Gender & Sex

                                                                           

    Gender is the socially constructed idea and Sex is a part of your identity which you are born with. but as we all know society likes to label and categorize things so, we have this idea attached to gender that if you are a man you are supposed to be storing and powerful and if you are a women you should rather stay at home and watch kids. this chapter and reading reminds me of the Ted video we have watched earlier which described the society's expectations attached to the idea of gender. if you are a woman you are weak and if you are a man you became eventually stronger than the woman.

The article i read was "Understanding Sexual Orientation". in this article the author talked about homosexual and heterosexual studies. i found the article very interesting and informative. the author of the article said that each of us are born into the sexual orientation meaning at birth we are either homosexual or hetrosexual and it stays same from the time of birth till the death, he said that there is nothing in between these two such as bi-sexual. but at the end of the article he said that people could be either one of them. the article stated that just because someone is gay doesn't mean that their voices will be high pitched or they won't have the masculinity. homosexuality has different types not all of the homoexuals have the same personality or behavioral traits.   
even though its not real clear what causes sexual orientation but it is true that you can't just decide who you wanna be with because it all comes naturally. 
gender is sometimes described differently in different cultures. some cultures premisses women more than in other cultures. one of the many hurdle for LGBT's have to face is homophobic, there are actually people out there who would harm people because of homosexuality. there are many reasons attached to that, some of those homophobic are religious extremists, than there are those who doesn't have any information about homosexuality, they are not aware of gay people's issues so they just start hating the idea and become homophobic. 
we as people create categorize to label and categorize people around us so that we can judge them easily and point a finger at it. as a human being we should all be free from these socially constructed ideas about race,sexuality, gender,ethnicity and etc. 

  

                                 


                                 
                     "Race & Ethnicity"

The research video "Power of illusion"  and chapter 10 goes together very well. Chapter 10 gives us the details about race and ethnicity. Since the racism is one of the major issues in united states i liked reading this chapter.also the video mingled with the chapter so well, the video explains the ideas and the thought process further by providing us the research about race and biological factors. it is still true a lot of people do judge people just by their looks. in my own personal experience when i go out a lot of people from different culture and races assume that i might be from the same place as they are just because i fit in their description of that particular race. 

In early times most of the scientists and researchers did the research of pseudo-science and they said that the race is biological factor which in reality is not. they basically focussed on the phenotype and never actually rugged deeper into the genetics. Race is not based on biology its rather an ascribed idea which is given to people of different race by society, when we say society it actually means that this idea was provided by the men in power meaning white men, the idea around race is totally socially constructed. Back in 1920s when a black American athlete won the Olympics scientist started to find a gene that is inherited because of the race.  The geneticist said in the video that we can't isolate a gene for athletic performance or intelligence. In the video they performed an experiment with students of different races, all of the students assumed that they will be more likely similar to the person who belongs to the same race group, but when the DNA result came up their hypothesis turned out to be false. We attached meanings of assumptions with the skin color which is absolutely an absurd idea.

No disease or trait is in the of any particular race group. As humans our DNA is 99.9% similar to one another doesn't matter what race or ethnicity group you belong to. The article i read goes with the research video and chapter very well. "Hispanic dropout mystery", in that article author mostly talked about the dropout percentage of students from schools, the rate of hispanic students are comparatively much higher than the other race group. 30% of the dropouts are hispanic this number is almost twice as high as other race groups. the author talked about many different ideas about why hispanic students do that. main prominent reason are the language issue, unemployment ( students have to support their families because they are not rich and can't just stay focused to studies), or sometimes because of the background hispanic people belong too since most of the hispanic immigrants are working class they don't give enough time to their children. i believe society plays an important role for those students who are dropouts or falls back because we tend to behave like what we have been told if people are keep telling someone that you are not worthy or your are not capable of doing something, this message will be fed into this person's mind, specially when you start feeding all of the negatives into an immature brain. 

