Week 9: The Social Construction of Gender

The first few pages of the assigned chapter on gender inequality explains how to distinguish between a person's "sex" and a person's "gender." While a person is born with certain physical characteristics that determine his or her sex, gender is a label society puts on each one of us. The idea is that the two genders are not as different biologically as we may have been led to believe. While reading the whole biological versus sociological debate, I was immediately reminded of an article I had read earlier this year.

The article (http://www.parenting.com/blogs/show-and-tell/christina-parentingcom/gender-neutral-parenting) talks about a couple who were able to keep their child's gender a secret for 5 years. They finally had to reveal the child's gender when they enrolled "it" in school. The school would not let them leave the gender box blank on the admissions forms.

While I was searching for the exact article that I remember reading, I actually came across a couple of other recent cases just like this one. It seems like there are some parents out there willing to take the risk and see what the outcome of such an "experiment" would be.

I say, why not? No harm done, right? I mean, if or until that child is bullied in school, I think it's a really cool idea and I applaud those daring parents. I don't know if I'm progressive enough to try it, though!

Week 8: Why Should We Care about Global Inequality?

The podcast we were asked to listen to outlined a few reasons why we should care about global inequality. One of them was that the price of goods we buy here in America is affected by global events and economies.

I have an example of how the prices of goods from around the world have affected me personally. When I was a kid in the '70s and '80s, my mother used to sew my siblings and me clothes. Every Halloween, while the other children got to go to the store to buy masks and plastic-y costumes, my mom insisted on hand-sewing each one of her children a costume. When I became a mom, I decided I would do the same thing. Before my daughter's first Halloween, I headed out to the fabric store, picked out a little devil costume pattern, and bought the materials for the costume. I had to purchase a couple yards of red felt, Velcro, thread, needles, bobbins, stuffing, ribbon, and elastic. I brought the goodies home and got to work at my sewing machine. Nearly 3 labor-intensive weeks and $40 later, I had an adorable little red devil. Shortly after I finished my masterpeice (pictured below) I happened to be in a store and spot a nearly identical costume (I'm sure there were differences in quality) for only $15! I couldn't believe it. I've never made another Halloween costume to this day.

My personal experiences as a consumer in America is that things have changed drastically since I was a kid and it is mostly based on the global economy. Goods can be made cheaper in China and other developing nations. It's that simple. There are obviously positives and negatives to this fact. When my daughter was about 3 years old, there were reports that many toys that were manufactured in China had been painted with lead-based paint. I immediately went online and found a lead-testing kit and sat down one night and tested each and every one of my daughters' toys. Luckily, we weren't affected, but I do know parents who, to this day, will only buy toys made solely in the USA.

Week 7: How Much Does Class Matter?

I think class matters a lot in the U.S. today. We all probably have stories similar to the ones posted on the “People Like Us” website. I particularly identified with the girl who was an “Army Brat” and moved all around, only to end up in an affluent area where her Dad was not as elite as he was in her other neighborhoods.

But I’ve got a great example of how class can have an impact on your life – it’s actually my husband’s story. My husband grew up on Staten Island in New York City. He did not live on Todt Hill (as the fiancée in the clip on the “People Like Us” website), but he lived in a single-family home in a nice neighborhood. His father was an elementary school principal in Chinatown in Manhattan. His mother was a high school Spanish teacher. You could call his upbringing middle-middle-class. When my husband was in 8^th grade, his parents had him take a test and apply to a high school in Manhattan called Regis. Regis is an all-boys Catholic high school that is free to those who are accepted, based on their test scores. My husband got in and started taking the ferry and subway to school every day. During his senior year, he applied to some colleges and, while he was disappointed that he didn’t get into his first choice, Princeton, as many of his friends did, he ended up deciding to go to his safety school – another Ivy League college. After college, he moved around a bit, attended business school, and after many years of working in large banks around the country, he was finally named CEO of a bank.

What does this story tell us about class? Well, my husband will be the first to tell you that education is everything. And I’m not talking about the quality of the education. I’m talking LOCATION. Believe it or not, when interviewing for jobs recently, my husband was often asked about the high school he attended. The high school, people. Because the high school he attended had a good reputation, he was able to attend an Ivy League college where he met and befriended people from all over the world, from all income levels. He has maintained those friendships and, in this day and age, networking for jobs could not be more important. Having connections in high places has had a huge impact on his (and my!) life.

