Sunday, April 10, 2011
In Conclusion...
In conclusion of my four chapters I hope you learned a lot about the four major topics I discussed in Sociology. Now to talk about a few of the major global concerns that are in wraps with my topics. First in the topic of birth control. Just recently in the government's new budget plan a very important, yet contraversial, thing was cut. All funding for Planned Parenthood was cut from the budget. Planned Parenthood, as I discussed in my chapter about sexuality, is a clinic where teenagers can go to get all kind of sexual health services so that they can remain healthy. During the time of adolescense, many teens are sexually active, but don't feel like they can confide in their parents. Therefore, when they are looking for help and for answers, Planned Parenthood is a great place for teens to turn to so that they can get the services they need for free or for very little money. Because of recently hard economic times, all funding that Planned Parenthood received from the government was cut completely so that there will no longer be any free services available to Planned Parenthood customers. Birth control is a very contraversial thing, but it is a great prevention method for many teenagers out there to ensure that they won't get pregnant when they are ready to have a baby. Yes, people shouldn't be sexually active if they can't handle the consequences, but birth control is a really great safety method so that teens can really feel safer about their actions. The next topic I want to discuss is Gay Marriage. This is something that is really frowned upon by many people who live in the U.S. Gay marriage isn't the worst of all things though, as a lot of gay and lesbian people will argue. Gay people can love just as well as straight couples and don't cause nearly as much harm as they cause good in the world. People are also very against the idea of gay adoption because they think that children shouldn't be raised by people of this concept. However, since gay and lesbian couples cannot conceive correctly according to biology, adoption is the only option available to these people to get children and to raise them. Just as I said before though, many gay and lesbian couples are standing up for themselves and fighting against all opposers because they know they can love just as good as everyone else. I agree with them completely. If I child can be raised knowing that they are loved is one of the most important things in childhood. Also, as long as the couple can provide the kid with everything that they need to grow up healthy and happy, they should be fine. Those are my views on two very contraversial and recent issues in the United States. Thanks for looking at my blog! I hope you enjoyed my insight on these many different concepts.
4: Families
Bye Bye, Love
Divorce is sad. But some folks are finding humor--and profit--in it
When Angie Schmidt's seven-year marriage ended, there wasn't much to laugh about. But what she craved was a little levity. "There was nothing out there that really made people laugh at themselves and laugh at breakups," she says. "I thought, Wouldn't it be great to create a business that does this?" Last September she started an online store dedicated to lightening the mood--smashingkatie.com, named after "the other woman." By the holidays, the site was flooded with orders.
The annual number of divorces has dropped nearly a third since the early 1980s, to 16.4 for every 1,000 married women age 15 and over, but 40% to 50% of first marriages still break up. In the spirit of American ingenuity that can find a way to make a buck out of even the worst situations, a cottage industry has sprung up to help people cope with and often celebrate this passage from one part of their lives to the next. "Once divorce gets so common, the human approach is to treat it like another aspect of life," says sociologist David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers.
Business for products aimed at the newly divorced, from greeting cards and post-breakup getaway packages to custom-made cakes and joke gifts like wedding-ring coffins, is booming. New Orleans resident Reneé Savant bought a hearse, thinking she would rent it out for over-the-hill-birthday celebrations. But since she began her service last October, the hottest demand has come from clients who want to ride around as they and friends celebrate the death of their marriages. "I would never in a million years have thought the fad would be divorce parties," says Savant.
No party is really complete without a cake, and increasingly, bakers are being asked to come up with fanciful designs that give new meaning to the pun "just desserts." Joan Spitler, co-owner of Cake Divas in Los Angeles, says she was used to baking cakes for "people's second, third and even fourth weddings" but has recently been getting orders for confections to mark the end of marriages as well. The designs feature scenarios like a bride kicking her former groom down the tiers of the cake. At Sprinkles Custom Cakes in Winter Park, Fla., Larry Bach has been getting requests for his upside-down wedding cake with the bride or groom's legs sticking out at the bottom as if the cake had crashed down on the figure à la the Wicked Witch of the East.
