So, back a few months ago, I wrote a post about how I was worried I wasn't going to be mature enough for college. Turns out that not only am I mature enough, I'm far more mature than many of my classmates...
...Why, oh, why did I wake up this morning to discover someone had taped a giant cardboard penis to the common-room door?
Showing posts with label people confuse me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people confuse me. Show all posts
Monday, September 17, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A Letter to My Younger Self
I've been doing a lot of reading lately, about people who are different. I've found that there's a lot out there about being on the receiving end of different kinds of prejudice, and I am very grateful for those who do that kind of writing. It has inspired me to answer somehow. Today I reached some important revelations about what I was doing when I was younger and I was so fascinated by the stories of the people who were the targets of such behavior. In response, here I write an open letter to the little girl I was around first or second grade.
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Teaching Versus Learning
A few years ago, I wrote a story about the adventures a character of mine had when she was in second grade from the perspective of her teacher. In the middle of a lesson, my character asks the kind of question I always wished I was brave enough to ask in school--pointing out a gap in a lesson, specifically asking why they didn't ask the people who knew the recent historical figure they were studying about the "mysterious things" that had just been glossed over--and the teacher has a moment of resenting the question because she was hoping to avoid getting into the place where her lesson plan was pretty flimsy. The little girl wants to bring the conversation to a higher level, and the teacher is invested in keeping it down to simple things.
That's not necessarily what I would want in a teacher, but it's what I've usually gotten. And I've had some wonderful teachers who did go above and beyond what's on the test, but not many. There haven't been nearly as many as I wish there had been, and that comes out in my writing even when I don't think about it.
College, they promise, isn't like that.
I'm going to start college classes on Monday, and when I do I'll be looking for what was promised: real conversations, real questions, real learning. Finally, classes where I can be engaged. Asking questions, looking for answers deeper than just the obvious, I might be able to succeed.
Because it's when I'm bored that I fail.
That's not necessarily what I would want in a teacher, but it's what I've usually gotten. And I've had some wonderful teachers who did go above and beyond what's on the test, but not many. There haven't been nearly as many as I wish there had been, and that comes out in my writing even when I don't think about it.
College, they promise, isn't like that.
I'm going to start college classes on Monday, and when I do I'll be looking for what was promised: real conversations, real questions, real learning. Finally, classes where I can be engaged. Asking questions, looking for answers deeper than just the obvious, I might be able to succeed.
Because it's when I'm bored that I fail.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Reputation
"Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!"
I've always loved my church. It's one of the most purely, honestly fun places I know, somewhere I can feel safe and ask hard questions and do good works and sing excerpts from Broadway musicals and drop anime references. My church family is full of wonderful people whom I love being around.
The hard part is, my brother attends youth group functions with me now, and he's embarrassed by my reputation for being weird and loud and active in every discussion. This is a problem, because he believes my reputation reflects on his, and consequently often gets mad at me for being myself.
I don't believe that my reputation and his have anything to do with each other, and I resent that he's trying to change mine. Because what he doesn't seem to understand is that the reputation I have is the reputation I want, that I'm more comfortable not reining myself in the way he does, that it's better for me that people expect me to act the way I do naturally. He doesn't want any part of my reputation, but that's okay because I want nothing to do with his. He can have his image. I just want to be seen as myself, nothing else, and definitely not as an extension of my little brother's quest to fake a socially acceptable normalcy.
Home isn't a safe space for me anymore except when I'm locked in my room alone, because of my brother. School was always unpredictable--some classes would be safe, but some I always felt like I was constantly in danger. Church is the one place where I don't want to worry about my reputation, because I have to keep it under control everywhere else just to keep the bullying level down.
-Michael Cassio, Act II, Scene 3, lines 281-282 from The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare
I've always loved my church. It's one of the most purely, honestly fun places I know, somewhere I can feel safe and ask hard questions and do good works and sing excerpts from Broadway musicals and drop anime references. My church family is full of wonderful people whom I love being around.
The hard part is, my brother attends youth group functions with me now, and he's embarrassed by my reputation for being weird and loud and active in every discussion. This is a problem, because he believes my reputation reflects on his, and consequently often gets mad at me for being myself.
