What is this? What is that?

Do you ever just wonder why a table is called a table and why it isn’t called a chair or even a barmbella? What is a barmbella? Well, I just made it up. But, someone, at some time or another made up the word table and gave it to the object that we know today as the table. Why though? This is a question that rattles through my brain every day. Semantics is the study of meaning. This is a pretty broad term considering when you really think about the meaning of things, you can go on and on and on and on. Semantics is particularly related with linguistics because of the meaning of different words. This topic is very relatable to me because I am constantly wondering about the meaning of different words. Why is this word this word and where did it come from and why do we pronounce it like this, etc… I think it is sooooo interesting to learn about that! This topic also relates to me because I speak English which is thought to be the hardest speaking language to learn. Why is that? Why must everything be so complicated?! I wonder about this frequently. When I get a job, I will most likely need to learn other languages to keep up globally with what is going on in my field of work. Why do different languages have different meanings for different things. Ah! I can go on and on!!! It really rattles my brain to think of this. So, start thinking about when you see a car drive by, or a plate of food come to your dinner table, why is this called what they are? Who gave them this meaning? 

TweetTweet

One of the biggest social networks of our generation is Twitter. Twitter is a way for people all over the world to connect. It lets people post their feelings towards, ANYTHING. You can say what you are doing, how you are feeling, personal feelings about events going on in the world, etc. Twitter contributes to globalization in a huge way. Globalization is the elimination of borders between nations and allows nations to connect. Twitter makes it accessible for people to interact with other people around the globe! It is estimated that Twitter has over 8 million users around the world and it is growing everyday. My friend who lives in Israel has a Twitter and I love being able to follow her on Twitter to see what is going on where she is living. Twitter also has a cool feature called ‘Trends.’ These ‘trends’ are worldwide and they are the most popular topics that are being discussed globally. This is a great way for people to connect around the world. When you post a tweet, you have the ability to hash tag a word or phrase and see who else, anywhere around the world, is using that same word or phrase as you. For example, I used #rain in one of my tweets, and I was able to see what other people around the world were saying about the rain. Someone in Sydney Australia mentioned how it was raining there. 

Twitter has definitely made it easier to connect with people around the world. Not just friends and family, but random people who I would never be able to meet or know if it wasn’t for Twitter.

Dude You’re a Fag, by C.J. Pascoe, 2007 is based on the research conducted by Pascoe at a typical American high school that Pascoe has named River High. River High is located in a suburban area that is said to be “the average.” It is full of working class people and very multicultural. This ethnography is a brilliant display of how gender and sexuality are explored in high school. This book is an innovative way to see how boys are scared of being a fag and feel it is necessary to prove their masculinity.

Pascoe discusses the label fag in more of the gender role and less about sexual orientation. During her extensive research, Pascoe spent most of her time around high school students. She was extremely surprised by the way they used the term fag. It happened so often, that she became curious as to whether they were really relating to one another as homosexuals or not. After speaking with, and studying, many of these kids, she learned that they called each other the word fag more on par as calling one another an idiot and nothing to do with sexual orientation. Digging deeper she questioned what kind of things would make someone call you a fag. The long list the boys gave her followed with things such as: dancing, caring about clothing, and being overly emotional or incompetent. These were all characteristics that they decided were not masculine. Pascoe realized that they used fag as an insult to police the boundaries of masculinity and nothing to do with same sex desire. She then asked about same sex desire, Pascoe received surprising answers. One boy told her that being gay is a lifestyle, and you can still throw a football around if you are gay. Pascoe realized that being gay wasn’t entirely accepted however it wasn’t that bad. It was much worse to be an un-masculine man, than it was to be a masculine man who desires another man. These boys called each other fags, to remind them of how to be masculine.

At River High there were three homosexual boys who were out of the closet and who were accepted by different groups. The first was an African American who was more masculine and apparently you couldn’t tell he was gay. He mainly hung out with girls, so he was socially acceptable.  The second boy was large, and passed for older than 16. No one ever talked about him. He never reported being harassed because he was relatively masculine. The last boy, Ricky, broke all the rules. He not only has same sex relationships, he was open about it but he also broke gender rules, he had long hair, dressed like a girl, talked like a girl. He was targeted, harassed and eventually had to leave the school. He couldn’t get the protection he needed.

Pascoe talks about something called the fag discourse. This is when boys throw around the word fag as an insult. They call other boys fags but at the same time, they do everything in their power to not get the word thrown back at them. It is almost like a fear. Young boys are so scared to be called a fag that it is so incredibly important for them to be masculine and heterosexual. Pascoe refers to this as “compulsory heterosexuality.”