Our society is shaped around the stereotype. People have the tendency to label anyone easily thats why we classified people into different race/ethnicity groups as well as social class.  Racism has always been around it just changes its faces sometimes otherwise it never disappeared.

"THE RICH & THE POOR"

 The video "People like US( social class in america)" showed us the real differences we have in class system in America. How the people who are the 1% of the population controls indirectly the rest of the middle class and poor class people. The inequality starts from there. People tend to separate their self from the other classes who are not as rich as they are. high society rules around the idea of materialism, sometimes we are not even aware of it and people are judging us based on our appearances. the video tells us that the neighborhood we live in, the gatherings we attend the cloths we buy, the way we move/behave in society etc everything tells us about the class we belong to, as it has been said in the video as well  that "its all about cash" if you are not born with the gold spoon in your mouth you are not welcomed in that so called high society. The researcher in that video tells us that it is almost impossible to change the class even when you do fall under that category of 1% you still won't be able to get along with the people who have inherited their wealth compare to people who reached that status by working their ass off because reaching the goal to earn a lot of money is not enough to be able to considered as upper class, the upper class has its own lifestyle and its own way of pursuing it. The video also showed us how one women was teaching another woman to move in the higher society, " how to marry rich" people and how to vow the men from that higher society so that you can get married and change your class status. The more money you have the more facilities you will get and the more respect you you will earn. 

The video connects to the article "cause of death, inequality" by Alejandro. the talks tells us that the main issue of the deaths in poor is because of the inequality and injustice of the system. lack of education and income could lead to the death as well as not having access to healthcare.those who have lower class status has more stress because they are trying hard everyday to get the higher status in society. Alejandro stated in his article that many of the stress related diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure, heart attacks/strokes, homicide the cause of due to the pressure of society and those diseases are more common in poor class people, these diseases could lead to the death as well because  most of the poor people don't have education. the inequality is everywhere in the system said the author of the article. people who doesn't have awareness because they never had the education about it they tend to make wrong decision when it comes to the idea of "educated guess".  also the better education you have the better chances you got to have a well paying job. but education has become so expensive to get, its getting harder for lower class people to survive and get basic necessities getting education is far beyond the question.

The chapter 9 "Inequality" from our book also emphasize on the same topic. Chapter explains the different class systems and how does it work the stratifications of the class. The article, the documentary video and the chapter it all goes with each other and makes it clear that the class system really do exist in our country, also it suppresses the poor. 

The family system also plays a huge role determining your class. A person who lived within the family he/she is most likely to have a better education because family usually help each other. in my own personal experience I'm not working right now but I don't need to worry about it as much as my friend who is own her own. Family helps each other having both of your parents at your side gives you moral support and at times you get tension free because you know you'll have your people by your side when you need them.

7. Deviance

Society and Deviance

1.      Last week in my bio class one of the student was Chewing gum in a class and snapping it loudly while the teacher was giving the lecture, I take it as one of the many everyday deviant act, she was breaking the norm of discipline.

2.      One of the deviant acts that I did was taking my mom’s pain killer without asking her and gave it to one of my friend who needed it I could say this was an example of primary deviance. I used to work in a doctor’s office, there were many patients who always wanted extra prescriptions, and they kept asking for more and more refills even when they have been already treated for the problem this is an example of medicalization deviance.  

3.      I have been into a house that was really dirty, you could smell some weird and dirty smells and everything else was a mess, but the people living in that house had no problem with that even though they seems clean when you look at them individually. Keeping your house really dirty and leaving the garbage around the house for too long could also be an everyday example of the deviance act.

4.      Not holding the door for the person right behind you, also not giving up the seat to disabled on subway and buses.

