This article, and the lawsuit itself, bring up interesting questions for us. What is sex? What is gender? Are they the same, or can there be differences between them? More broadly, what is equality? Does everybody deserve equal rights, or are there some exceptions?
I read the comments of my classmates, and people who agreed with the employer (or at least could understand their point of view) said that people would not feel comfortable being accompanied by someone of the opposite sex while doing something as intimate as urinating. What I wonder is, why? First of all, this man’s employer only knew to ask about his past because she heard about it from someone else. When he was hired, nobody looked at him and could tell that he had been born a man. So, unless he wore a sign around his neck saying “transgender,” which obviously he would never do, probably none of the people he was observing would even know.
Furthermore, I fail to see what the problem is even if he were a full woman and he saw these men urinating. I can understand why a woman wouldn’t want a man to see her, because women have to uncover a large part of their bodies to urinate and because men are so driven sexually by visual images. But women do not tend to be aroused sexually by seeing a man, and they would probably not be judging. Actually, it is more probable that a man judge another man’s intimate parts than a woman judge a man. Women are also FAR less likely to commit acts of sexual harassment.
This aside, the real issue here is that of transsexuality. The problem in our society is that we’re afraid to address these issues of people going against the norm sexually. We have come to some type of discussion about homosexuality, although many people would prefer to believe that it doesn’t exist, but almost nobody talks about transgendered people at all. It is very taboo in our society to be transgendered, and I think this is a shame. People are disgusted to hear that someone was once a different gender, and we never find a way to bring it out into the open and talk about it.

I thought this speaker had a very interesting take on war. At first she starts by telling us stories of individuals who live through war. What I found most powerful was when she spoke of how life goes on during war- people fall in love, people study, people work, people get divorced. Life goes on during war, and this life needs to be a full one and not one ruined by another’s fight. Eventually she comes to her main point, which is that women should be included more in the decision making process and that this would ensure that fewer wars would be fought and that more people would be taken care of.
It sounds like a very good idea. I agree that women tend to be more people oriented and less conflict oriented, they tend to look at this from a more complex point of view and do not generalize things as much as men. Women are probably more likely to think of those who are suffering and not just think about what can be gained from a war. However, although I think the idea was a good one, it did not seem that she had much of a plan for implementing this change. Where would the women come from? Would these be women who actually lived in this area? Or is she thinking that more American women should be included in the U.S.’s decisions about whether to go into war and how to deal with it? Would these women be volunteers, would they be female politicians, would they be civilian women?
Although it seems like a wonderful idea, I fail to see how it would be implemented. Women who live in war torn areas probably do not have much time to sit around talking about war, they need to take care of their children and keep their families alive. Women who go into politics tend to (although not always) be more masculine, more butch. Would they really be much different from men? Does being a woman change everything, or would women removed from the conflicts themselves be just as likely to treat casualties casually? This we do not know.

There is a widespread belief that most of the people who have lots of money have worked hard to earn that money. They deserve it because they were more dedicated than we ourselves were to hard work and sacrifice. They must have done something right. Personally, I don’t even have that much trouble with cheating your way to the top. Hey, at least you were smart enough to be successful and not get caught.
I know the world isn’t fair. It will never be fair. But sometimes, it’s not so easy to accept that. You work hard and make a lot of money? Great! You schemed your way to the top? Ok, I can take that. But what I hate is something that Sam touched on in class. What I hate is how we can be BORN INTO opportunity, or we can be born into POVERTY. So much of this depends on whose sperm connected with whose egg. What I mean by this is that it’s arbitrary. It has nothing to do with intelligence or hard work or skill. The more money you have, the more likely it is that you’ll go to Harvard, which will in turn get you a very high paying job, and with that money (and maybe a little help from daddy) you can invest in new businesses and voila you’re rolling in more dough than I will see in my lifetime.
Now, we can blame the rich all we want. Poor us, we’re at Penn State and not Harvard. Poor us, we don’t get to party with Paris Hilton. But let me tell you a little story. I come from a family without much money, and when I was 18 I got the crazy idea in my head that I would move to Mexico. I worked for a while (earning minimum wage, mind you) and saved three thousand dollars. With that, I moved to Mexico. That lasted me for a year, and during the second year I lived there I got a job as a waitress and earned a MEXICAN wage- about 70 dollars a week, working eight hour shifts, six days a week.
In the United States, we don’t realize what we have. Not because we our minimum wage is higher than Mexico’s, but because we have more opportunities. Probably at least 95% of Mexicans could not go to a college good enough to get even a decent job (public college is almost free in Mexico but barely good enough to get you a mediocre middle class job).

