If its not too personal could you perhaps share what some of those prejudices were?
Sure. When I was younger, I had to come to terms with the anti-semitism I was raised with, and bought into. As I mentioned in
the other thread, I was raised to believe that Jews were intrinsically bad. It took time and education and exposure to other points of view that made me realize that this was a false stereotype.
Growing up in the U.S., there was a time I had also became swept up in disdain for poor people, the homeless, and immigrants from Mexico and the south American nations. It didn't last long, because I was myself brown and not from a wealthy family, but I did have some friends when I was in my teens who espoused somewhat bigoted views which I was peer-pressured into believing. It took a short foray into living in an urban environment with lots of racial and other diversity, and getting educated in economics and sociology for me to discard those notions about the poor, the homeless and Latino peoples.
Until about 6 or 7 years ago, I was quite ignorant about the issues surrounding transexuality and felt that it was something irreconcilable with what I thought was a binary gender system, that everyone was just a man or a woman and no variations could exist. There was a time when I thought transexuals were just gay people who couldn't come to terms with their homosexuality. Same with bisexuals.
As with the other biases, it took education about sexuality, sexual diversity, the history of the invention of these terms "homosexual" "heterosexual" "bisexual" and "transexual" and a study of how sexual diversity has been viewed in other cultures, in other times and places, that I came to get a better understanding that there are many different ways of being in the world and what feels "natural" to me is a product of all the various influences that have affected me, and it may not feel the same to someone else. It also took
listening to "the others", hearing them out, considering that their life experiences are as real for them as mine are for me, that I developed empathy and a sense that if I want to be authentic to who I am, I have to give other people a chance to be authentic to themselves too, to take their perspectives into consideration and that I should avoid trying to speak *for* them, but talk with them, let them speak, and listen.
Topic: Women