5.      Engaging in a sexual activity with a corpse could be related to loner deviance.

6.      Driving into the emergency lane without any emergency and just because of the traffic.

7.      Cheating on someone who is really close to you, like your best friend or boy/girl friend.

 

 

“Positive functions of the underserving poor” by Herbert J. explains the thirteen functions of the undeserving poor people. This article gave us the clear image, of how society treats and uses the poor people when needed, and then ignores them after their work has been done. How people look down at these poor people and show their hatred towards them. Society and people in power use poor for their own benefit they hire them on under-paying salaries. This whole act of society stigmatizes poor people. We label poor people as a bad impression of our society but we never really think that it’s the richer who gets richer and uses poor for their own good and then make them look bad in front of the society by blaming them the poor.

6 SOCIETY AND SOCIALIZATION

Society and Socialization

It was very interesting to watch “Killing Us Softly”. Jean Kilbourne talked about how media portray standards of femininity thru advertisement and how these wrong ideal standards are damaging our society. The society has always been giving this impression to women that the most important thing for women is how they look. The perfect image of body we sees in ads is the image less than 5% of American women have.  The beauty that inspires everyone isn’t real even the models in those pictures don’t look like that in reality. Kilbourne said in her video that objectification of women’s body can lead to violence against women. The women’s bodies are always shown in the ads as a sexual object. The ads always have girls as passive person and boys are shown as active/strong image to the society. Kilbourne explained how everyone is exposed to the commercials and how it changes people’s mind unconsciously.

When we think of being a girl a picture comes to everyone’s mind, that is a pictures of someone who is passive, vulnerable, pretty, susceptible, or in simple words just the opposite of tough, encouraged and just opposite of masculinity. The negative image of women affects men and women both in our society. We should not label the qualities according to gender, like the media and society made us see it that way because as humans we all share the same qualities, it’s just that it has been suppressed and we are forced to focus on the emotions and qualities that only go with our gender.

Second video, “A Call to Men” is similar to Kilbourne’s killing us softly. Porter explained in detail about the problems and issues that are attached to the society’s definition of manhood. He talked about the ways we construct the manhood in today’s society , he used tormenting samples from his own personal life experience (the way his dad felt sorry because he was crying in front of him on his other son’s death). He used this model called a ‘man box’, he explained the terms described in the man box. It tells us how men are portrayed in our society as a non-emotional, agitated, aggressive, sexualized and dominant. Masculine mentality leads men unquestionably to suppress or overpower women, and that leads men to engage in obnoxious and fierce behavior towards women.

Not only this causes a problem to women but it causes trouble to men as well the violent and aggressive behavior causes problems for men as well  and each other, because not all of the men are very strong or emotionless. It’s hard for men to keep their emotions and feelings suppressed even when they are in a company of other men they never show the real feelings because they don’t want to be called as “girls”, which is apparently a very bad thing in our society.  Majority of violent crimes are done by men and a large population of prisoners are men. Acting or behaving like men is not the problem, but the real problem is the violence and insensitivity attached to the value of being manly. This lead us to violent behavior against the weak doesn’t matter men/women.

                Both of the videos inter-connect with each other. Both of the speakers in videos focus on society’s expectation from men and women. The way these ideas have been drilled into our heads it’s hard to change it all at once. Both videos also relate to the chapter 6 “socialization” because the chapter explains the society’s behavior or pattern of men/women the way they are expected to behave or socialize. The chapter explains how it all starts from a smaller scale and it goes onto a higher level. For example we start to learn how we should behave from out family, the differences between being a girl or boy. And to a larger extent when the kids are exposed to society it also conveys almost the same message as we have been taught or seen.
 

The reading “Retro wife” and “Parents' socialization of children” also connects with the chapter and the videos. The article retro wife is also about the women’s expectations and how women are wired in their minds about what they should do and what’s more ethical to them. This article was about a young educated working mom how she felt bad about not staying at home. So she quit her dream career and decided to stay home to look after her husband and kids. Society as whole always gave that impression that men are supposed to be the bread earner and women should stay at home and take care of house chores. Unconsciously we all do things that have been seeded in our minds for centuries. Women always take pauses in their career to take care of the house or family unlike men.