A couple years ago, I was talking with a former employer of mine and he told me proudly that his daughter had aced her SATs and had been accepted to the University of Maryland on a full scholarship and also to Brown (no scholarship). When I told my husband that my boss’s daughter had chosen a full ride at Maryland over paying for Brown, he couldn’t believe it. He didn’t see why anyone would value saving a buck now over the experience of attending the country’s most elite college. He just didn’t get it. His “pedigree,” if you will, has gotten him pretty far. You see, in his eyes, if you attend Brown, you get to build relationships with all sorts of amazing, smart, rich, powerful, and creative people. Throughout the rest of your life, you’ll have a connection with these people who could potentially one day help you in any number of situations.

I went to a regular, non-Ivy-League college, so I don’t have the perspective that my husband has. I think I did alright without it. But this is just one example of a guy who was born into a middle working class family and, through luck or intelligence or who-knows-what was able to rise up to the next level.

Week 6: Technological Isolation?

I think people are less isolated today due to technology. I’m speaking in a purely social and emotional context here, and not physical. I think that, yes, physically, we see people less face-to-face. We talk in person to people less, but overall, I think communication has greatly improved our social connections.

The summers when I was 12, 13, and 14 years old, I went to a YMCA sleep-away camp. I made a great friend there, Mindy, and we became pen pals. As the years passed and we both went off to college, we pretty much lost touch. That was until Facebook was invented. When I signed up for my Facebook account in 2008, the first thing I did was look up Mindy. She has three boys and lives in Chicago. Yet here we are, friends again. We know what each other looks like, we are able to see pictures of each other’s kids, and we share funny anecdotes about being moms. I was able to support her during a recent battle and victory over cancer, and we even plan on meeting  up again someday soon. I believe that, without Facebook, and thus the Internet, I would have probably lost my friendship with Mindy altogether.

So, yes, physically, we are becoming more isolated as a society. But on an emotional and friendship level, I think we are only making tighter, longer-lasting bonds.

Week 5: The Criminal Justice System

When reading the final pages of our assigned chapter on criminals and our criminal justice system, I found myself coming back to the idea of “shaming.” I think it’s intriguing. It works in other cultures, like Japan, where people are less individualistic than in the U.S.; where more emphasis is put on our individual accomplishments than those successes attained as a group. But I think it could work. In fact, over the past few months in the news, I have read of a couple examples of shaming in the U.S. Parents are sending their children out with sandwich boards alerting the public on the streets that they are failing classes (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/bad-grades-sandwich-board_n_1338938.html) and women are announcing their husbands’ indiscretions on front-yard signs (http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/woman-calls-out-cheating-ex-husband-homes-sale-sign-141973).

Would this work in the legal world? As a punishment handed over by a judge in court? I would like to think that it would. I especially believe that shaming would work in the U.S. for smaller crimes, like shoplifting, simple assault, etc. Maybe today’s youth should be the target.  Teenagers are more susceptible to peer-pressure. Feeling shameful about something in front of their peers may be just enough to never commit that crime again. As we’ve learned in our text, the majority of the crimes committed in the U.S. are not homicide or rape, but rather smaller crimes that people may be compelled to repeat over and over.

In some communities, it may not be shameful to commit a crime, and some people don’t have a strong enough familial support system to make shame even relevant. But if cleaning up one small crime at a time can lead to a better environment altogether, as we learned while reading about the broken-window theory, then shaming could be a real answer.

One little wrinkle in my little theory about shaming that has been nagging me is the labeling theory. I wonder if shaming a teenager about shoplifting would compel that person, and those around him/her, to automatically think of that person as a criminal for the rest of his/her life. Because of this, I think the proposed shaming punishment should be imposed only after the first known criminal offense, thus hopefully deterring the possibility of a secondary deviation.

