. For example, I suppose my speech tends to be mostly... how shall I say... culturally nonspecific. Bland, you might say. Please don't say "white" ...not that there's anything wrong with that. But that's just the base. I like to mix in stuff from any number of other sources. Slang from different countries from which I may have seen TV, movies, read books, listened to music... slang from different genres of TV, movies, literature, music... from different cultures, different age groups... I do like to be up on what the kids are saying, considering I think of myself as a kid.... And then, slang is just one sort of thing. My tastes... not just in byproducts of the various entertainments, but in the entertainments themselves... tend to be quite varied. I do not try to talk or act like a member of any one culture, because I don't really think about things in such terms. I like what I like. I am what I am. I do what comes natural to me, okay? That's what I think everyone should do, and stereotypes just make it harder. Makes some people feel like they should try to be something they're not, because of some demographic they happen to be in, makes them feel there's something wrong with them if they don't fit the stereotypes. And makes others deride them for being different. Calling white people "wigger" or black people "oreo," for example, totally pisses me off. People... should just let people be people, dammit!

Well... perhaps I've ranted on just about long enough for now. Might add more to this later, might not. Hard to say....