The second reading about parents’ socialization of children talks about how parents from different culture raise their kids. Unexpectedly the results of the cross cultural parenting research were almost the same because all of the parents want to raise a good child besides the cultural differences the way of parenting were similar. There were three parenting styles that the author talked about “Authoritarian”, “Authoritative” and “Permissive”. A parent can have more than on style depending on which kid they are talking to. In families boys and girls are treated differently and that’s how we begin to shape our society by marginalizing the characteristics of a girl and a boy.

In my own personal experience my parents are more lenient and permissive when it comes to my brother but they are very authoritarian when it comes to allowing me for something they allowed my brother. Like they would never ask him where he have been if he’d come late at night, on the other hand when I’m late, I’m not allowed to go out with those friends again until they forgets the incident.

Society’ expectation, parenting, socialization, men/women’s behaviors they all go hand in hand and that’s how we shape our society. If we really want an unbiased society than we should stop labeling and be open minded in real because media and everyone just says that men and women are equal but in reality it is not true.

Power & Oppression

Chapter 5 “Power” gives us the better understanding and meaning of power. It explains the types and depth of power related terms. Reading chapter 5 and the article “Five faces of oppression” as well as watching the video of “Milgram Experiment” gives me the clear understanding of power and oppression. The video of the experiment relates to the chapter very well. In chapter 5 Bertrand Russell (philosopher & social critic) said “the fundamental concept in social sciences is power, in the same way in which energy is the fundamental concept in physics”. The term “Power” can be used in so many different ways it works from macro level to micro level. In everyday life we are sometimes forced and obliged to follow the rules which are set by the people who are in greater power than us. That goes back to the Milgram experiment the five main points of video in my point of view are:
i) Obedience: teachers obeyed the researcher even though they didn’t really had to.
ii) Authority: teachers had the authority to stop the experiment but they didn’t use it.
iii) Violence: teachers didn’t really felt the violence of experiment and 9 out of 12 went all the      way to the end.                                                                       
iv) Behavior: a lot of teachers didn’t pay attention to the yelling and shouting of learner next door.
v) Significance: a lot of teacher went on to continue the experiment without thinking of consequences.
The experiment showed different aspects of power. In the experiment the learner was in a separate room and he had electrodes attached on to his arms. Other person (teacher) and scientist went into a room that had an electric shock generator with a series of switches from 15v to 450v (extreme shock).   After hearing the voices of the learner next door the teacher kept on asking the researcher if they could stop the experiment. Even though the teacher could stop it anytime he/she wanted it to stop but they looked upon the researcher as a power figure of authority. This experiment also shows the behavior of a normal person how they could easily hurt others the violence in a common person is similar to anyone we label as a violent person. The teacher took the assignment more serious and some of them really gave the importance to the experiment and did not really care about the learner’s shouting and yelling and thought that it was not them who had the authority to stop the experiment they rather focused on the experiment. It shows that they felt they were obliged to obey even though they had the authority to stop the violence or walk away but they didn’t, this was the good example of “culture of silence”. The experiment gives the example of both types of culture of silence. It was shocking for me how 9 out of 12 people went all the way to the end to finish the experiment without even thinking about the learner and consequences. If I was in those teacher’s shoes I wouldn’t have gone that far to hurt anyone because this is like an example of someone giving you poison and telling you to give it to others it is good for them or it is the part of some sort of experiment no one would do it or at least I wouldn’t do it, because you need to think before you act.

the reading “five faces of oppression” gives us a better understanding of oppression we conquer these five types in everyday life:

Violence: violence is most obvious and prominent form of oppression. We see violence everyday all over the world.  Violence takes place when people get xenophobic and hate crimes begin to start.

Exploitation: it is to miss use labor to benefit one’s own self. It is mainly related to the power of economy. Even in United States people get exploited by their employers every day.

