I largely agree with Mr. Chomsky. I consider myself a conservative and can agree that our education system does promote stupidity and conformity. In fact, society as a whole largely promotes stupidity and conformity. We are all born into this society and must either follow its rules or end up in prison or dead. One of the necessities of society that currently pisses me off is credit. It’s nearly impossible to have a successful life without decent credit. I currently have no credit history and the fact that I don’t makes it very hard to get a credit card or sign a lease in order to establish credit in the first place. It seems that there is too much regulation and conservatives should agree but rather republicans and so-called conservatives think that challenging ideas and thinking for on one’s own is not desirable. The military is known as the most conservative institution known to man kind. However, having almost every aspect of your life controlled and being trained to act as a unit and follow orders doesn’t seem to quite fit the definition of conservative.

The more I think about it the more I come to understand how conforming the educational process is. We all grow up being told to read and interpret the exact same books in English class. We are all taught the same events in history with many events being excluded. We understand that we need to take the SAT and go to college because that is how we will get good jobs and be contributing members of society. In college I go to class, listen to lectures, memorize facts, understand a few concepts, then spit them back out for the exams. Why should I complain because if I conform and do what the university requires, I’ll come away with a degree that should at the very least land me a decent job.

Growing up my dad would always ask me if there were any teachers who were really challenging me to think. Several teachers have, especially Dr. Richards and that is why I am able to address this topic now. However, if my livelihood depended upon people around me believing exactly like I do, I would not want conspirators being told to question my authority. A good example of this comes from a man named Dr. Willhelm Reich. He was a sociologist and a student of Freud. He expressed that suppressing natural urges leads to possibly harmful consequences. He addressed the fact that children are taught to suppress natural sexual urges. This in turn increases conformity in other areas of life and the cycle continues as these children grow up and teach their children the same thing. Reich said that we are being trained to follow rules from a young age but not all of the rules are in our best interest. This man was silenced by the government because they thought his ideas were too dangerous. I guess they were right. If people continue to challenge authority, those with it may not be in their positions for very long.

MissFancyFeet,

I love seeing girls in tights, skirts, low-cut tops etc. I expect them to go out like that but I don't think guys set the standard for how girls should dress when they're out at parties or bars. Therefore, I may think it's not fair that girls are subjected to so much ridicule but I don't believe it goes against the MALE attitudes at Penn State. I think women's magazines and Hollywood help to set the standard, influenced by females. The posts you are seeing from males might seem understanding and heartfelt because we aren't the ones judging females on what they wear. Feel free to provide examples of guys judging or ridiculing girls for what they wear but I don't think we do.

I can agree that all women are beautiful in some way, but the image of beauty is and has been shaped by societal standards for a long time. It is always changing and differs by culture so there is no concrete definition of beauty. As in Laurie’s play, the girl wanted to have smaller boobs because she thought she would be conforming to that society’s norms and it would make her more attractive. I think that scenario could easily be the case rather than how our society currently favors bigger boobs.

Peter Paul Rubens was a 17th century painter who is well known for his portraits of “rubenesque women.” These women can be described as plump with definitive curves. This was the beauty standard at the time. Being large meant you came from royalty or an upper class and could afford to eat well and did not perform manual labor. Thin, muscular people were not seen as attractive because they probably labored outside and were of a lower class.

Today, beauty is largely influenced by the media and it portrays primarily thin, attractive women with curves as beautiful. Magazines and Hollywood constantly portray this so that influences our perspective. This shift may have occurred for reasons other than simple appearance but that rather if you are thin and/or muscular it means you are willing to work hard and take care of your body so one’s personality may be the true attractive trait. So I believe that society’s definition or outer beauty is actually influenced by personality. Sam stated earlier in the semester that he thinks his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world and that you could line up the most attractive models etc. and his wife would still be more beautiful eventually outer appearance doesn’t matter. I agree with this and also that whoever society and the media portray to be beautiful, we will conform.

I liked the discussion in class about who girls actually dress for and it really made me think deeper into it. I believe girls do dress primarily for themselves and other girls. One justification made for that was guys don’t pay that much attention and other girls are the ones who will judge and ridicule you. Someone else mentioned that if a girl wears something risqué and then catches a guy looking she’ll ask why he’s looking. It should seem fairly obvious if you’re dressing that way for guys. Girls also mention that guys don’t notice when they make certain changes to their appearance. So why do they continue to do it? I think what you wear plays a big role in confidence. Some girls wear expensive fancy underwear that no one may see, but it makes them feel more confident. I think everyone should dress for themselves while also looking appropriate for certain venues.

