I interact with and think about stereotypes far too often. Just a few weeks ago, I spent some time at the only gay bar in my city, the only bar I really go to at *all*, the only place I feel comfortable expressing parts of myself that are distasteful to most. I happened to meet another group there containing trans people, uncommon as this location specializes in late 30's cis gay men, and immediately got roped into their conversation, to my joy.
There were 4 there initially: A longer-term trans woman, a gay cis man, an early-on trans woman whom the discussion was bubbling around when I joined, and her cis lesbian partner. What an assortment, and they were my age! The discussion I walked in on was about what name early-on should have, as she had failed to come up with one in the three months of transitioning. This is all good and normal and cool; this is what life is about.
After failing to solve her months long problem with 5 minutes of my tipsy intellect, they start asking me questions: "Where are you from? What do you do for work"? There's only one answer to each of these personal questions, a rhetorical dead-end, something people ask just in order to segue into something capable of a discussion, or to break the ice. Well, I respond, the deep south, and I work in cybersecurity. Slattern laughter followed, rapturous, how else could they possibly react? I don't blame them, in fact, I don't feel much of anything at all. I merely wait for the formality to end. The early-on also works with computers. The trans woman has a trans woman job and what could be flattery is reduced to nothing.
Stereotypes are undeniable. They're a way of life, and the oversimplication it's defined as is often too complicated for many of the cases. Stereotypes are oil slicks of low hanging fruit that are equally irresistible. They're so irresistible that even those subject to the same stereotypes indulge themselves with it.
Many people, as myself at one time, internalize these stereotypes as a form of pride or belonging in the zeitgeist, unaware that they condense their own image into what others already believe, something less, something that isn't real. Now, I have no desire to line up on the wall, but still I'm placed there, more often than not by people just like me. The only way out of this scenario is to uproot and unmake what I am, or to never have accomplished it in the first place.