Like almost everyone else commenting on this video, I am in support of Gay Marriage, and I was very very moved by the story that Zach Wahls told. He had a beautiful way of explaining his point, and the fact that it was his own experience, not just an opinion he had, made it a lot more convincing and powerful.
Critics of homosexuals having children will most often argue that children need a stable, well rounded family. If this is so, why are they not also criticizing single parents or divorced parents who share custody? How about remarried parents? What is it like for a child to have three or four parents and two families? It doesn’t seem to me that one can judge a family superficially only on how conventional it is, because I think a large portion of American families are no longer conventional at all.
In my case, my mother didn’t even get married until she was in her thirties. My brother was born when my mom was 36, and then she divorced his father. She met a charming man twenty three years her senior and they started dating. He worked constructing research facilities, and therefore was on the road very often. Seeing as she was getting older, she told him she wanted to have another kid, and he agreed. Later it would come to be known that he only agreed because he believed that she would not be able to get pregnant. But she was able, and I was born when my mom was 40 years old. My parents were not married. My sister was born three years later, and that is when my mom found out that my father’s wife had not actually died from cancer, as he had told her, but was alive and kicking. He had another family, including two “kids” who were my mom’s age.
Needless to say, my mother left my father. She found herself a single mother with three small children. At that time my brother’s father became sick with heart disease. My mother let him move in with my family, and she took care of him in return for him helping her care for her children. They never became involved emotionally, sharing separate rooms. So I have a father who is now 85 years old who I see only once or twice a year, a dad who is not only not biologically related to me and in no way involved with my mother, but actually my older brother’s father but not mine, and my mom who is now 62 years old.
My family is very unconventional but we get along just fine. I have always known my mom and dad (the one who lived with us) loved me very much. They supported me and helped to guide me as I grew up. We lived together peacefully and we loved each other. I think this goes to show that families don’t have to be conventional to work. Love and support, guidelines and teaching are what really make a good family.

After watching this video, I was surprised not by the video itself, but rather by the comments. After our class in which Sam talked about risk, and the probability of children being abducted, I was surprised to see that my fellow classmates had really not absorbed what Sam said. The most common response in the comment section was basically “although I learned in class that there is a one in a million chance that my kid would be abducted, I will still teach him not to talk to strangers. Better safe than sorry.” Now, if you’re going to take this approach, that is perfectly valid. But then you should also not allow your child to ride in a car, and not to play with other children. This is because it’s much more likely that your child is killed in a car accident, or that another kid accidentally does something to harm your child than it is that a complete stranger abducts him. In fact, it is much much much more probable that one of his own family members abducts him, so while your at it, don’t let him interact with any of your family.
As for the video itself, it was a little amusing to me. The guy was obviously completely unstable mentally, because he tried to grab the kid in such a stupid situation. There was no way that he could have been successful, unless he literally picked the kid up, pushed the nanny down, and made a run for it. In no way did he even attempt this, so it is apparent to me that his intention was not serious nor well thought out. Rather, it seemed to me that while either under the influence of something, no untable mentally, he saw the child and it crossed his mind that it would be funny if he made a grab at him. When the nanny retaliated, he just walked away, thinking how clever he was to scare her like that.
The nanny is now being called a hero, but I’m not exactly sure why. I think that any rational person would do the same thing. If you are walking along with a child, and some random person grabs at the child, then you grab the child back. It’s a natural instinctive response.

Our culture and many like it have preconceived notions about love. One could say that the media feeds these ideas to us, and this is partly true, but I believe they are also regurgitated to us by our peers, family members, and even those we don’t know. We like to believe that some greater being has designed someone special just for us. Even if we don’t believe in “the one” we often convince ourselves, once we have a partner, that this is the best person we could ever hope for, and that there is no one else that would fit us as perfectly as this person does.
I once read something in a self-help book of my mother’s that said that there were thousands of people on earth that any one of us could be happy with. Marriage or long-term committed relationships aren’t based so much on finding that one person that fits us perfectly, although it is easy to lull ourselves into believing that when we’re with someone. A truly good relationship is maintained by working hard at it. To achieve this, we can do another thing Sam said: “if you want to be happy, ask someone who is how he or she did it.”
Sociology is based on finding the big picture by looking at the statistics. If 78% of happy couples achieved their happiness by having X amount of things in common and working on the Y problems which they solved using Z, then most probably if you followed those steps, you would have the same results. If you understand that you are not as unique as you think you are, and you learn to look around and learn from the mistakes and achievements of your peers, you can potentially be much happier.
I watched a movie once that made an amazing point: We always look at the EXCEPTIONS, but you are NOT the exception, you are the rule. Then it went on to ruin that point, but that’s not the point. I thought the point they made was a very valid one, especially in our Sociology class. Today Sam said that it is very unlikely for a child to be abducted. And yet we focus on all the times when children are abducted, and work ourselves into thinking that this is such a common phenomenon. But they are not the rule; they are the exception. The rule is that most strangers would go out of their way to help a child in need.