I don't believe that my reputation and his have anything to do with each other, and I resent that he's trying to change mine. Because what he doesn't seem to understand is that the reputation I have is the reputation I want, that I'm more comfortable not reining myself in the way he does, that it's better for me that people expect me to act the way I do naturally. He doesn't want any part of my reputation, but that's okay because I want nothing to do with his. He can have his image. I just want to be seen as myself, nothing else, and definitely not as an extension of my little brother's quest to fake a socially acceptable normalcy.
Home isn't a safe space for me anymore except when I'm locked in my room alone, because of my brother. School was always unpredictable--some classes would be safe, but some I always felt like I was constantly in danger. Church is the one place where I don't want to worry about my reputation, because I have to keep it under control everywhere else just to keep the bullying level down.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Maturity, Autism, and Normalcy
It seems that, though most people don't realize it, the word "maturity" is used as a catchall term for a lot of different qualities that (are said to) become more common among any given group as its members grow older. Some I have. Some I don't.
I've graduated from high school and now I'm looking to leave for college in the fall, but I'm not sure I'm "mature" enough to survive there. I don't even know if I was really "mature" enough for high school, for all I managed to graduate. Believe you me, it took a lot of help for me to get this far, and now a lot of the support I've had to get here is dissolving while I still need it. It's going to be a struggle, and all the more so because I'm slow and I still haven't recovered from a rather traumatic, well... the past six years, really, ever since I first started secondary school.
Compounding the problem was the fact that I was also too mature for high school. Like most teenagers, I spent a lot of high school trying to figure out the answer to the question, "Who am I?" Unfortunately, a lot of the answers I found led me to conclusions that my classmates couldn't even seem to comprehend. I have never gone a single year in my memory without being the target of at least one major bullying incident, and by the time I finished high school I realized that it was because I was so obviously different from everyone else.
I am autistic, and ever since I discovered as much I have been struggling with how much to own the label. It does make me different, in demonstrable ways. I would rather be proud of my strengths than ashamed by the challenges that come with them, but even owning the name "autistic" too much makes me a target to the ignorant and a problem for my friends. But it's my life, built in, not something I can just turn off because I'm bothering someone. It's not the only thing in my life, but I can't ever get away from it even if I don't talk about it. Is it more mature to speak up, like my uncle (technically first cousin once removed) does in being part of an autistic self-advocacy protest group, or to stay quiet and let it just be the background of my life like most of my friends wish I would?
Sometimes even I forget I'm autistic. I believe the things that people say, about how I can do everything that everyone else can, that I'm no different, that I'm capable of anything. I don't look different. I've been forcibly and unpleasantly taught to observe the basics of "acting normal" that don't come nearly so naturally to me as to others. So I push myself to keep up with everyone else, but then I discover every time that I can't always do that. I'm truly good at gathering and memorizing information, but really only on the topics that are meaningful and important to me, and so I'm characterized as "lazy" because it's hard for me to force myself to fill my head with things I don't care about when there's something just one tangent away that's on a topic I have a passion for. And that's part of what my form of autism is: Hans Asperger, the doctor for whom my Asperger's Syndrome is named, characterized the children he studied as "little professors" because each had a deep and thorough knowledge about their own subjects of interest to the exclusion of most else. And I'm not good at socializing with strangers when I don't have someone I'm comfortable with around to make it easier. That's the part that's hit me lately: when too much is happening at once, I go into sensory overload until I can get away to calm down.
No, I'm not normal. And I just have to live with it. That's a form of maturity, too:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
I've graduated from high school and now I'm looking to leave for college in the fall, but I'm not sure I'm "mature" enough to survive there. I don't even know if I was really "mature" enough for high school, for all I managed to graduate. Believe you me, it took a lot of help for me to get this far, and now a lot of the support I've had to get here is dissolving while I still need it. It's going to be a struggle, and all the more so because I'm slow and I still haven't recovered from a rather traumatic, well... the past six years, really, ever since I first started secondary school.