Pascoe realizes that the problem is that being a young boy is hard work, becoming a man is even harder, and being masculine is the hardest task of all. When you watch a dad play with his son and daughter, he is always much more rough with the son. Tackling him in a football catch, pushing him around, teaching him how to be a man. A young boys life is about learning how to become a man, and when the boy is called a fag, they are instantly stripped of their manliness. The worst thing for a straight or gay boy to be called is a fag. Fag means that you are not masculine. Fag means that you are not a real heterosexual boy. Pascoe points out that boys hate the word fag, not only because they are homophobic, but because they are really misogynist.

One way that boys protect their masculinity is by taking advantage of girl’s bodies. They publicly harass and sexually assault young women in the hallways as a way to prove that they are masculine and don’t deserve the title of fag. Pascoe mentions: “… other ‘touching’ episodes has a more explicitly violent tone. In this type of touching the boy and the girl ‘hurt’ each other by punching or slapping or pulling each other’s hair until in the end the girl lost with a squeal or a scream. Shane and Cathy spent a large part of each morning in government class beating up on each other in this sequence of domination. While it was certainly not unidirectional, the interactions always ended with Cathy giving up… while this sort of interaction disrupted Cathy’s work and actually looked exceedingly painful, she never seriously tried to stop it.” (98) Boys don’t always act like this. The only time that the boys acted gendered was when they were in a crowd publicly.

“Dude You’re a Fag” is a riveting book that definitely taught me a lot about gender status and masculinity in high school and in the world. Pascoe feel that there must be more done to prevent this from happening in the future. She believes that there are consequences in relationship to the fag label.  Events in history have proven that there are sometimes devastating consequences to the fag discourse. To try and stop history from repeating itself, people need to make a change. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone! It is a nice ethnography to learn how other people view each other concerning masculinity and gender. This book has taught me to watch how I speak to others even if I am joking around with my friends.

BOOK REVIEW

MISS REPRESENTATION 

In a society where people learn from what is around them, media is the message and the messenger. This is a scary thing when the media is relaying messages that tell women, in particular, that it is “all about the body, not about the brain.”  The media shapes people’s lives. Whether or not people want to believe it, they are being affected directly by the media. People dress, act, eat, look a certain way because the media is telling them to. The media is making their mark on women at a very young age, which can be very detrimental. The film, Miss Representation, shows the affects of how serious media can be on women.

From Facebook to Youtube to the television screen in your living room, media is everywhere. It is being seeped into our brains without even realizing it. We see advertisement everywhere. When driving on the highway, when watching your favorite television show, while stalking someone on Facebook, or just reading a magazine, the media is constantly there trying to tell you how to be, and, unfortunately, women listen. The media portrays images that are not ideal for young girls in our society and not realistic whatsoever. The images that young girls see in magazines are completely photo shopped or in some cases not even real women, but computer-edited images. When the young girls see these images, they feel that that is how they are supposed to look. They do whatever it is to look like them, for example, starving themselves. If they cannot look like them, they run to depression where they cut themselves because they don’t think they are perfect in this society. The truth is, nobody is perfect, especially not the images in the magazines. The harsh reality of it is that 65% of women and girls have eating disorders and 17% do bodily harm. In 2000 to 2010, the depression rates doubled in girls and women.

Media also portrays images of how gender should be in society. Men are portrayed as powerful while women are portrayed as not beautiful enough. There is always something wrong with them. In an advertisement for Dep Styling Gel, they state “Your breasts may be too big, too saggy, too pert, too flat, too full, too apart, too close together, too A-cup, too lopsided, too jiggly, too pale, too padded, too pointy, too pendulous, or just two mosquito bites. But with Dep styling products, at least you can have your hair the way you want it.” What this article is saying to women, is that they will never be good enough, they will always have something wrong with them. You will never see an article saying any of that about a man’s penis, so why must the media point out women’s insecurities about their breasts?

A huge industry in this society is beauty products. American women spend 12000- 15000 dollars on beauty products. That means that more money is being spent on beauty products than education. This is a problem because more women are concerned on their appearance rather than how intelligent they are. Some mothers give their daughters breast implants as a graduation gift. This is a problem. When the young teen is not even fully developed, they are still trying to perfect themselves and shape themselves so that they fit into the “social standards” that the media presents to them.

Miss Representation was a brilliant film that really hit close to home being a woman myself.  I felt that it made me view media in a different way and made me view how I see myself differently. I would recommend this film to anyone! It really is very inspiring and I am thinking about seeing it again.

MY ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH!!!

