Many things result in something being blown way out of proportion, could social stigma be the cause behind this? Whenever something “hits the news”, most of the time if it is severe enough, people tend to panic as there first instinct, but most of the time the news or wherever you read the news is making it sound worse the it actually is. Social stigma is when society creates a normal for reacting to certain situation, or will create a normal way to react to something. For example, when AIDS became an “epidemic”, and people didn’t want to touch or even walk with someone with AIDS, it was because they didn’t understand it and therefore heard it was a terrible disease and people panicked. People thought, if we ignore them, they will go away, or like people said in Helen Epstein’s text, “out of sight, out of mind” (page 109). Social stigma usually relate to gender, race, culture, etc. and it is hard for most people to shy away from that because a lot of people do it and it sometimes becomes “the normal”. Social stigma makes us turn on people because they may have something affecting them. People, like with AIDS thought instantly that it was contagious, but in fact it isn’t. OR they thought it was a “gay” disease, when in fact AIDS can also be contracted through blood. Helen Epstein’s text talked a lot about this and how she saw these organizations getting people talking about it and not treat anyone infected like they have the plague. Social stigma seems to always do more harm then good, people when they hear about something like this need to look it up and do more research then just what they hear from an article on facebook (which can be VERY false). Everyone deserves to be treated fair, no matter if they are sick, or have a different skin color, we were all created equal and should be treated that way.
