For me, joking between friends in a context of equality is very, very different from imposing such cliches and language on someone who is not in a position of equality, or simply someone we don't know.
I think something similar happens with books. The author has to earn our trust.
One way an author loses my trust (re gender issues, but others too) is if the stereotyped assumptions about what are appropriate and normal for men and women are presented as global facts and go unexamined.
Some women are as bothered, even more bothered, by these things than I am. Some aren't bothered at all by things I consider very sexist. I can't tell other women how they "should" feel based on my own experiences.
People often cry PC when someone points something out or asks that it at least be examined and considered.
To me, it matters whether a writer is coming at something from a place of goodwill. I enjoyed Lynn Flewelling's Tamir triad, but after talking to/reading comments by some people who are transgender, I think she probably got some things wrong about what it feels like to be trapped in body of the wrong gender. She missed an opportunity to explore that in more detail than she did.
I don't think the oversight came from a disdain for the feelings of transgender people or because she had a cisgenderist agenda she was pushing. But I can also understand why someone who is transgender might not enjoy the book. Especially given the lack of accurate and positive portrayals of transgender individuals in fantasy literature (or the media in general), it may scrape against issues that are too raw. I'm certainly not going to lecture other people that they're being too sensitive or "PC" if they can't get around they way this author handled this issue.
This is why I ask my question. I'm not asking for a way to justify making racist characters. I'm asking if when you as a writer create a character, how close to real life (generally speaking) do you make them?
As close to real life as they need to be for the story I want to tell.
But I'd argue that all character traits can be said to be "real life" in that people fall along a spectrum. Some people fit at least some of the stereotypes associated with their culture, gender, religion, race, orientation or whatever, and of course some don't. One is no more realistic than the other in an individual sense.
When a stereotyped character becomes problematic to me is when he or she is presented as if the stereotypes were the overarching reality, and where no other characters are presented who don't fit those same stereotypes. Frex, in my own novel, one of the antagonists is a temple official who cynically uses religion to further his own ambitions.
Yes, this is a stereotype, but such people also exist. But given the nature of the story, I needed this character to be this way.
But I don't want readers to think I'm assuming that all religious people are like this, so I've tried to sneak in religious characters who are more sincere in their beliefs and to also show the more benign and neutral ways religion influences the lives of some of my characters.