Gender stereotyping - sauce for the goose

I ordered a book for myself via the internet a few days ago, and we were slightly surprised to find that it came today addressed to my wife.

I had used a pre-saved address setting which named both of us, and the seller must have assumed as the book was a regency romance novel that it had been ordered for Brigid rather than myself.

In this instance the fact that someone jumped to a false conclusion about reading tastes based on a gender stereotype is amusing rather than annoying. But it does illustrate the point that many of us find it far too easy to jump to false conclusions about people based on irrelevant information such as what sex they are without even realising what we are doing.

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