Like Schmidt, many of the divorce entrepreneurs are people who have gone through the experience themselves. After Scott Schmeizer, an executive with a housewares firm based on Long Island, N.Y., got divorced in 2004, he worked with a designer to manufacture a knife rack that looks like a human figure. He called it the Ex. "It was cathartic," he says. Others apparently think so too; it now comes in six different colors, retails for $120 and is one of the firm's top sellers. Schmidt's online breakup boutique sells mugs that say things like BOO FRICKIN' HOO and books like How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is the Antichrist. "Why take life so seriously?" she asks.
Most separation-inspired items--the Ex, ex-wife toilet paper, ex-boyfriend voodoo dolls--may be intentionally designed to evoke laughter from the otherwise painful situation of a breakup. "They're filling a need," says Princeton anthropologist John Borneman. But he and other experts worry that the surge of products is symptomatic of an increasingly fickle investment in marriage. "A classic case where market intervention is sapping the moral fiber of a society," Popenoe says.
Marriage experts say it's too soon to know how these new rites will affect future relationships. "We'll have to wait and see whether such things help you find a new mate sooner, and once you do, if you're going to stay with that person as you didn't in the first round," Popenoe says.
Throwing a divorce party turned out to be just the right thing for Lesley Rogers, whose five-year marriage ended in 2006. Rogers, a communications director in Seattle, met her current boyfriend that night when another friend brought him to the celebration.
(Bye Bye, Love. By: Sharples, Tiffany, Time, 0040781X, 2/11/2008, Vol. 171, Issue 6)
-This website provides divorce information to many families experiencing hard times. It covers topics such as child custody, visitation, child support, alimony, and property division.
-This website provides help for specifically women. It helps talk women through the hurt of divorce and the process of rebuilding their lives.
"When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they "don't understand" one another, but a sign that they have begun to at last." - Helen Rowland
Families
Across 2. Consensual unit based on intimacy, economic cooperation, and multual goals. 7. Those never married, widowed, or divorced. 8. The legal ending of marriage. 9. Whole network of parents, children, and other relatives who form a family unit. 10. Married adults with stepchildren, cohabiting stepparents, and stepparents who don't reside together. Down 1. Married couple resides together with their children. 3. Child abuse involving sexual relations between persons who are closely related. 4. Primary group of people who form a cooperative economic unit to care for offspring and each other and who are committed to maintaining the group over time. 5. Pracitce of men and women having multiple marriage partners. 6. The practice of sexually exclusive marriage with one spouse at a time.
I chose this chapter of the book because the concept of a family is something that most everyone is blessed enough to experience. Families are mostly thought of as a great support system of people who love you and who are always there for you. However, within all things that are good, there are things that are bad as well. Such as mentioned in this chapter: divorce, abuse, and the issue of just not getting along. I chose to focus on the common experience of divorce because I have seen many people who have experienced this and who have had great problems with this issue.
The first article that I chose for this post talked a lot about one women's specific experience with divorce and how she had to go about the process of rebuilding her life. I found it entertaining and enlightening. Next, the picture I chose for this chapter was actually a graph representing the divorce rates over a 50 year period. The graph showed how rates of divorce have gone up greatly. My video I included was from the Mormon Church. It had a church member talking about divorce and their ideas of divorce within their church. I grew up surrounded my mormons which is why I found this video interesting. My two websites were very similar. The first one was a divorce support website that was a resource of helping people get through the hard times of divorce and the different things that come along with a divorce that need to be addressed. The second website was the same kind of website but aimed directly at women. I found it interesting to see the differences between a women related website and a website aimed for both genders. Lastly, my quote was included to help people see that divorce isn't always a bad thing. It does cause a lot of people hurt and hatred towards others but at the same time it can greatly release stress in some people and in some marriages. It was really interesting to research different aspects of a divorce to see what was all included in this different concept.
