Racial Stereotypes: Origin and Accuracy

'All turians have a stick up their ass.'

'All batarians are criminals and thugs.'

'All asari are sex-obsessed.'

'All salarians are smart.'

Etcetera.

This is stuff we've all heard on more than one occasion. A turian ain't just a human covered in razor-blades and metallic plating - they function on an inherently different level in certain ways. This is a fact to keep in mind when you compare everything from social norms to their style of government. Same goes for every sapient race in the known galaxy. We've all got some distinctive traits that make us stand out on an inherent, basic level. I'm all for interracial cooperation and a lot of my friends are aliens (I can count the number of batarian friends I've ever had in my life on one hand, so I think I'm pretty atypical as far as batarians go), but sometimes you've got to address basic fundamental differences and identify traits that aliens have that you just don't.

So let's take a look at stereotypes. Take a racial stereotype (your own species or another), present it, and speculate on the origin of that stereotype (whether popular culture picked up on an actual or perceived racial trait and blew it out of proportion to the point where it just stuck in the galactic population's general mindset or it really is some trait the species in question just naturally possesses, or whatever) and then debate/discuss how accurate it is.

I'll start.

'All batarians are criminals.'

This is one that I'm not gonna do a good job at explaining as false, considering my own career choice. But it's false.

Only a lot of us are criminals.

There's a huge distinction.

Batarian society, culture and social structure pretty much entirely hinges on looking like you're better off than you really are. You are literally defined by who's over you and who's below you in a perceived social/military/economic/corporate/etc. hierarchy. If you have nobody over you, you need to elevate yourself in the eyes of your peers somehow, and literally nothing else matters. So, of course, people frequently resort to drastic measures to get higher up in the eyes of their peers. 'Look at my shiny new aircar guys' is a very common attitude in mainstream batarian culture. And what's a high-reward way to elevate yourself economically, I wonder?

That's right. Criminal activity. This cultural mindset lends itself very easily to the idea that you need to take what you can get. Period. It's what led to the rise of the Camalan Grusto and all of the corruption inside the Hegemony government prior to the Reaper War (y'know, not counting all the indoctrinated at the top). Batarian StateSec and StateInt were rife with it, and so were most of the lower echelons of the government. It was all because batarians need to do more than be the bread-winners - they need to elevate themselves and their family above everyone else. Best way to do that's money.

So, let's hear some other stereotypes. What all do you guys have to share?

The stick up my ass is there for CQC.

I think the turian stereotype (law-abiding uptight assholes)... can actually be quite accurate, sometimes. Our culture is very focused on honour, duty, the Law, that sort of thing. So much so we've turned it into basically a religion - priests are lawyers, clergymen are barristers. Seriously.

'Cause of all the emphasis on doing the right thing, self-sacrifice, quite a lot of people sign up for that stuff. They drill it into you in boot-camp; serve. Much like the quarians were (before they got Rannoch back), we can't be selfish about things - it's about the bigger picture, the greater good. Very utilitarian, in a way. It's also what makes us good for riding in and saving the day.

Other species see all this as us, basically, having sticks up our asses, as you say. No rule-breaking, give your life for the Hierarchy, all that. But you get just as many turian mercs and dirty cops as other species - it just gets downplayed a lot more. The volus and other clients would crap themselves if they heard about how their special protectors were so corrupt.

I thought the "all batarians are criminals" was born out of Hegemony only sending out the worst they couldn't contain out into the galaxy and kept the law-abiding citizens inside H-space by forbidding them leaving by law.

But you now tell me it's a cultural thing and not result of xenophobic government. Thanks a lot Mekan.

Well, the Hegemony certainly didn't help matters. It's a little of A and a little bit of B. It's totally reasonable and normal for batarians to just 'climb the ladder' the normal way. Hard work, legitimate lifestyle, etc. But, batarians just look at crime in an inherently different way. The low standard of living in the Hegemony for anyone who wasn't upper-caste certainly made it more prominent in mainstream batarian society than it should've been, especially in more recent generations.

I mean, think about it. The Hegemony stood for 2,000 years. The indocs that were around near the end couldn't have been the only reason for the government becoming so corrupt; this was a process, probably helped along by the (later indoctrinated) batarian leadership caste over an extended period of time, probably dating back to the days before humans showed up. And the reason they helped the process along was probably because they were getting fuckin' kickbacks and under-the-table payments the whole time, off the books - they stood to gain something that would help them advance themselves over their peers, so they did it. Once again, that's all batarian society is about: Self-advancement. Crime is just a method we use to advance ourselves on 'easy mode.'

Subset-specific stereotype: Geth are inherently inclined towards aggressive/martial oriented action in response to external threats.

