The use of negative, passive images in communication is a well-known tool of against women and people of different ethnic origins for a very long time. Women have traditionally been portrayed as wives or mothers, powerless, unpaid servants to our fathers, husbands, brothers, and lovers. If women are seen as having power, it is generally confined strictly to the family circle and does not extend to economic or political power. Every country and tribe uses similar negative communication methods when they are trying to show how much better they are than a neighbouring country or tribe. These jokes always portray the Scotsman as mean, the Irishman as stupid and the Englishman as the only one who is clever.
Every culture has similar examples.
The leper is always at the gate of the church - never inside. What is really happening is that we are all communicating our negative response to difference. We are saying that anything or anybody who is different from our accepted ideas of who should be part a particular group should be excluded, mocked and criticized. The promotion of negative images is not the only oppressive communication technique. The more firmly we believe in the particular group that we come from or support the better we become at communicating in a way that makes people who are different unable to hear or understand what we are saying.