Erin Beeghly's "What's Wrong with Stereotyping?"

Erin Beeghly is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies for the Philosophy Department at the University of Utah. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of ethics, social epistemology, feminist philosophy, and moral psychology.

Beeghly applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, What's Wrong with Stereotyping?, and reported the following:

Page 99 drops you into the book’s fourth chapter. That chapter opens with a photo of Barbara Gittings, an early gay rights activist in the United States. She’s holding a sign at a pre-Stonewall rally, sporting short haircut, stylish sunglasses, and a smart mid-1960s dress straight out of Mad Men. Her sign says: homosexuals should be judged as individuals. She’s there to protest homophobic policies, rampant and shameless in that era: policies that required the federal government to fire gay employees because they were alleged security threats; that allowed businesses to refuse service to gender non- conforming and queer patrons; and justified police raids on gay bars. In these raids, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming patrons were manhandled, assaulted, and thrown in jail. All of this – and more – was perfectly legal.

The chapter wrestles with the idea on Gittings sign. What does it mean to treat someone as an individual? Is it plausible that all stereotyping – and, for that matter, all discrimination – is wrong because it involves generalizing on people, ignoring their individuality? Is there a moral right to be treated as an individual?

I’m at a point in the chapter where I’m grappling with the slipperiness of the ideal on Gittings’ sign. The most natural ways to interpret the sign’s message don’t work. They suggest, implausibly, that clocking anyone based on looks – as a certain gender, as queer, as belonging to a certain racial or ethnic group, as Republican or Democrat – is inherently wrong.

“For some theorists,” I write on page 99, “the upshot is this. We must stop explaining what’s wrong with stereotyping—as well as what’s wrong with discrimination—by saying that it fails to treat persons as individuals. The claim is philosophically corrupt. However, other theorists take the analysis so far as a challenge. The challenge is to articulate a new interpretation of failing to treat persons as individuals that does not generate the problem of absurdity.”

I am on the cusp of diving into nerdy attempts to vindicate the imperative on Gittings pre-Stonewall sign. If we take Gittings and other early gay rights activists seriously, we should be able to make sense out of that sign’s message, interpret it in a way that is not absurd, find the truth in its meaning.

It’s Pride month right now. Almost sixty years after this photo was taken, it’s still important to make sense of that sign. LGBTQIA+ stereotyping and discrimination continue to plague us, alarmingly so. Page 99 holds out hope that we can push back against anti-queer policies, and the dehumanizing stereotypes that underlie them, with the idea on Gittings sign. On the other hand, the book goes on to argue that individualistic wrongs are only ever part of the story of what’s wrong with stereotyping.

Using queer history as a touchstone, the book as a whole offers a nuanced picture of what’s wrong with stereotyping. It argues that stereotyping individuals – judging persons by group membership – is not always wrong. Nor is characterizing groups in generic ways: queers are fabulous after all. However, when stereotyping is unethical, you can tell because it is characterized by clusters of wrongs, travelling together for systematic reasons, targeting groups for violence and marginalization. All in all, my book provides a rich understanding of wrongful stereotyping that readers can use to identify wrongful stereotyping in their everyday lives. Page 99 exemplifies this, taking readers on a lively philosophical journey.

Visit Erin Beeghly's website.

--Marshal Zeringue