Speculated origin: Extermination of ninety-plus percent of Creator-Remnant population over the duration of regional conflict: Morning War.


Subset-specific stereotype: Creator-Remnants are consistently [intentionally] unaware of the long-term ramifications of their immediate actions.

Speculated origin: Extermination of ninety-plus percent of Creator-Remnant population of the duration of regional conflict: Morning War.

Take it from a woman who's teetering on the cusp of the Matriarch stage like a tightrope act with Palsy. Asari are sex-obsessed.

Some would argue that the culture is simply 'free' or 'less close-minded' but let's be honest here. Sex is a weapon for the asari. Sex is one of the main pillars of the entire civilization. Rampant sex with any sapient life they can get their hands on is how we came to the 'everyone loves asari' conclusion. When there is next to zero stigma for having a relationship with an asari, especially compared to any other given cross-species pairing, the saturation of the galactic media with stunning young asari can continue unabated. It's quite more sinister than the myth that asari can simply make themselves attractive to your brain against your will. Societal pressures do that job for you.

And let's not forget about the Maiden stage. Good sweet merciful Goddess the Maiden stage. It's like the Pilgrimage but even dumber. Young asari, driven by unchecked hormones, go join a merc outfit or a seedy club and shoot, strip or fuck their way to riches and success. I was the youngest person in my university, and not one of my classmates didn't have a story about their 'wild' Maiden days. And don't even get me started on the amount of experimentation that went on behind closed doors.

So, yes. Want to know why the galaxy thinks all asari are whores? Because the vast majority of asari have been whores of some kind or another. And then you've got the high-profile ones who stay whores and pretend that their profession is somehow worthwhile.

Although I might be the worst person to comment on this stereotype since I've often been described to be lacking of that proverbial stick for some reason, I think that we need to understand what people mean when they say this.

I mean, is it because the turian kind is so duty and public service orientated? Militaristic? Rigid in social structure?
Well we might be all that but I believe that it comes down to one simple thing. Less flexibility. In pretty much anything. Turian law is known to have extremely few, if not none at all, loopholes in it. Turian trials are short; no constant bickering and word-twisting between advocates. Our language is straightforward and almost always literal. The list goes on and on but you see the pattern. The attitude resulting from this overall social rigidity of our people may come across to others as thought nobody is good enough for us. That we always find fault in the ways of other species. That we refuse any sort of counter arguments, dismiss any evidence contradictory to our convictions as inadequate and basically, want everything to go our way.

Well, this is all because we are trying to function the only way we've known. Strict to the rules and guidelines, always by the book. You really cannot blame a species for just trying to get by their daily lives and acting just how their society's evolution dictates their very psyche to act. I am by no means saying that turians are incapable of stepping out of the lines. Quite the opposite. There are tons of examples throughout the galaxy. What I am trying to say is that all this talk about a 'Stick up our asses' is a product of insensitivity towards an alien culture that may have not evolved to be as compatible with others as, say, the Asari. Or Humans even. It is just people not acknowledging the ever-present cultural barriers in almost every interspecies interaction.

I have had the displeasure of coming to face this aspect of turianity in form of my superiors who are incapable of understanding a relationship with separatists that does not involve clandestine undermining of Hierarchy authority. Yes, I have worked on a shooting range and cafe that was co-managed by a Sundowner and established friendships there. No, I do not seek to undermine the Hierarchy by maintaining my friendships with people who had the misfortune of having their homeworld taken over by Hierarchy with violence centuries ago. And fuck the officers who play the race card and exceptionality when I try to reason with them that this relationship is actually beneficial for Hierarchy. They won't accept a rebuttal, all they want to hear from this "unreliable alien who constantly skirts the line of mutiny" is yes sir I shall forget a considerable section of my life and carry on like nothing happened.

And the blue tits. Don't forget the blue tits.


Our women are very flexible, I assure you.


Oh, that's you? I think I heard about that - didn't you spy for the Hierarchy or something?

No you have it all wrong, it was that cunt who married a guy she murdered later and put her mother in jail and then has the gall to brag about doing loyal service to the Hierarchy when all she did was sow discontent between people who should have cooperated during the war and left a child both motherless and fatherless.

But it's alright, the Cause won't mind few bodies in the way of its course. It never has. All it does is eat them!

Here's another batarian stereotype that I've been hearing a lot more in the wake of the Reaper War and the 'unveiling' of a lot of stuff about batarian weapon design, existing stereotypes of batarians being brutal slavers and torturers, and how that stuff all functions in action and in theory. The stereotype: 'Batarians are all experts at torture.' This is a grim one, and it's one I feel the need to address, considering my own experiences.