This video game is despicable but perhaps it needs to be understood in a cultural context before we can wonder what’s wrong with these Japanese game makers. Grand Theft Auto is one of my favorite video games. You can’t rape anyone in the game but the ERSB rating states that it “may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language. Intense violence includes graphic and realistic-looking depictions of physical conflict. It may involve extreme and/or realistic blood, gore, weapons and depictions of human injury and death. Blood and gore includes depictions of blood or the mutilation of body parts. Sexual content includes non-explicit depictions of sexual behavior, possibly including partial nudity. Strong language includes explicit and/or frequent use of profanity.” Pretty graphic. This game seems to include everything but the full nudity and sexual assault in RapeLay.

Maybe other countries are as outraged by the extensive weapon use and extreme violence in our video games. In the movie Rush Hour 3, a French cab driver refuses to drive Americans because “they’re the most violent people on earth. Always starting wars, always killing people.” In our society, the consequences for first degree murder are more severe than for rape so why are we so appalled by RapeLay? Many of the themes in Grand Theft Auto and RapeLay are similar. That is, to seek revenge on someone. The difference is, in RapeLay , revenge is sought be raping women and in GTA it’s sought by murdering people, a crime with more severe consequences.

American society has different norms regarding sex than other countries. By no means is RapeLay an acceptable game just because it may have different cultural connotations, and I certainly don’t think it would offer potential rapists and outlet to deter them from raping someone. If anything, it would whet their appetite to commit an actual assault. However, the Japanese do have different cultural norms when it comes to sex. In the United States, the rape of a child used to be punishable by death. That is a consequence which many child murderers wouldn’t receive, even if it was done in the first degree with several aggravating circumstances. That goes to show how heinous we perceive sexual crimes to be in this country. There is a registry of sex offenders because society feels we have a right to know if one lives in our neighborhood so that we may protect ourselves and our children. There is no such registry for murderers. Many foreigners perceive Americans to be prude and don’t understand our censorship of sexuality in many instances. The Japanese government said it did not condone the game when pressured to release a statement. I don’t think the United States government would condone Grand Theft Auto but I don’t think we are faced with the same pressures so it is not addressed.

As Sam said, this video is very disturbing and on a pretty deep level. The fact that the majority of these young children have already been socialized to believe that white is superior or “good” is remarkable. Now that dolls are manufactured in a variety of races and ethnicities, availability does not determine why children want to play with white dolls. The fact that the majority of kids preferred to play with the white doll is not even that disturbing. Whites are still the majority in this country and white dolls may be mainstream. The disturbing thing is that the children identified the white doll as “good” for the simple reason that it was white and the black doll as “bad” because it was black. I think this shows that they have no understanding of why one would be good or bad but rather it is completely a product of socialization. Even worse, after identifying the black doll as bad the children would still admit that they look the most like the bad black doll.

Trying to explain this, I think the media is the most influential factor. Children watch tv and movies from a very early age and it is one of the easiest ways to shape their perceptions of society. Specifically, Disney movies come to mind when I think about racial portrayals. Like we discussed in class, girls want to dress up or think of themselves as princesses, many of them modeled after the many such examples in Disney movies. Sure there are several races and ethnicities of princesses, but as Sam said, they all have very white features. Princess Jasmine and Mulan have the same physique and hair style and consistency as the other princesses. They also speak perfect English and don’t have an accent that could be attributed to their native region. Disney portrays racial stereotypes in their movies such as in Oliver and Company where Tito the Chihuahua is a poor and dirty Mexican character. Yet Disney doesn’t accurately portray the nationality of several princesses, even if it means stereotyping the characters which it seems they have already been willing to do.

At the end of the doll clip, some of the girls were discussing how they feel that they don’t have a connection to the culture of their native African countries. I guess this is an unfortunate byproduct of slavery. Slaves largely weren’t able to establish their African cultures here and now African-Americans haven’t learned traditions and values that would have been passed down through families. Embracing the WASP culture as the ideal American may be another factor that helps to explain why children would rather play with white dolls. In any case, the video was very disturbing and I think that as whites move toward becoming the minority in this country, socialization will change.