3: Sexuality
Ending Discrimination based on Sexual Orientation
It is incredibly heartening to see that you understand that to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, you must use your powerful voice and the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to stand up for the equal dignity and worth of all Americans, including those who are LGBT. Laws that discriminate against LGBT people, or against same-sex couples and our children, should be repealed. Existing federal anti-discrimination measures should be vigorously enforced and interpreted to protect individual rights, including those of LGBT people. And LGBT people should be afforded full legal equality. On these issues, we are truly hopeful that you will lead the country forward throughout your presidency. I want to highlight several issues that require work, several of which you have already indicated will be priorities of your administration.
I chose this chapter because I find sexuality very interesting to me. Sexuality as been around according to the bible since the beginning of time. It's something that most people feel very uncomfortable discussing with others. However, there are so many different debates constantly going on within the realm of human sexuality like birth control, gay rights, abortions, etc.
I first chose my article to appear in my blog because I found it very informative and educational on how to succesfully end the argument over sexual orientation. Next, I chose my picture because it shows a man at a gay pride celebration who is publicly announcing his sexual orientation to the world and how he's so confident in himself. Next, I chose my video because it is a discriptive video on the commonly used birth control pill. It tells the listener all about what the birth control pill has to offer and how effective it is. My two websites I chose covered different topics within sexuality. I first chose the San Fransisco Pride Community's website because I had the chance to experience the celebration in San Fransisco last year. Also, I thought it was a good place to do any research on the topic because you can hear directly from the source. My other website talked about birth control methods through Planned Parenthood. This is a very common place for teenagers to go to get the methods needed for safe sex practices. Lastly, my quote had to do mainly with the idea of love as a whole. It's from an ancient philosopher who basically says that as long as love is love then what is the problem? I find sexuality very interesting because it's always going to be a withstanding issue across the world.
It is incredibly heartening to see that you understand that to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, you must use your powerful voice and the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to stand up for the equal dignity and worth of all Americans, including those who are LGBT. Laws that discriminate against LGBT people, or against same-sex couples and our children, should be repealed. Existing federal anti-discrimination measures should be vigorously enforced and interpreted to protect individual rights, including those of LGBT people. And LGBT people should be afforded full legal equality. On these issues, we are truly hopeful that you will lead the country forward throughout your presidency. I want to highlight several issues that require work, several of which you have already indicated will be priorities of your administration.
Publicly funded discrimination against LGBT people should be ended immediately. It is impermissible for federal funds to be used to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, whether these monies are used to pay federal workers salaries, to pay federal contractors, or to provide block grants to private social service providers. Among other actions, the Office of Special Counsel, charged with enforcing prohibitions on discrimination in the federal workforce, should return to its previous longstanding policy of enforcing prohibitions on sexual orientation discrimination in federal employment. It is time to extend these protections to those who face discrimination based on gender identity and expression as well.
As you know, we need your leadership on a long overdue federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by private employers. Equal workplace opportunity is an essential aspect of equal citizenship. Without the ability to support ones self and ones family, individuals are deprived of self-esteem and self-sufficiency, a home and a place in the community, and access to health insurance and health care. Unfortunately, many LGBT workers across this country face serious employment discrimination every day. Today, in thirty states it remains legal for an employer to fire someone for being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. In thirty-eight states, a transgender or gender-nonconforming person can be fired simply because of his or her gender identity or expression. For transgender people in particular, the incidence of blatant discrimination is incredibly high, resulting in epidemic levels of unemployment and homelessness. I ask you to lead the legislative effort on this issue and to announce that you would welcome the opportunity to sign into law federal legislation that protects people from job discrimination based on both gender identity and sexual orientation, and to say that you would refuse to sign legislation that does not include both.
We wholeheartedly agree that it is time for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), enacted in a wave of anti-gay sentiment in 1996, to be repealed. This discriminatory measure is anathema to the principles of equal protection and due process. It treats individuals differently based on their sexual orientation and bars an entire class of families from a vast array of federal protections. Because of DOMA, same-sex couples are treated unequally with regard to federal benefits and taxes, families are denied the job protections of the Family and Medical Leave Act when a spouse or domestic partner is critically ill, individuals and their children are denied access to survivor benefits when a spouse or partner dies, federal employees are unable to provide their spouses and domestic partners with health insurance coverage, and individuals are denied the right to sponsor a spouse or partner for immigration purposes. These are not special rights; rather, they represent just a few of the 1,138 federal rights, responsibilities, protections, and benefits currently available to all married different-sex couples but denied to every same-sex couple.
