Part-Time Pundit: On Stereotyping

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February 9, 2005

On Stereotyping

On Feb. 8th, Bridget Sharkey put up her weekly column in the Daily Illini that included divisive and demeaning comments about Christian men. Quote:

Virgin O'Christ: This species of male can commonly be identified by his "Abreadcrumb and Fish" T-shirt and "In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned" bumper sticker. This boy loves God, and, boy, does God love him. In theory, this guy sounds like a very spiritual and enlightened young man. In practice, he is a twenty-two year-old virgin with an axe to grind...a very horny axe. Because he only listens to country and gospel, he tends to use antiquated phrases like "a woman's place is in the home" and "my wife better know how to cook." If you aren't looking to be married the day after tomorrow, you should probably let this Lazarus lie.

Now, this statement that essentially all Christian men are sex-crazed hypocrits that seek to oppress women is typical banter that is passed off as the core curriculum at the University of Illinois. It's unremarkable, except that it provides a nice double standard that can be exposed.

On Nov 5th, the Daily Illini published the following comic by Matt Vroom in his strip "I Hate Pam":

If you can't read it, here is what it says:

I had a really good jew joke for today's comic, but I decided not to run it.

What, was it too offensive?

Yeah, I don't want Isaiah down at the bank to beat me with his nose.

This comic released a shit storm on campus, with the Chancellor himself going down to the Daily Illini and demanding they take sensitivity training.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Thursday that Interim Chancellor Richard Herman would look into starting a competing, University-sponsored newspaper if we don't train our staff better and undergo sensitivity training. From here)

I'm not going to defend the comic, it was in poor taste. There is, however, a difference between this comic which stereotypes the occupation and nose size of Jews, with this column that attacks the character of all Christian men. If we are going to enforce these kind of speech codes on campus, why is it that Christians never seem to be protected by them?
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Posted by John Bambenek at February 9, 2005 1:56 PM