Simply put? The way those weapons were designed may not be a conscious design decision by some Hegemony military R&D scientist, and with how long the Hegemony stood it's hard to differentiate between what's a racial stereotype, what was government-enforced and what's just a natural, batarian way of thinking. Control chips, all that talk about batarian prison camps being packed full of torture equipment? All true, we made that shit, we’ve gotten good at it and during my time on Erszbat, I was on the receiving end of some of it. And there's probably evolutionary reasons for it when you compound it with everything you look at regarding blade armor, ballistic blades and the harpoon gun thing.

There’s theories among batarian scientists that have been coming out since the fall of the Hegemony that our evolutionary ancestors developed an instinctive urge to resort to lots and lots of pain to keep our prey under control while we killed it. We didn’t pull what humans did - shoot it with an arrow or spear it with a sharp stick and then follow it until it bled to death. It’s a generally-accepted theory that we ran our prey down, and basically smashed it to a pulp before eating it, but we also ended up developing some sort of psychological urge to make the prey hurt before we finished it off. That’s not to say we made it last, but we almost certainly made it hurt, and that’s probably the key point that drives everything else I’m talking about behind this stereotype. The prominent theory right now is that it’s because we’re fucking aggressive as all hell on an animalistic level when we get our fight-or-flight instinct going, and not in the manner of a rampaging krogan going into blood rage or a human defending himself.

Kishocks? Blade armor? Ballistic blades? That’s not R&D at work, that’s animal instinct masquerading as weapon design.

Batarians probably do have some kind of instinctive need to make a guy hurt before he dies. And I mean hurt. Slavers could just as easily resort to strictly non-lethal options for taking someone alive. Instead, you see a bunch of batarian slavers packing Kishocks, and go ‘why the fuck do they use those?’ Well, the answer is ‘because THIS HURTS YOU.’ Then there’s the sheer intimidation factor at work - blade armor looks intimidating. The stories of Kishock victims bleeding out in extreme pain, ballistic blades shredding people and making them die horribly? People hear the stories and they scare them. It adds a layer of psychological warfare to everything batarians do when they go into combat.

We’re not sadists (or at least I’m not), but if a batarian’s coming at you with intent to kill, then unless he’s been trained to suppress that urge, he’s probably going to make it painful (if not necessarily slow).

When I was first introduced to the batarian species, I only felt contempt for them. When the corrupt government of Hegemony collapsed, I learned that the cultural basis for your slavery was just cultural basis for the upper classes who delighted from oppressing the underclasses.

You however are not helping that. If you what claim is true, that all of you bald men and women live for the thrill of inflicting pain and seeing the horror of your prey with your multitude of eyes, then I see you are only the diluted version of the Parnack's base barbarian masters who had the misfortune of discovering element zero and polluting the galaxy with your seed.

The fun fact here?

I can neither confirm or deny with absolute certainty that any of this is correct. The vast majority of that is speculation, theories by scientists whose works were suppressed by the Hegemony, and 2,000 years of history under an oppressive government that may have reshaped our entire culture to suit their needs without us figuring it out along the way.

We literally cannot know for certain.

Also


Wrong.


Cool reading comprehension bro.

You forgot: "Humans think they're better then everyone else"

One would say its due to humanity's impulse to break what we see as a "status quo", colonizing the Verge and Traverse, getting a Council seat while the volus and elcor are still waiting for theirs, etc. Then of course you get people like Cerberus who took that belief to its most illogical extreme. I'd also argue that as we have only really been part of the greater galactic community for one generation, whereas everyone else has already long been integrated, we're still regarded as the immature stepchild who just now have started to learn.

I can't lie and say there haven't been times where we've given off the that we're arrogant and haughty over the years, see above for instance. And I think more than any other race, we're the ones still trying to get the ropes of being a part of the galactic community so to speak.

One would more accurately say it's humanity's impulse to have the status quo suit them.

Tell me a race that didn't have that mindset at one point in its history.

Naw, you know what man, fuck you!! Where the fuck do you get off thinking you can come over and start telling us what's wrong and what's right like some polishing tier climber?

It's fuckin' hilarious you're chatting this shit in a stereotype thread, bro, because you're a crystal fuckin' pure example of a human stereotype. You rock up late, bitching about all the little fuckin' made up injustices you've dreamed up happening to you, and then you fuckin' demand that your way is better and we should all fuckin' listen to you.

It ain't fuckin unreasonable to be suspicious of someone that hangs out with seppers, bro. And don't you dare fuckin' act like you know what that means. A bit of paint and some two-cred fuckin' history vids don't mean you know all the fuck there is to know about Unification, you fuckin' feel? You don't get to tell us how boo fuckin hoo it was that we had to have a war to get our people united. You don't get to abandon your own fuckin' furhead government and come tell us duty don't mean shit and that any colony can just fuck off whenever they want and it's cool because of some xemna shit about freedom.