We do want you to understand that the fundamental freedom to marry belongs to all Americans regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. Civil unions and domestic partnership laws — whether on the state level or as an avenue to securing federal rights — are a step in the right direction, but they do not represent equality under the law. It is antithetical to the most basic principles of fairness and equality for the government to create a separate family law status for same-sex couples solely in order to reserve the most respected and esteemed family status for heterosexual couples. Relegating an entire class of families to a separate legal status serves only to stigmatize these families as less deserving than others and to invite private and public discrimination against same-sex couples and their children. The children of same-sex couples have the same needs as other children, not only to have their families recognized and protected under the law, but also to be treated with equal dignity and respect. Providing such basic equality is fully consistent with religious freedom and with the diversity of religious views about marriage. No religion can be required to perform marriages for same-sex couples or to recognize marriages between such couples for religious purposes. On this critical issue of equality and freedom with regard to civil marriage, we need our new president to step up and lead as courageous past presidents have done on other vital issues of civil rights.
We agree with you that LGBT people in our military should be able to serve our country honestly and openly. You should work with Congress to repeal the discriminatory Dont Ask, Dont Tell policy, which cruelly prevents patriotic service members, who have voluntarily stepped forward to risk their lives for their nation, from serving openly and with dignity. Under this unfair and outdated policy, more than 12,500 highly trained service members have been discharged simply because of their sexual orientation. Military policies also call for the discharge of otherwise qualified transgender service members. It is unconscionable that these discriminatory policies remain in place while our nation is at war and all military branches report recruiting problems. LGBT people who are willing to serve should be honored, not required to remain closeted and live in fear of being discovered and drummed out of the service.
Also long overdue is a federal hate crimes act that covers both sexual orientation and gender identity. It has been more than ten years since Matthew Shepard was left to die on a Wyoming fence after a brutal beating motivated by anti-gay animus. When Matt was killed, there was a national outpouring of grief and federal officials held a vigil at the U.S. Capitol to decry hate violence and pledge to take steps to end it. His parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, have advocated continuously for this bill, returning to Capitol Hill again and again, but it has yet to be enacted. Unfortunately, the problem of hate violence against LGBT people continues, with federal statistics continuously showing that sexual orientation remains the third highest recorded bias crime in the country and with anecdotal evidence that anti-transgender hate violence occurs frequently, and especially against gender-nonconforming people of color. A federal hate crimes bill should be enacted that covers both sexual orientation and gender identity.
As you know, LGBT youth are especially vulnerable to violence and abuse. For example, in February 2008, fifteen-year-old Lawrence King was shot in the head and killed by a classmate at a California public school simply because Lawrence was identified as gay and often wore makeup and feminine clothing. Peer harassment and bullying based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity and expression continue to be serious problems. One 2007 survey shows that nearly nine out of ten LGBT students had experienced harassment in the past year at school. In addition to enacting strong laws and policies, we must ensure that teachers and administrators are well trained and able to respond to harassment effectively. We must ensure that schools teach all students tolerance and respect. Recognizing that LGBT youth are also at a dramatically increased risk of homelessness, we also need federal appropriations for housing, shelters, and supportive services targeted to these youth. Federal programs and services for older Americans also must stop excluding LGBT elders, and federal research and policies must recognize the existence of this population.
We also ask you to provide leadership to lessen and help end the HIV/AIDS pandemic that takes its highest tolls in the LGBT community, in communities of color, and among poor people. Our nation should be educating people on how to prevent HIV infection using proven methods, not sponsoring ineffective politically motivated programs such as abstinence-only sex education. With HIV, as with so many other issues, our federal government should restore the roles of research and science to their rightful places; politics should not trump the health needs of our people. Prevention, education, treatment, finding a vaccine and a cure — all are needs that should be addressed with common-sense solutions and adequate, reliable funding. Discrimination against people with HIV, including the irrational and unconscionable ban on visitors and immigrants with HIV, should be abolished.