I don’t necessarily think most men are uneducated about menstrual cycles. I am fairly educated about the physical process and I think most people have acquired some type of knowledge on the subject throughout their schooling process. It’s pretty standard stuff that should be covered in health class or biology. However, I can say that I don’t know too much about all the emotional changes other than the basics of PMS. I think the issue is that men choose not to talk about it for various reasons. First of all I don’t know why men really need to talk about it. I’m not too excited to get into discussions about bleeding when it’s not very practical other than to try and explain a woman’s emotions, inquire about pregnancy, or for educational reasons. Now that I think about it, most practical aspects of the menstrual cycle can be discussed without talking about blood. I think the bleeding aspect is the most uncomfortable and many people don’t want a visual image of it as it relates to a period.

I don’t think many people were too uncomfortable in class until Sam started referring to the cycle as bleeding and how he wanted see the “work of art.” I’m not too interested in discussing bleeding out of an area where I may or may not have ever performed cunnilingus. I don’t think most men want to combine the thought of blood with women’s sexuality. In the Woodland Critter Christmas episode of South Park, one scene depicted a “blood orgy” with small animals which was fairly appalling. While bleeding is very natural it just doesn’t seem to be an overall pleasant experience and men don’t want to associate it with women. Some people may have heard the joke in which a man says “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”

To directly answer the question I don’t think the menstrual cycle is weird in the first place or would become any less weird if it were discussed more. However, periods can be an uncomfortable subject and perhaps would become more comfortable if it were talked about more. I’m not sure why the girl who posted this comment suggested that tampons could be free if men had periods. Men’s hygiene products are not free so I don’t know whey tampons would be. It’s not like free condoms which are given out because they are funded by organizations that aim to decrease STDs and unwanted pregnancy. I don’t think anyone not being able to afford tampons faces any serious health issues. Maybe women can acquire free tampons somewhere if they really needed and the free supply might increase if twice the population was to need them but they probably wouldn’t become absolutely free.

This incident is very unfortunate and it doesn’t seem as though the school district has come up with any reasonable justification for their actions. It makes sense because I can’t think of any justifications other than blatant discrimination. This town is in the south in an area that is probably less welcoming of homosexuality than many other areas of the country. The school district may also be under a heavy influence of the community which may be comprised of many older, more traditional residents. Prom is a very traditional event and certainly many people don’t want to see such changes in it. Cancelling the prom seems rather drastic and I’m not sure what advantage it had instead of just excluding the couple because they were in violation of the policy. This greatly upset many of the other students. In another article on the issue one girl told McMillen that “She ruined her senior year.”

I have studied several court cases in which school districts violated students’ rights because it interfered with the mission of the school or was determined to be dangerous. In many cases the school district won but I don’t see the legitimate cause they have here. The school board stated that they wouldn’t be hosting the event "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events." I don’t know what distractions to the educational process can be caused by allowing a homosexual couple to attend prom. The schools board’s attorney also released this statement regarding the cancellation of the event. “At this time, we feel that it is in the best interest of the Itawamba County School District, after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our students." Now I’m certain that a homosexual couple doesn’t pose any threat to the safety and well being of the school’s students. These statements released by the school seem like general educational mission bull shit excuses that don’t even directly address the issue. The community probably supports the school but now that it is being challenged, the district can’t explain its discrimination to national media.

I think the ACLU has a good case here because the school has not been true to their legal obligation to treat all students equally, especially when there is no possible harm or danger imposed under the circumstances. There is more evidence which shows that the community supports the school district because the school board expects the private citizens to organize an event for the students. If that were to happen, the organizers could impose any regulations they please and homosexual couples would most likely be excluded. I think this incident is the result of a traditional community whose unspoken disapproval of homosexuality went unchallenged until now. Now they must attempt to mask their discrimination with some kind of vague school mission justification but I think the ACLU will tear them apart.

This is interesting. I can come up with several reasons supporting the idea that this basketball league is racist. I can also argue that it is not necessarily racist by comparing this league to other institutions and programs in this country that are based on race. The fact that this guy looks and sounds like a joke does not support either argument but I still can’t believe that this Moose character is the promoter of anything. Actually, I think his intentions for creating this league are racist, but an all white basketball league doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.