Fuckin' jumped up clients, bro...

Hey, it's a living, and someone has to do it.

Matter-of-fact: Very well. I've been thinking about how my kind are perceived recently. I've been thinking about it a lot, as it happens.

With slight irritation: I perceive at times that my people are not taken seriously. That is not to say we are not respected; in a way we are. We have many friends. With mild displeasure: But we do not enter into discussion as a serious power in the galaxy. We are not a force to be reckoned with. We are reliable, and predictable, and we are not ambitious.

With spontaneous commitment: So I will put it to you - the belief that elcor are inherently non-aggressive and non-ambitious, and why it's wrong. That is distinct from the belief that elcor are well-meaning in regards to their neighbours, mind you. Bluntly: Some people, it seems, are surprised to hear of our potential for military prowess. You've heard the phrase "living tanks". A tank is not just well defended and hard to bring down; it advances. It mows down obstacles in its path. Wounded: Yet we are viewed as a passive people.

Knowingly: I believe I know why. With conviction: It's because we are herbivores. There's a perception among many of the races that herbivores are non-aggressive. This is not so. Slyly: Watch your heavyset herding animals, your large browsers and grazers. They will undoubtedly be the most dangerous animals on your planets.

Belated uncertainty: Unless you're from Tuchanka.

Projected confidence: Unlike the predator, which must remain free of injury if it's to hunt successfully, the large herbivore can afford to take a few hits. Wryly: Its food doesn't run away.

Matter-of-fact: Obviously, Dekuuna complicates this in our case. *Nothing* on the homeworld can afford much of a tussle because the gravity is too immense. There's no charging or wrestling; if you fell, you wouldn't be getting up. We are cautious, and that is self-evident enough that I won't discuss it here. And it's true that among ourselves we are naturally given to avoid feuding.

Explanatory: Our communication is extensive, scent- and sound- based both, highly complex, as a means of determining intent and status, sending messages, heading off conflict before it leads to physical confrontation - which could be fatal. We are not very aggressive among ourselves. Wryly: disagreement is resolved before anything that the rest of you would find interesting ever occurs. Sharply: There is the important point - we are non-aggressive among ourselves. With those who can be reasoned with. With emphasis: We are herbivores, large ones; we're heavyset and we invest in our family groupings very closely. There are - or were - predators on Dekuuna. Firmly: Yes, we close ranks, we form a tight circle, we present a wall of muscle. But we also charge. Not physically, like the lower herbivores on your worlds - as said, Dekuuna isn't the place for that - but conceptually, with our brains, not our brawn. Proudly: And we are methodical. When we press forward, nothing stands against us. We mow them down.

With artificial significance: We are known for our self-sufficiency. We were not so lucky as to be granted mastery of our world from the outset.

With wounded pride: Too many mistake caution for passivity. Vaguely boastful: My people established a regular trade route to the Serpent Nebula within a generation of making contact. We are rebuilding at tremendous rate, despite the damage to the homeworld. Dismissive: I hear it often. The elcor have no ambition, the elcor are non-competitive, the elcor are content in their ways. Firmly: We can be ambitious. We can take steps to alter the universe to suit our needs, and we do not back down when we do. Challenging: Have any of you ever seen footage of a Darkscreamer or a Hornfist? With conviction: No. Because they no longer exist. Pointedly: We protect our own, and we are every bit as capable of aggression and ambition as the rest of you.

Sober reflection: One race that does not underestimate the elcor: batarians. Reading the post of Mekan, I see why. They're predators, they know how inherently dangerous the large herd-dwelling herbivore is. They know what they're up against. Bitterly mournful: some of the batarian operatives have elcor slaves - our own slaver advertises them in his signature, does he not? Rhetorical: Do you know what it takes to keep one of my kind in bondage? With conviction: No, we are not underestimated there.

Not all of us are whores Celeste, no matter how much you believe it so. I worked my way through college as an eezo miner, never once spread my legs to get my way. And you're wrong about sex being the asari people's primary weapon. Our main weapon, if you will is deception. Deception about the beacon, deception involving the council law, that alone is a more telling attribute about asari than our promiscuouity, or the 'wild' years. Sex is but a tool, not the defining aspect of our approach to dealing with the galaxy.

And since I brought up that particular specter, the galaxy is wise to our act sisters, we can't go on pretending that it was our 'cultural superiority' that allowed us to reach the stars. Much as I hate to admit it, the scarface and bitter matron are right. We need to find a better way, otherwise those self-important old women on Thessia will just keep making the same damn mistakes, and we maidens will pay the price.