Access to health care and health insurance coverage was a recurring theme throughout the presidential campaign, but the health-care laws and policies of the U.S. government leave some of the most vulnerable behind. Many transgender people who rely on the government for health care — those on Medicaid, those in prisons, or those held in U.S. detention facilities — are denied treatment related to their transgender condition, even when their lives or health depends on it. We need leadership from the executive branch to support federal policies and legislation that will bring an end to this blatant discrimination and neglect.
Mr. President, as you have indicated that you deeply understand, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of this country are working hard, raising our families, and living our lives honestly in the face of the tremendous hurdles caused by the continued prevalence of state-sanctioned discrimination. We look to you for visionary and sustained leadership to ensure that our nations laws protect us and treat our families fairly. The early signs from you and your administration are encouraging. We stand ready to work with you.
(Kendell, Kate. Human Rights: Journal of the Section of Individual Rights & Responsibilities, Fall2008, Vol. 35 Issue 4, p18-19, 2p, 1 Black and White Photograph)
- This is the website for the San Fransisco Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration Committee to educate the world on gay heritage. I had the chance to attend this celebration last year and it was definitely an eye opening experience.
-This is Planned Parenthood's website for helping women get ahold of birth control methods. They have been around for over 100 years and have been providing people everywhere with safe sex practices.
"Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law. - Boethius
Sexuality
Across 4. Attraction that people feel for people of the same or different sex. 5. Usually very young women are forced into commercial sex acts. 7. To apply scientific principles of genetic selection to "improve" the offspring of the human race. 9. the fear and hatred of homosexuality. 10. Struggled over the right to terminate a pregnancy as well as a battle over differing sexual values and a referendum on the nature of men's and women's relationships Down 1. 435,000 teenage girls have babies per year in the U.S. 2. Availability less debated than it was in the not too distant past, strongly related to the status of women in society. 3. Institutionalization of heterosexuality as the only socially legitimate sexual orientation. 6. Widespread changes in men's and women's roles and a greater public acceptance of sexuality as a normal part of social development. 8. the process of defining oneself as gay or lesbian.
I chose this chapter because I find sexuality very interesting to me. Sexuality as been around according to the bible since the beginning of time. It's something that most people feel very uncomfortable discussing with others. However, there are so many different debates constantly going on within the realm of human sexuality like birth control, gay rights, abortions, etc.
I first chose my article to appear in my blog because I found it very informative and educational on how to succesfully end the argument over sexual orientation. Next, I chose my picture because it shows a man at a gay pride celebration who is publicly announcing his sexual orientation to the world and how he's so confident in himself. Next, I chose my video because it is a discriptive video on the commonly used birth control pill. It tells the listener all about what the birth control pill has to offer and how effective it is. My two websites I chose covered different topics within sexuality. I first chose the San Fransisco Pride Community's website because I had the chance to experience the celebration in San Fransisco last year. Also, I thought it was a good place to do any research on the topic because you can hear directly from the source. My other website talked about birth control methods through Planned Parenthood. This is a very common place for teenagers to go to get the methods needed for safe sex practices. Lastly, my quote had to do mainly with the idea of love as a whole. It's from an ancient philosopher who basically says that as long as love is love then what is the problem? I find sexuality very interesting because it's always going to be a withstanding issue across the world.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
2: Gender
Crossing Boundaries
In the last century, the number of people publicly claiming their gender does not match their physical sex has grown substantially. Some key moments in the history of transgender awareness:
"As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." - Patti Smith
I chose this chapter because I think gender is something that is always going to be an major topic of discussion in our world. It's always going to be that one thing that can cause differentiation between groups and people. I chose to focus on Gender Identity Disorder throughout my post because I think that the concept of this disease is really fascinating. It's something that is still a little hard for people to accept and be able to talk about publically which makes it all the mroe interesting.