If given the opportunity to conduct ethnographic research what would I research? where would I go? Whom would I focus on? WHY??? These questions have been jumping around in my head for the past week. Ethnographic research gives you the ability to study WHATEVER it is that you want to. Thats what made this question so difficult for me. Out of all the things in this world, what would I want to do my ethnographic research on? I came to the conclusion that I would like to do my research on a celebrity. Which one? Well, it has to be someone who is known as an “A-list” celebrity. Someone who feels the real tension of being a celebrity. Someone whose life is always printed and nothing is kept to themselves. I ultimately came to the conclusion that I wanted to so my research on the Kardashian sisters. They are EVERYWHERE. Constantly in every magazine, every commercial, television, radio, etc. It is safe to call these girls A-list celebs. I will fly to California and do my research there because that is where they live. It will take me about a year i’d say to compile thick description on the girls. The challenge I see if trying to focus on all of these girls. I will try and spend a week with at least one of them. I will follow them on their reality show and while the cameras are down. I want to see how they react to paparazzi and how they take their image in the media. I will get my research by using first hand observation/ participant observation. I will be a daily participant of their lives and follow them wherever they go so I can get a good feel for their lives. I chose this method because it seems to me to be the most accurate way of getting a true idea of what the girls go through on a daily basis. I feel that although I am not just focusing on one girl, but three, It will be a little bit more challenging, but, because they are all celebrities, it will still be an accurate observation.

GENERgenderGENDER

GENDER is a very commonly mis-understood term. Many people, when talking about gender, will think it is the same thing as sex (Make/Female).  “What gender are you?” someone might ask on a survey to see whether the person taking the survey is male or female. But, gender is NOT the same thing as sex. Although many people think it is, sex is male or female. Plain and simple. Penis or Vagina. Gender is NOT that. Gender is the social construction of cultural meanings that are attached to biological differences in genitalia. This means that based on if you have a penis or vagina, that is what will determine how society looks at you and what the “norms” of your sex are. Gender is how society as a whole looks at you. For example, if you are a girl, you are feminine; you are dainty, stressed, hormonal, bitchy, drama filled, talkative, etc. Whether people like to admit it or not, that the “norm” of how a typical woman should act. If we look at the male norms, we will see hard workers, masculine, big, strong, tough, etc. The two different sex’s have two completely opposite views of them by society. Gender is clearly not just about genitalia, it is about what comes with it by how society looks at you.

Although gender is deemed as how people look at you based on your genitalia, people who are queer might act more feminine and show signs of how women are looked at by society. Clearly, they might not be women, but they might act as it which will have people questioning their gender. This is the same way that lesbians might come off more masculine even though they are clearly not men.

Because the norm of queer and lesbian have been the opposite of what they are “supposed” to be, the “norm” is that lesbians=masculine and queer=feminine.

Advertisements are the strongest way to see how men and women are looked at by society.

In this advertisement, it shows a woman, very dainty, smiling, tiny. Her finger is in her mouth. Looking at this one ad. won’t bring you to the conclusion that her finger is in her mouth so that men will think that she is being quiet “for once”. In many other ads that feature women, their fingers are usually in their mouths to promote quietness and showing that the girls who are usually so talkative are not in this ad. This will relate to men better.    

In this advertisement, you will see that the man is masculine and tough. He is confident and sure of himself. In almost every ad. this is how the man is portrayed.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE IN A KINSHIP?

kin·ship (knshp)

n.

1. Connection by blood, marriage, or adoption; family relationship.

2. Relationship by nature or character; affinity.

3.family relationship or other close tie or relationship.

This definition to me means that although you might have a large family, its the one’s who are most important, or closer to you, who are in your kinship. I have a big family and many friends, but when it comes down to it, i put the most important people in my life in my kinship. I put my intermediate family as well as my grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles because I feel that those are the people who are closest to me in my life. Although the definition of kinship says “connection by blood”, I am not necessarily connected by blood to my aunts or uncles but they are still just as close to me as some of the people that I am blood related to. The people in my kinship diagram are the people who I am not afraid to be myself around; the people who I feel most comfortable with and who I feel i can turn to no matter what. They are the people that I might not always see as often, but i know that when i do see them, things will fall right back into place again. I honestly don’t feel that I would be the same without any of these people in my life. I love each of them very dearly and feel that it is necessary for them to hold a spot on my kinship diagram.

OUR CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS: A SOLUTION?

Though many people are sheltered by this harsh reality, we are indeed going through an economic crisis. The stock market is down,housing market went down, and unemployment rates are growing. Unemployment areas is where we see the crisis the most and realize we need a change, a solution. But how!? Currently the unemployment rate is over 9% right now. This may not sound like a crisis, but when the normal or average unemployment rate is usually at 4 or 5 percent, there is a problem. There are many different ways to approach this issue. The more democratic way or the republican/ conservative way. But which way is the right way to solve this crisis? In my personal opinion, I feel that mixing and matching is the best way to go about this crisis.