Week Four: Nature vs. Nurture

The nature versus nurture argument is one that will probably never be settled. Some people say our personalities are a product of genetics. Some people say our personalities are made up of our life experiences, or our environment. I, as a mother, like to think that it’s a combination of both. My oldest daughter is very kind, quiet, studious, and intellectually curious. My middle daughter is stubborn, argumentative, and a perfectionist. I’d like to think that my older daughter is the way she is because I spent so many hours with her alone when she was a baby - reading to her, doing puzzles, singing and dancing. But I don’t like to think that my middle daughter is the way she is because I lost my patience with her too many times or I didn’t have the time to sit down and read and sing with her as much as I did my oldest. I refuse to believe that they both turned out with opposite personalities because I, their mother, treated them differently. If I believed this, the guilt would be unbearable.

My husband tells me that he used to sit on his bed and read all day, just as my oldest daughter does now. And I distinctly remember defying and arguing with my parents on many occasions, just because I didn’t want to give in. If I had spent more time reading to my middle daughter and less time trying to divide my time and love between two little girls, maybe she would have had a different personality altogether. However, this cannot be proven, so I’m leaning toward the “nature” argument versus “nurture” just for my own sanity, but it’s clearly both.

My middle daughter was recently diagnosed with sensory processing disorder (SPD). She has sensory defensiveness. In other words, she needs her personal space and doesn’t like when people invade it. She also has problems with clothing, like getting her socks on just the right way or avoiding collars and belts. She is very sensitive. Until I figured out what was wrong with her, my husband and I tried yelling and time-outs to no avail. If it took her 30 minutes to get that one sock on just the right way, nothing we could say would change it. Now that we know she is this way because of something physiological, and she’s not just on a quest for attention, we have changed how we react to her. We know it’s not something she can control, that it’s probably something she was born with, so we are more patient with her and react in a totally different way than before her diagnosis. She is starting to change too, as a result of our new attitude toward her.

Week Three: Thoughts on Hugh Laurie's "America" Sketch

This week, we were asked to watch a clip of actor Hugh Laurie singing on a British sketch comedy show.

The bit consisted of Hugh sitting at a baby grand piano, playing and singing. He was wearing a plaid shirt and what appeared to be a wig with a mullet. The song he sang was "America" and consisted of three words: "America," sung almost the entire length of the song, and "the States," which he switched to about three quarters of the way through the "song".

While Mr. Laurie sang the "song," the studio audience laughed in unison during moments when Laurie displayed intensity or rapture on his face. When he switched from the word "America" to "the States", the audience thought that was pretty hilarious.

At the end of the bit, a man dressed in a suit came on stage and punched Laurie in the stomach, ending the song and the skit altogether.

So, the question I'm supposed to answer is: What do each of these things tell you about how American culture looks from the point of view of a British audience?

So let's break it down:

1) Laurie chose to wear an outfit to appear as what someone in America might label a "redneck" or "hillbilly". So, we could make the assumption that British people think the majority of Americans wear this type of clothing and fashion their hair into mullets.

2) Laurie's song consisted of the sole word "America" initially, which the Brits thought was a hoot. Probably because Americans are known for being ego-centric and self-loving. The Brits were laughing because of the truth in the notion that we think only of ourselves and we think we are the best. No other words are required for such a ballad.

3) When Laurie switched over to use the words "the States," big laughs were had by all in the studio audience. I guess when Americans travel to England, we refer to our home as "The States" often? I'm not really sure. I personally never use this term to describe where I live, however the last time I went to Europe was in 2003.

4) When the man in the suit came onstage and punched Laurie, thus ending the dreadful song, the audience went wild with guffaws. So, I guess they, like me, were happy the "song" was over. But I guess it also indicates that the Brits were happy that their chosen symbol for "America" (a hillbilly singing about his beloved country) was beaten, if only to shut him up.

Okay, so we already knew how Brits felt about us. This sketch was not a shock. Insulting, yes. Shocking, heck no. They and the citizens of many other countries like to laugh at our expense. I think Will Ferrell could come up with an equally witty, if not more wordy bit for how Americans feel about Brits. I might guffaw at that.

Yes, stereotypes persist throughout the globe. They last many years, decades, even centuries. Labels are hard to shake. We will probably be "ugly Americans" for the next 500 years on this planet. I think the intelligent, thoughtful citizens of our world know enough to ignore stereotypes and judge people based on their individual qualities. Well, we could hope anyway...