I chose my article first because I felt like a timeline of major milestones in gender surgeries provided a lot of insight into where I was going to be going with this post. It is able to show how much times have changed over the time. Next I chose my picture because I felt like it demonstrated gender well. It is obviously a picture of a man who looks like half a man and half a woman. This also ties in the idea of Gender Identity Disorder. Next, my video is of the infamous pregnant man. He had a sex change early in his life and was still able to get pregnant and give birth after his wife was unable to get pregnant. I thought it was a miraculous gender story. Next my two websites were very different. One was a more opinionated site that deals with how parents should deal with gender identity at an early age. The second one was Web MD which provided more of the facts about this certain "disorder". My quote was a really great one. It kind of provided my readers with the idea of how important is gender really? Gender is something we will have to deal with until the end of time and it will forever be changing.
In the last century, the number of people publicly claiming their gender does not match their physical sex has grown substantially. Some key moments in the history of transgender awareness:
- 1912 The first attempted sex reassignment, performed on a female desiring to be male, takes place in Berlin. The sexual transition, however, is not fully completed.
- 1919 Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld establishes the Institute for Sexology in Berlin. It becomes a center of study and is one of the first clinics to serve transgendered people.
- 1930 Felix Abraham, a doctor at the Institute for Sexology, publishes the paper "Genital Reassignment of Two Male Transvestites."
- 1933 Man Into Woman," the story of Danish painter Lili Elbe's transition from male to female--and the first-known biography of a transsexual--is published.
- 1952 Christine Jorgensen, formerly George, becomes famous as the first American to undergo sexual reassignment.
- 1970 Dedicated to advocacy and social service, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, one of the first transgender activism groups, is formed by Sylvia Rivera and Martha P. Johnson.
- 1975 Richard Raskind becomes Renee Richards, and later wins the right to compete as a woman in professional tennis.
- 1989 Jazz musician Billy Tipton (center) dies and is found to have female anatomy. Tipton had lived more than 50 years as a man, marrying multiple times and raising children.
- 1999 The film "Boys Don't Cry," about the murder of transgender teen Brandon Teena, is released. The crime had drawn widespread attention to transgender discrimination.
- 2007 In a landmark vote, the House of Representatives passes a bill that would extend hate-crime protection to people victimized because of gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.
-This site goes into depth about how to raise your child fairly. Parents are constantly dealing with the contraversy of making sure their child fits into stereotypes or letting them explore and become the person they want to be.
-This site is a medical dictionary site that biologically explains the idea of Gender Identity Disorder. It talks all about the causes, symptoms, options, etc."As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." - Patti Smith
Gender
Across 4. Passed in 1972, Schooles are forbidden by law to discriminate based on gender. 5. Those who deviate from the binary system of gender including: transsexuals, cross-dressers, and others who don't fit the norm expectations of gender. 6. The fear or hatred of homosexuals. 9. Refers to biological Identity, being male or female. 10. Men and women learn the expectations associated with their sex. Down 1. Explanations that attribute complex social phenomena to physical characteristics. 2. Society in which women have power over men. 3. Socially learned expectations and behaviors associated with members of each sex. 7. A society in which men have power over women. 8. Condition caused by irregularities in the process of chromosome formation or fetal differentiation that produces persons with mixed biological sex characteristics.
I chose this chapter because I think gender is something that is always going to be an major topic of discussion in our world. It's always going to be that one thing that can cause differentiation between groups and people. I chose to focus on Gender Identity Disorder throughout my post because I think that the concept of this disease is really fascinating. It's something that is still a little hard for people to accept and be able to talk about publically which makes it all the mroe interesting.
I chose my article first because I felt like a timeline of major milestones in gender surgeries provided a lot of insight into where I was going to be going with this post. It is able to show how much times have changed over the time. Next I chose my picture because I felt like it demonstrated gender well. It is obviously a picture of a man who looks like half a man and half a woman. This also ties in the idea of Gender Identity Disorder. Next, my video is of the infamous pregnant man. He had a sex change early in his life and was still able to get pregnant and give birth after his wife was unable to get pregnant. I thought it was a miraculous gender story. Next my two websites were very different. One was a more opinionated site that deals with how parents should deal with gender identity at an early age. The second one was Web MD which provided more of the facts about this certain "disorder". My quote was a really great one. It kind of provided my readers with the idea of how important is gender really? Gender is something we will have to deal with until the end of time and it will forever be changing.