Marginalization: is like cornering people when you think they are not as good as you or as compatible as your own race or society. People get marginalized when they are looking for jobs. Even though we say people get jobs on merit but it’s not really true.

Powerlessness: awareness is needed when you have powerlessness. People in power always oppress those who don’t have power. Powerless are always dominated by those who has power.

Cultural imperialism: it is the culture of majority.it could be described as values or rules set by the authority or government. It is the widely accepted culture or language or norms that a society needs to follow.

Culture & Background

My parents are from India but I was born in Pakistan. Since these two countries are neighbors there are not much differences in the culture of these countries its like Canada and USA. the culture of South Asian countries are very much similar to each other. Being part of of two societies gave me the idea to differentiate

South Asian weddings:-
weddings in our south Asian countries are so different from the weddings here in USA.  Indian weddings are so popular because our weddings are humongous. It was a cultural shock for me when I first attended an American wedding of my co-worker 6 years ago. She told me how she planned her wedding and how difficult it was for her to manage the expenses being from a middle class family. It was different for me because weddings in our culture are financed by parents and the brides and grooms do not have to worry about the expenses, the couple only has to worry about their new apartment/house and the wish list. All of the family members and friends pick something from the couple’s wish list and give them that item as a gift in the end whatever is left unpicked bride’s parents provide it to the couple. A lot of people consider it as a dowry but it actually is not because no one forces anyone to provide something very expensive because that's how these societies are shaped. One more thing that you will notice is colors we have so many colors in our weddings specially the red color, red is considered as a color of happiness. Big fat weddings are the popular culture in India and all the south Asian countries. At my sister’s wedding 400 people were invited and this is an average number it could go high up to 700-800. The wedding dinners and functions starts 1 week before the wedding and the expenses are divided between the parents of the couple so the couple does not have to worry about anything. The bride is not allowed to participate in any house chores 2 weeks prior to wedding all she has to do is take care of herself and be ready to her big day. Seeing my co-worker working till the very last day prior to her wedding was something which was really weird for me.

 

 

this is the picture of the Venue of my sister's wedding.

Henna: Henna is the most important symbol of our weddings and culture you will never find an Indian or Paki bride without the henna. girls apply henna on their hands not only on wedding but on religious occasions or holidays as well. When I first moved here in the united states 11 years ago I was new to this country and a bit hesitant towards everything on an occasion my mom put henna on my hands( I love henna by the way) and the next day I went to school I used to live in Connecticut at that time everyone at that school gave me a weird look because they didn’t know what it was on my hands one of my friend actually thought it was a disease than I realized that my behavior was out of the norms of this culture and next day I explained everyone what, how & why I had that on my hands. But as time goes by the knowledge and multiculturalism is spreading more and more know about different cultures and its values, now almost everyone in NY knows about the henna tattoo and people really like it.

The other thing that made me uneasy at the very beginning when I moved here was eye contact. In our culture younger are not supposed to make an eye contact with elderly such as grand parents and other older respected family members, or anyone who you should give extra respect like a preacher or even professor sometimes. This has a strong value in our culture if you gaze at elderly in their eye it means you are not respecting them or this could be used against your parents in the family that it’s your parents who never taught you how respect the elderly, whereas here in united states when you don’t give an eye contact during a conversation you are giving an impression of not paying attention. No eye contact could be considered as a nonmaterial culture in the society where i have come from.

Shisha (hookah) is another famous cultural object that I would like to talk about people from all across the world knows about shisha. I was amazed to see a shisha lounge in NY when I first got here. It is like a subculture here in NYC, I did not expected that people here would know about it but later I found out there are many shisha lounges available here in NYC and it is popular among certain people. It is mostly associated with Middle Eastern culture because shishas is very popular there but it is also a part of my culture usually the sub cultures who are descended from Arabs or Mughal ancestry shisha is a part of their material culture. the difference between middle eastern and my culture in regards to shisha is that in middle eastern countries it is a norm and in my country it is considered almost like a high culture.