That would be culture, which is a general thing.
Oh, come on now, Fatalis. I feel like we're playing merry-go-round word games. I said you made it more specific by adding the word "phenomenon," and you reply by using the word "culture" alone, without the very word that I said made what you wished to discuss specific.
Make three statements regarding cultural phenomena and I will show at least three times why they are generalizations.
Will one do? I'm supposed to be working here. :-) How about this: "In 2002, 1.5% of all native-born Japanese women between the ages of 18 and 25 married a native-born American man, an increase of 87% over the previous year."
No word games. Play nice. And remember two things: first, you said generalizations were "necessary" in discussing cultural phenomena, and second, your post, the one to which most people responded, talked about American women "on the whole."
Yeah you are.
Will one do? I'm supposed to be working here. :-) How about this: "In 2002, 1.5% of all native-born Japanese women between the ages of 18 and 25 married a native-born American man, an increase of 87% over the previous year."
I take it that's a projection over the whole population based on a statistical sample. Ergo, a generalization.
Next!
The whole complaint with generalizations is rather sophomoric. Generalizations are useful and often necessary tools in discourse. They aren't inherently bad, they're only bad if they're incorrect.
Generalizations are about sets, not specifics. A problem can arise if folks assume a generalization about a set is necessarily applicable to any member of that set; that's stereotyping. Stereotyping is not useful, but that doesn't mean that the utility of generalizations should be ignored.