Recently I was pondering over the latest group of people to be discriminated apon:
"Emos" From a very basic point of view, there kind of like the Goths, only less rugged.
But what ARE Emos?
Kalypso pretty much hit it on the nose. An emo is what he said -- whether or not the group itself exists is up to your own paradigm.
Most of today’s teens will say that there just a bunch of "gay ***s" that have no place in today’s society.
Well, although not everybody with long hair or a bit of personal sorrow should be looked down upon, the people that the label is intended to represent are people that overdramatize things incessantly. This transcends mere appearance. A person that "looks like a jock" who plays the victim because mom won't make steak every day would be, as the label fits here, an emo. Why is this annoying? Because the problems these sort of people take straight to heart are usually very trivial compared to, say, the many families whose beloved sons/husbands/fathers come home in pine boxes thanks to roadside bombs in the Middle East.
Is this simply because they dress in an awkward manner (to today’s dress code anyway),
Well, as I said above, if you're going to apply the "emo" label to a real world context, you have to look beyond appearance. This is certainly the case for some people, but not for most -- with half a brain, at least.
is it because there usually seen as "Depressed", or is it because of there alleged suicidal beliefs?
Well, yeah.
Especially in conjunction with the latter. As aforementioned, the label of an "emo" person specifically refers to the types that harbor extreme self-pity over excessive trivialities. People who talk about killing themselves because Jeneane doesn't like them compared to people that work at a sweatshop for ninety cents an hour don't really seem all that bad off.
I have often wondered why people discriminate others so just for these things.
Most of these "facts" (In my book) appear to be unjustified, and just made up from popular belief.
For better or for worse, popular belief comes from a skewed and misrepresented fact. For example, Stalinist Communism was a great threat to America's values and even the Russian people. However, somewhere around the era of McCarthyism, this fact was twisted into a belief that Communism is inherently threatening, which it is not.
The same applies here. People who are obsessively unhappy -- the few that are so depressed that they truly
thrive on being "dark" and "moody" -- begin to project themselves that way, be it subconsciously or deliberately. Maybe they'll stop trying with the hair. Maybe they'll try on their sister's jeans. Who knows? Somewhere at the root of this is a genuine justification, but like everything else coming down the grapevine, we won't be able to pinpoint it.
I mean, honestly, if there are SO many emos’ its a problem, then how can they all be SUICIDAL?
A very bad argument...
How does that make any sense?
I'll tell you how. The people the label refers to present a mildly unpalatable self-image. Moreover, genuine cutters tend to cut in a calculatively non-lethal fashion -- "across the street", as it were. This is generally a plea for attention; again, whether this is a conscious decision is on a case-by-case basis. Most emos, going by the label's definition, tend to take it down a notch, talking about cutting themselves but not actually doing it. Your average Fall Out Boy sort of band is proof that at least some of them exist
Again, if there all so depressed, why is it they have friends, and appear to laugh and muck around with them?
I don't know. Why can a date feign interest in you while mentally undressing the waiter? Why can men have wives and families, and come out of the closet in their fifties? Why can women fake orgasms?
Human beings are a hell of a lot more complicated than what makes waves on the surface.
I declare that sneer defused by my above statement.
The look, I admit, comes of as a little intimidating, but that’s all down too today’s perception of how we should all dress.
I'll give you that, though it bears mention that if society dictated that we should dress as an emo might, a true emo would probably dress differently.
Blackadder said:
What I'm asking here, I guess, is what is a real Emo? Why are they discriminated? And are they really all that "gay"?
Most of that's covered in the above stuff, though I didn't get to touch on the "gay" thing...
Almost no one views them that way. Only the truest of bigots -- the kind of people that still drop the n-bomb with full malevolance -- have such narrow minds. In general, this is just people noting how they dress... because, let's face it, there are a lot of similarities between the standard "emo" apparel and how many more effeminite homosexuals dress.
Blackadder said:
To me all that seems to come off as the typical view of an emo.
Have you ever tried to get to know one? Have you ever made any attempts to understand there view of life? You are just spouting out the common reasons, really. That no one seems to like them, beacause they don't WANT to like them. They look freaky, seem freaky, so they must be freaky.
That just seems to be what I'm hearing from you, the typical teen answer answer.
I beg to differ. Quite strongly. Kalypso's points must have zipped right over your head like a CF-18, because none of his points were punctuated with dress code attacks. Instead, he points out an example of inate logical fallacy that many of them uphold, and a general fact that the families of these sorts suffer (they do).
Honestly, emo isn't really about how you dress. It's more of a side effect. Not all emos would dress that way and not all people who dress that way are emos. It's all about how you deal with problems, and if the emo label fits you, you're not dealing with them all that proficiently.
-I