1: Race & Ethnicity
Thinking in Black and White
The reasoning behind why I chose this chapter is simply interest. Ever since I could remember I have been interested in segregation and prejudices and stand strongly against them. In my middle school years I started to gain a keen interest for the Holocaust, a supreme example of segregation, and ever since then I haven't been able to stop being intrigued by discrimination.
The reasons why I chose these things to appear on my blog are also simple. The main term I focused on from this chapter is stereotypes. The are one thing that really stands out to me above the rest. They are everwhere and happen to everyone throughout a lifetime. I really liked the article I chose because I thought it made a strong point about how prejudices are formed so early in life by plain examples. Next, I thought the picture that I chose really examplified how stereotypes really are so easy to form and to make a habit of. The two different internet sites I chose were a little bit more random. They still both had to do with stereotypes but they were both taking different sides against the issue which I thought was important to make note of. I love the quote that I chose because it explains stereotypes so simply. We form stereotypes because it's the easy way out and only because of that. Lastly, the video I chose really stood out to me. To hear directly from people who are segregated because how they look, act, or perform really can hit home in many people. Stereotypes are a terrible thing to get involved in, even though we all do it. We should be accepting to everyone in life because you can never be too sure on what someone can offer.
When Mahzarin R. Banaji created a Web site to advance her scholarly research on prejudice, she had no idea it would become a cultural phenomenon. Ten years ago, the social psychologist, then at Yale University, was simply looking for bodies to take a few tests designed to expose hidden racial preferences. Well, she found them. More than three million people so far have visited Project Implicit, which has expanded to offer a buffet of interactive tests -- Banaji calls them "implicit association tests" -- that claim to reveal people's hidden biases, attitudes, and beliefs. Banaji, a professor at Harvard University, is confident in her discoveries about how prejudice and stereotypes operate in adult minds. So she has turned her attention to a new set of subjects -- children.
"There was a woman who we interviewed once, a very liberal lawyer working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, and she told a story about her 5-year-old kid. They were walking through a subway station in New York City, and he found some gum on a wall and put it in his mouth. And she said, 'How could you do that? That gum was in somebody else's mouth!' And he said, spitting it out, 'Yeah, it could have been in the mouth of a black person.' And she was just horrified by this. A child is not born into this world thinking that black is bad and white is good. But I guess I hadn't thought about just how prepared babies are to learn this stuff, how fast they can learn it.
"We created a child version of the Implicit Association Test, so that kids as young as age 5 and 6 can take the test. It's all based on sound and pictures. We were expecting to see that children that age would show no bias. That's not at all what we found. And that surprised the hell out of us. Bias is shown early and at the same magnitude as it is in adults. We did a test with 3-year-olds. To our great surprise again, the bias is not only there, it's the same level as it is in adults. We think it has to do with cultural privileging. Very early, black kids know that their group isn't 'good.' When we begin to talk about how to change our society, I tend to give an enormous amount of weight to simple awareness. Once the awareness is there, there are a million paths to change our lives. We can do it. I very much believe we can. The question is, will we?"
(Thinking in Black and White. By: Fogg, Piper, Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 7/25/2008, Vol. 54, Issue 46)
- This article in Time Magazine talks about how as people age, they can be persuaded to believe either postive or negative stereotypes which can greatly impact their lives. It talks about a specific study done at Indiana University about certain stereotypes.
-This is a large paper done by a student at MIT who explored the concept of stereotypes. He concluded that there are different kinds of discrimination that are appropriate in certain situations.
Race & Ethnicity
Across 2. Evaluation of a social group and the individuals within it based on conceptions about the social group held despite facts that disprove them. 7. Group- Treated as distinct in society based on certain characteristics, some of which are biological, that have been assigned social importance. 9. Process by which a minority becomes socially, economically, and culturally absorbed within the dominant society. 10. Overt negative and unequal treatment of the members of some social group or stratum solely because of their membership in that group or stratum. Down 1. Pattern of extreme segregation. 3. Oversimplified set of beliefs about members of a social group or social stratum. 4. Perception and treatment of a racial or ethnic group as intelectually, socially, and culturally inferior to one's own group. 5. Underclass- Grouping of people who live at the absolute bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in urban areas. 6. Group- Distinct group in society that shares common group characteristics and is forced to occupy low status in society because of prejudice and discrimination. 8. Belief that one's group is superior to all other groups.
