Self-Help For Cynics #12: Prejudice

Some people say bowling alleys got big lanes

Some people say that bowling alleys all look the same

There's not a line that goes here

That rhymes with anything

Take the skinheads bowling - take them bowling!

Camper Van Beethoven - Take The Skinheads Bowling

Racism, sexism, homophobia, hating New Order and Audi drivers... can they all be explained by the storytelling brain?

I heard one today about the one I love

I heard one earlier that shook me up

I heard one the other day, can't believe it's true

I heard one by accident wish I hadn't

I heard one so many times, couldn't care any more

Minutemen - Stories

 
In my past two Self Help For Cynics posts, I've looked at how the brain uses stories to build neural pathways. This can be a positive thing in that it helps us learn knowledge, skills and how to survive… but it can also be negative if the stories we use to learn end up reinforcing bad habits, unpleasant ideas or defeatist emotions. Last time, I explained how a nasty teenage experience had created neural pathways in my head that made me hate New Order. However, just the act of writing about that experience has honestly lessened the animosity I feel towards a band that’s never done me any harm. 

Every time I think of you

I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue

New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

There are two explanations for this. Firstly, understanding why we think the way we do is the first step towards changing the way we think. (That’s the main reason I’m writing this series.) Secondly, you can overwrite bad neural pathways with good ones by replacing negative experiences (stories) with positive ones. Here’s another example from my terrible teens…

Chumbawamba - Homophobia
 
Was I a homophobic teenager?  
 
I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. Positive representations of gay people in the media were limited to Larry Grayson and Mr. Humphries from Are You Being Served? Camp, limp-wristed caricatures. In the pop world, we had the Village People and then Boy George. Many less stereotypically gay stars like Elton John and George Michael kept their secrets for a long time. Even Freddie Mercury – one of my teenage pop heroes – refused to confirm his sexuality, right up to the point he told us he was dying of AIDS. Tom Robinson might have proclaimed himself glad to be gay in 1978, but I certainly didn’t hear about it.

Pictures of naked young women are fun

In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun

There's no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine

But they still find excuses to call it obscene

Read how disgusting we are in the press

The Telegraph, People and Sunday Express

Molesters of children, corruptors of youth

It's there in the paper, it must be the truth

Tom Robinson Band - Glad To Be Gay

 
Far worse than the clichéd media portrayal of homosexuality was the strong undercurrent of homophobia fostered by straight male society. “Backs against the wall, lads”, “shirtlifters”, “poofters”… these were phrases I heard on a weekly basis from my peers, my elders… even on TV. Add to this that the only openly gay person in my school was a bitchy viper of a boy (probably a defence mechanism, and I can hardly blame him for that)… well, you can see how my storytelling brain was busy building negative neural pathways throughout my early adolescence.

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy

You were the one that they'd talk about around town as they put you down

Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy

 
Things did start to change in the mid 80s, with more openly gay celebrities, and alternative music and comedy which celebrated LGBT culture. It was at this point when I finally started to question the prejudice I’d been a part of in my early years of high school. But it wasn’t till I started working in radio, at 16, that the stories in my brain were completely rewritten. At the radio station I worked at, there were a lot of openly gay men. And as I got to know them, I liked them. Often more than I liked some of my more hetero, alpha male type colleagues. Some became lifelong friends and so my storytelling brain was forced to write new, stronger neural pathways that cancelled out my old prejudicial ones.

Spearmint - Your New Gay Friend
 
All this just reinforces the value of positive representation in the media, in my mind at least. The anti-woke brigade rail against the fact that every TV show these days has to feature a variety of sexualities, skin colours, genders and differently-abled individuals. But only through frequent exposure to people who are not the same as ourselves will our brains stop fearing these unknown beings who are actually just like us, for good and bad. This all seems a bit obvious to me, to the point where I’m not sure I needed to write it… certainly not for the open-minded folk who read this blog. I’m preaching to the converted. 

Rufus Wainwright - Gay Messiah

Those that are harder to convert – the ones who turn off their TVs whenever they see a gay kiss, for example – maybe they’re beyond help. And there are certainly plenty of storytelling options available to them (particularly online) which feed and reinforce their own negative neural pathways. We’re a long way from a utopia.

As to the Audi drivers… I keep hoping one day I’ll have a positive experience that allows me to rewrite the neural pathway prejudice I feel towards them. They can’t all be bad…?