It’s interesting to analyze two different kinds of “group think.” In this example, the subjects are actively DOING something. They are acting in a certain way because of what they see others doing. The other side of “group think” is what we DON’T do. In the video we watched in class, the subject was taking part in “group think” by being inactive. Instead of speaking up for what he knew to be true (that the first line was in fact the same length as a different line than the one the rest mentioned), he went along with everyone else and listed the wrong answer. Another example of this is how most people will not stand up for someone when the group is against this person. “Group think” tells us what to do, but it also tells us what not to do.
An interesting example in my own life happened just hours before coming to class today. A group of students, myself included, had individually read a speech and assessed whether we thought it pertained to one type or another, and wrote a three page paper about our opinion. When we got into a group to discuss our conclusions, one of the guys stated with conviction “well it’s OBVIOUSLY type one” and everyone agreed, with this kind of “duh, of course” attitude. What’s interesting is that I had just written three pages about why I believed that this speech belonged to type two, but when everyone swore that it was type one, I just nodded along with them, and even gave part of a presentation in front of the whole class saying why I believed it to be type one. I could not speak up and defend my own point of view.
Mr. Richards mentions that many people justify -to others as well as to themselves- why they conform to the group. They make themselves believe that that was their own opinion; that was what they really wanted to do. I like to believe that I am not among these people. I often consciously think that I would like to do something else- but I won’t because no one else is doing it. Sometimes I hope that SOMEONE will do it first, just so that I may be free to do it.

Like this prisoner, I have often wondered about my moral compass. Sometimes I have gone as far as to wonder what a moral even is, and why it is needed. The idea of ‘morals’ is so ingrained in our culture. Listen to any politician speak, and you’ll hear about his or her supposed morals. Watch almost any American movie and you will be being taught a lesson about American morals. Being selfless and doing right for someone else is a commonly valued moral. But when we step back from our own culture, we see that as a whole, we United-States-ers really don’t follow our own advice. Much more than other cultures, we value our own needs and desires over those of our friends or families. Most Americans wouldn’t dream of turning down a great job halfway across the country just because we would be thousands of miles from our family. In some countries, children wouldn’t think of taking a job in a different city, albeit one close by, because they would be letting their family down.
Personally, I think each situation is different. The lifer mentions not lying as a moral, but should we really be so rigid that we never allow ourselves to lie? Some situations merit a lie. To ‘treat others right’ is such a loose concept that it can’t really be upheld. If we all tried to ‘do no harm’ AT ALL, life would be chaos. Sometimes we have to hurt other people. I agree that it’s important to respect (almost) everyone, and that one should try to help those around them. But, as with everything, there is a flip side. Some people are so eager to help that they hurt themselves. Is this what life is all about? Forgetting your own wellbeing?
People should learn to understand and care about each other, and more than anything else, about themselves. One way to understand is by identifying the ‘invisible strings.’ If we can understand others and understand ourselves, then it shouldn’t be too hard to judge each situation, and decide what the ‘right’ thing to do is.

In class we talked about how suicide is “the most private and psychological act one can do.” While this is true, we looked at how although it is extremely private and psychological, it is not free from sociological strings. This is especially apparent when looking at the suicide rate in Japan. If suicide were not influenced by outside social factors, why would so many people in such a small place all choose to commit suicide? Patterns show us that our decisions are in fact very influenced by our environment and social group.
There are various social constructs that may be affecting Japanese peoples’ feelings of desperation that drive them to suicide. One interesting thing that popped out at me about the video is that the newscaster mentions that suicide is frowned upon in Japan because it brings shame on those family members who survive the deceased person. So with society telling people not to commit suicide, why do so many still choose to do it? I once read an article that talked about a place where suicide was almost unheard of, until one person did it. After that, more and more people started doing it. I believe that we are not born conscious that suicide is an option, but rather that we are influenced by the knowledge that others have done it, and this makes it an option. If I understood correctly, the Japanese call this forest where people go to kill themselves ‘suicide forest.’ Imagine feeling like there’s no way out of the mess that you’re in, and then hearing about a place called ‘suicide forest’ where many others go to kill themselves. Just imagine how that would influence the choices you make pertaining to your current situation.
To make things worse, Japanese culture is not as laid back as the American culture we’re all used to. In Japan there is a lot of pressure to do well. It is widely known in the U.S. that Asian children are pushed really hard to study diligently and become extremely successful. Someone who is subjugated to this kind of pressure and sees this as the most important part of their life could understandably become overwhelmed by feelings of personal failure when the economy goes down the drain and they are no longer doing as well as they’re used to, have to struggle to make ends meet, and maybe even lose their job.
I believe all of these are sociological factors that influence these Japanese people to commit suicide.

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