The reasoning behind why I chose this chapter is simply interest. Ever since I could remember I have been interested in segregation and prejudices and stand strongly against them. In my middle school years I started to gain a keen interest for the Holocaust, a supreme example of segregation, and ever since then I haven't been able to stop being intrigued by discrimination.
The reasons why I chose these things to appear on my blog are also simple. The main term I focused on from this chapter is stereotypes. The are one thing that really stands out to me above the rest. They are everwhere and happen to everyone throughout a lifetime. I really liked the article I chose because I thought it made a strong point about how prejudices are formed so early in life by plain examples. Next, I thought the picture that I chose really examplified how stereotypes really are so easy to form and to make a habit of. The two different internet sites I chose were a little bit more random. They still both had to do with stereotypes but they were both taking different sides against the issue which I thought was important to make note of. I love the quote that I chose because it explains stereotypes so simply. We form stereotypes because it's the easy way out and only because of that. Lastly, the video I chose really stood out to me. To hear directly from people who are segregated because how they look, act, or perform really can hit home in many people. Stereotypes are a terrible thing to get involved in, even though we all do it. We should be accepting to everyone in life because you can never be too sure on what someone can offer.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Sociology?
"As sociologists revealed, it truly was a world of ghastly contrasts and the more I descended into the bowels of the discipline of sociology, the more I realized just how ghastly it all was.... Now, I realize that I may not be making a good case for the study of sociology. Who wants to study a discipline that’s going to make you depressed? However, I later realized that no matter how bad the world is, how unfair or unwelcome it seems, or how dysfunctional the “structures and functions” are, it’s still our world and we created it. We create it with our actions (or inactions); thus, WE CAN CHANGE the world, and for me, that’s the power of sociology. That’s what redeems us from the pit of despair that sociology puts us in. Sociology is the only discipline that can give us the tools we need to change society. No other discipline can do that. Medicine allows us to manage our sophisticated bodies, engineering allows us to build things, psychiatry provides us a way to be happy within the confines of the world we live in, and history catalogues the past abuses of power and privilege, but only sociology can give us the tools to change the world." - Dr. Mike Sosteric
"Sociology can give us the tools to change the world," what an amazingly powerful quote. This quote alone provides so much insight into such a deep sea of society. Before this semester, I have never looked inside the world of Sociology. It's definitely been an eye-opening experience for me to take a class like this. This class has provided me with a lot of insight on the world that I have never considered before. I thought the book we chose started off very slowly, but now that we are in the midst of things, I am really enjoying all that we are able to discuss as a class. Growing up in Boise, Idaho there isn't a whole lot of cultural diversity. The biggest known ethnic group would be the Basque culture and in the surrounding cities of Boise- like Nampa and Caldwell- the Hispanic culture is very prominent. Other than this though, there is not a whole lot of diversity in ethnic groups. As far as religion goes, the most common religions are Mormonism and Christianity. Coming up to Moscow and starting college this past year, I have definitely experienced many cultural changes. Moscow is a much more relaxed town with a lot of diversity and many different ethnic groups. Maybe it just seems this way because it is so much smaller than Boise, but I feel like the culture is much more rich up here. This is why sociology has really caused me to think a lot about my surroundings. I love all the high drama topics there are related to sociology; religion, racism, politics, sexuality. They are all so controversial and such a hot debate topic. The kinds of debates we experienced throughout this semester over the internet even brought about a few very powerful opinions which makes me want to learn and pay attention even more. Overall, this class has provided me with so much insight on the world and the people who surround me. I am so excited to share with everyone my opinions on my favorite topics we have covered in this class because, like said before, such a powerful opinion can change the world.
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| Mr. Karl Marx: "It's hard to imagine another scholar who has had as much influence on intellectual history" -Sixth Edition of Sociology: The Essentials |
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