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.