Compounding the problem was the fact that I was also too mature for high school. Like most teenagers, I spent a lot of high school trying to figure out the answer to the question, "Who am I?" Unfortunately, a lot of the answers I found led me to conclusions that my classmates couldn't even seem to comprehend. I have never gone a single year in my memory without being the target of at least one major bullying incident, and by the time I finished high school I realized that it was because I was so obviously different from everyone else.
I am autistic, and ever since I discovered as much I have been struggling with how much to own the label. It does make me different, in demonstrable ways. I would rather be proud of my strengths than ashamed by the challenges that come with them, but even owning the name "autistic" too much makes me a target to the ignorant and a problem for my friends. But it's my life, built in, not something I can just turn off because I'm bothering someone. It's not the only thing in my life, but I can't ever get away from it even if I don't talk about it. Is it more mature to speak up, like my uncle (technically first cousin once removed) does in being part of an autistic self-advocacy protest group, or to stay quiet and let it just be the background of my life like most of my friends wish I would?
Sometimes even I forget I'm autistic. I believe the things that people say, about how I can do everything that everyone else can, that I'm no different, that I'm capable of anything. I don't look different. I've been forcibly and unpleasantly taught to observe the basics of "acting normal" that don't come nearly so naturally to me as to others. So I push myself to keep up with everyone else, but then I discover every time that I can't always do that. I'm truly good at gathering and memorizing information, but really only on the topics that are meaningful and important to me, and so I'm characterized as "lazy" because it's hard for me to force myself to fill my head with things I don't care about when there's something just one tangent away that's on a topic I have a passion for. And that's part of what my form of autism is: Hans Asperger, the doctor for whom my Asperger's Syndrome is named, characterized the children he studied as "little professors" because each had a deep and thorough knowledge about their own subjects of interest to the exclusion of most else. And I'm not good at socializing with strangers when I don't have someone I'm comfortable with around to make it easier. That's the part that's hit me lately: when too much is happening at once, I go into sensory overload until I can get away to calm down.
No, I'm not normal. And I just have to live with it. That's a form of maturity, too:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Categories and Stereotypes
I've been thinking lately about an article that was in The Washington Post a few months ago. To the best of my recollection, it was comprised largely of complaining about how difficult it is to find an adjective that fits all black women. And it made me think: why? I'm just a little white girl, so I might not have the credentials to say so, but it seems to me that all the Post is trying to do here is find a stereotype that works--and stereotypes don't work.
The problem with trying to attach a non-tautological* adjective to any group of people, but especially such a broadly defined group as "all females of a given race," is that pretty much any adjective you pick will describe some of those people, thus supporting your suggestion for every instance of a person who can say "oh, yeah, I know a black woman who is exactly like that," but there will also be many instances of "but I know a black woman who is NOTHING like that." In my experience, the latter group tends to get ignored, because people love their stereotypes and want to keep them.
But any stereotype isn't how it is. The Post can't find an adjective that fits all black women because some black women are loud and some are quiet; some sleep around, some are faithfully married, and some don't sleep with anyone; some are poor, some are rich, some are in between, and one is the First Lady of the United States. The stereotypes don't work for a reason that's fairly obvious to me: what a person looks like on the outside has very little to do with what kind of personality they have underneath.
I've read that people talk about how annoying loud black girls are, but I can assure you (because I had at least one of each in the same class--and it was a class I really wanted to pay attention in, too!) that loud white boys can be every bit as irritating. And loud white girls. And loud Asian boys. And loud Hispanic girls. In fact, if it's their race or gender that you're getting mad at, rather than the fact that the interesting lecture is being interrupted yet AGAIN by the individuals whose private conversations never seem to end even when there is obviously something else going on and everyone is raptly attentive, the problem may be with you.
But that's just my opinion.
*I don't see a problem with saying, for instance, "all black women are female," because that's part of the definition of "women." Or "all black women are of African descent," because that's what "black" means in this context. Those statements are just rephrasing the original term, and really don't need saying. Going beyond that, however, gets into stereotyping. People do treat stereotypes as tautological... but when you look at it, "all members of Insert Group Here who are fillintheblank are fillintheblank" is a statement restating itself; "all members of Insert Group Here are fillintheblank" almost never is.
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