I believe that the way to get America out of this crisis and out of unemployment is to get the government involved. The government should hire people to work. This means that the government needs to make jobs so that people can fill them and get out of unemployment. By the government making more bridges and roads and buildings, this will give people more opportunities for jobs. The government would pay for this to take place while the unemployed get employed with these jobs. Many can argue that this will cause the U.S. to dig ourselves a great hole and become in debt. I feel that for this crisis, we need to start somewhere and worry about that later.

A great debate is the “drilling for oil”  debate. Basically, we have oil on our territory under our ocean. The only way to get it is to drill. The problem that this faces is that if we dig for oil under the ocean, this can pose as a problem with making a mess and the water becoming infested. This is not a problem that many people want to deal with. The reason that drilling for oil will help the economic crisis is because currently we pay millions of dollars to foreign countries for their oil. If we dig it ourselves and sell it, we would be making the millions and millions of dollars instead of spending it. Along with that, more job opportunities come out from that because we need employers to drill.

Another way to help the crisis is to cut the unemployment time. People who are out of work get unemployment checks of 500 dollars a week for 100 weeks. With this time people are supposed to be looking for jobs. But, many people are free loaders and just want to take it easy and live off the governments money for a while and not look for a job until their unemployment time is up. If the unemployment cut was reduced to 50 weeks, it would still give people time to look for jobs but they would probably find jobs quicker knowing that they cant just live off the governments money for too long.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN AMERICAN?

Being an american is one of the most underrated privileges. Americans don’t fully appreciate the fact that they are Americans. The fact that we get to be free is what it means to be an American. To live in a democratic government where YOU get to decide who YOU want to run YOUR government. A country where you don’t just see the same breed of people everywhere you look, living in a melting pot is one of Americas greatest qualities. To be an American, is so underrated because when you look at other countries where they are being led a life with no choices, no privileges, and then you look at America, the difference is clear. Living in America is one of the greatest gifts anyone can have. When we look throughout history, we see people risking their old lives, families, everything just in hopes of starting a new life in America. Immigrants would risk it all just to live in the big “melting pot.” America to me is a living a life of choices. Being able to freely say what’s on my mind. Being able to meet a variety of different people from different backgrounds in one country. This is something that is rarely found anywhere else. I feel that it is a privilege to have this array of people all in one country. It’s what makes America, America. Being an American allows me to know that when i finish college, I have the choice of what job i want to do. As a matter a fact, I have the choice to go to college. America is all about choices. Being an American hits people so hard that they risk their lives to fight for it. Soldiers go to war and risk everything just to protect America. Being an American is so powerful that it is hard to put it into words. Imagine living anywhere else but America. Life wouldn’t just be different, I have no doubt that it would not be nearly as good. America give people a sense of luxury whether that is just giving people rights or allowing all different genders and races to work in all different jobs, America is great.

RELIGION

Religion is a big part of any culture. No matter what culture you are in, you will see that each one practices different religions and has different rituals. Religion is a collection of cultural symbols, belief systems, and world views that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. (Wikipedia). In many cultures, there is some form of a “rite of passage”. This is when someone goes from one stage in their life to the next. Not physically, but spiritually. In most cases, it is a boy becoming a man; a girl becoming a woman. Basically an adolescent becoming an adult. Sometimes it could be something more on the lines of an immigrant becoming an American citizen.

In class, we watched a documentary that showed us one religions way that they perform rites of passages on boys. In this specific religion, they did not allow the boys to cut off their hair at all. Even the slightest trim would be considered a sin. Most families would usually disown the boy if he decided to cut off his hair or just look at it as their son has committed a murder and would make him pray to be forgiven for his wrong-doings. For the boy to become a man, they go through a rite of passage where the boy’s hair grows long enough that he can tie a turban around his head. Once the turban is tied around his head, he is considered a man. Physically he did not become a man by hitting puberty, but spiritually and religiously he did.

In my religion, we have a huge rite of passage for both girls and boys. I am apart of the Jewish religion, so our rite of passage for girls is a Bat Mitzvah and for boys it is a Bar Mitzvah. In both cases, throughout this rite of passage, you are changing from an adolescent to an adult. For both of these rites of passages, the adolescent will spend a good period of time learning a passage in the bible to read in front of the congregation. The service is usually held at a temple with a Rabbi helping lead the service. The temple is filled with family, friends and members of the temple. When I was going through my Bat Mitzvah process, I remember being so stressed. For a 13 year old, learning how to read a whole passage in the bible was extremely nerve-racking and difficult. Not to mention the whole thing was in hebrew! I got through the whole service beautifully though and I could see people in the audience crying. I wasn’t sure why they would be crying. Now i realize that because it is such an emotional rite of passage of me becoming a women, the people who were closed to me were weeping tears of joy. After the service, we eat and celebrate.

Having that rite of passage in my religion makes me feel special that I got to be apart of something that has been done by Jewish people throughout history.