Mr. Lewis states that players on other professional teams carry guns, attack fans in the stands, and go through the motions of playing the game. It seems as though he is implying that all of these problems are caused by non-whites because his intention is to eliminate these problems but whites would still play in his league. I suppose in Mr. Lewis’ view, the same result could be achieved by eliminating all non-white players from current leagues. Kicking them out of leagues would be racist, but creating the AABA for the same intentions is not. Fundamentally sound white players are vanishing and fans want sanity returned to the game of basketball? I guess this means that non-whites are out of control and now incapable of playing the game humanely. Other qualifications are that “only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.” I think this makes the league more discriminatory. If the goal of the AABA is allow for more fundamentally sound whites to play the game, why can’t white foreigners participate?

I think Moose promoted his idea very poorly but the idea of an all-white league is not necessarily racist. There are many programs and institutions in this country that are available only to non-whites. Does this mean they are discriminating to white people or are we in debt to non-whites and must make up for it in certain ways? For example, there are academic scholarships available only to blacks. I have never heard of a scholarship that only whites may apply for. The same argument can be made for affirmative action. A certain amount of seats may be saved just for minorities who seek admittance to a program or institution. This would eliminate whites that are potentially more qualified for admittance in order to increase diversity. That is not an all inclusive explanation of affirmative action but is that example discriminating against whites?

I do believe that Mr. Lewis’ intentions for creating this league seem to be racist but the idea for an established program to be all white does not have to be that way. Whites have suppressed many minorities in this country and have since created programs and opportunities in order to try and level the playing field. Creating programs solely for whites might contradict that but it is not necessarily racist.

Yvrose is an inspirational business woman and it is amazing how she has been able to turn her sales into a sophisticated micro-business. The more I think about it, the more I find myself in agreement with Dr. Richards in realizing that much of our success is not a measure of our own achievements. Even though I come from a working, middle class family I realize that many of my accomplishments were set up by the people and things around me. I think that I would have not achieved nearly as much or be where I am now without the assistance from my parents. Without high expectations from others, how many of us would seek out opportunities and find motivation to be successful from an early age? My parents enrolled me in sports and other extra-curricular activities at a young age. They placed pressure on me to do well in school and would reward or punish me based on my performance. I attended an excellent high school that assisted in giving every student the opportunity to attend college. Now I understand what is necessary to succeed in this society and have more self-motivation to perform well and be involved.

In Dr. Richards’ case, his mother suggested he become a stenographer after high school, but instead he attended college. Eventually “something clicked” and he found the motivation to get serious about his work and eventually earned a Ph.D. He is responsible for many of these achievements but still thinks he has had a lot of help and believes that had he gotten more assistance or grown up in a wealthier family, he could be doing the same thing at a more prestigious university.

I wanted to agree with the statement/question made in class on Tuesday that the killing of so Native Americans could be explained with the Darwinian theory and survival of the fittest. However, the point was made that it is hard to make the argument that the “fittest” are actually on top in this world because the fittest are simply the product of other fit people. If everyone was left on their own to fend for themselves from the beginning, circumstances would be very different. I agree with this point and it goes both ways as in Yvrose’s case because sometimes the strongest and most capable do not survive or are not on top.

I think Yvrose is a good example of someone who probably hasn’t been set up for the success she is capable of achieving, but makes out very well given her circumstances. To have a 5th grade education and be able to grasp and effectively apply the concepts of lending money, purchasing goods internationally, then loaning them with interest to merchants is quite remarkable. Like most parents, she is probably motivated to succeed for the benefit of her children. There are certainly many people in this world who are as intelligent as Yvrose and it’s interesting to imagine what they might be capable of if they were afforded more opportunities.

cont...As Dr. Richards stated in class, children of same sex parents are not more likely to become homosexuals themselves. This is important and reinforces my belief that homosexuality is not a choice. Some religious beliefs hold that homosexuality is a choice and the devil has an influence on that person. Perhaps that makes it easier to condemn a person and put them at fault. Therefore it makes it possible for them to change and still achieve salvation. Even though the children are not more likely to be homosexual they are still subject to teasing and discrimination. If I had same sex parents I might be hesitant to disclose their relationship under many circumstances. It may be unfair to the child to subject them to teasing from their peers or feel underprivileged because they do not have the societal norm of a mother and father. However, one may still consider whether these possible disadvantages of same sex parents are a better alternative to remaining in a shelter or foster care. I think it is advantageous to be adopted by a same sex couple, but adoption may still be condemned by society because they only consider the current situation while overlooking the alternatives.