When 9/11 happened I was 7 years old. I remember I was at my grandparents’ house in Kentucky. My family was in the process of moving from North Carolina to Pennsylvania and we were planning to live in Kentucky with my grandparents for a couple months while my dad went on to Pittsburgh to find a house. I was playing outside with my sister and cousins when my mom came out and told us to come inside. She seemed calm but I remember being able to tell that something was wrong and she was worried. The TV was on and the news said that a plane had crashed into a building. Me, being a naïve little kid, thought a pilot had just made a mistake and it was an accident. It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that someone had deliberately flown a plane into the twin towers. Even when I knew the situation, I still couldn’t figure out why someone would do that on purpose. Why would someone take their own life just to kill others and send a message to the United States? My mom just said they were bad people and were called terrorists. There really isn’t any other way to explain it to a young kid. So all of us stayed inside for the rest of the day and just played inside. Life went on as a kid. I didn’t realize how many people had died. I didn’t realize the impact that it would have on peoples’ families and the effects that this would have, not only on the people it hurt, but our society as a whole. It made us lump all Muslims into one category, terrorists. I remember being on a plane a couple years later and seeing a person with a turban on and thinking “this plane might go down today.” Even now, over ten years later, people still are weary of being on a plane with a Muslim and it didn’t really help that the Boston bombers were Muslim. That strengthens the stereotype and the outlook that people have on Muslims. It’s a shame that these extremists have to be the face of a whole religion of people. When people see muslims they see terrorists, killers. It’s like the situation with the westboro Baptist church. Because they do extreme things and protest all of these funerals, they are what other people think of when they hear the religion of Christianity. Now that an older though I realize the true nature of these horrific events. I see the damage they cause and the effects they have on all types of people. We can try not to judge people for what others have done, but we can’t help the way we think when these things keep happening.

First things first; I am a heterosexual male. I think the main thing that keeps us from asking if the woman was pleasured is the way society has molded us. Sex is based around male satisfaction and when the guy gets off then everything stops.
Another main point is if the guy cares or not. If I am in a relationship, then I care if I satisfy you or not. If this is a one night stand thing then, as bad as this sounds, guys don’t really care if the girl has an orgasm or not. The thing is, even if that does sound bad, most girls don’t usually mind it. I’ve talked to girls, and although I usually can satisfy a girl, they don’t care whether they have an orgasm or not. I’ve had one night stands where I didn’t have an orgasm the first time we had sex and the girl was upset when I didn’t get off the first time so she wanted to again and make sure that I had an orgasm. There is almost a pressure and an expectation for the girl to pleasure the guy and not the other way around.
As Sam said in class, sex is better when you have that emotional attachment. I think a big thing for girls is to please the guy so that he will come back later on and not just be a one night thing. If she satisfies him and not herself then it’s okay because she will most likely see him again and this one night stand could possibly turn into a recurring thing. It actually means more to the girl than it does to the guy. So for the girl, the point is to please the guy that did this.
Another way of looking at this is like the sex being the reward. In society, the men are supposed to approach the women, and very rarely does it ever happen the other way around. So after a few drinks and a decent amount of flirting you take the risk of asking to go back to your/her place. After going through all this work the sex is seen as a reward for the guy and the work paid off. People also say to girls, why even bring a guy back that doesn’t satisfy you completely when you can do that yourself. Guys can do that to, it’s just more of a pride thing to know that you can go out and pick up an attractive girl and follow through. For the girls though, I imagine the reason they don’t just go home and do it themselves is because of the emotional attachment that they are trying to find.

I would have definitely had more sympathy for Tammy if she was Native American. If she was Native American I would have assumed she was born into this and her family has been generations of very poor people who are not in a situation in which they would be able to get out and make their lives better. Since she is not Native American, she comes off to me as just being lazy and not wanting to make anything of her life.
When I started watching the video I felt bad for Tammy at first. My initial thoughts were she was a single mother, she could barely afford this trailer, and maybe she is trying to work and make life better for her kids. Then the video progressed and you heard her excuses of why she doesn’t make life better. She blamed her parents for her lack of education because she had twenty two brothers and sisters. She said she couldn’t get to work because her car doesn’t run. I assumed the car was running, but started having problems and she didn’t get it fixed and just put it off for lack of money or whatever reason.
The one thing I was impressed with was the fact that she walked over ten miles to get to work every day, no matter how the weather was. I wouldn’t do that just for a job. I don’t think anyone that had any other options would ever do that.
The reason people feel sympathy for Tammy was because of all the hardships she went through. But what they look over is the fact that she got herself there. She could have done things to make her life better but she chose to do different things and now she has excuses as to why she lives the way she does. It’s like how people look at recovering drug addicts like they are heroes and so inspirational for recovering and “defeating withdrawal,” and how no one looks at the people who have never done drugs as inspirational or heroes. They look over the mistakes that the addicts made to get into the situation they are in.
The stereotype that people are connecting with Tammy is that she is trailer trash. She fits into the stereotypical white trash that lives in trailer park. She doesn’t have nice things, her yard is filled with trash, she isn’t educated along with her children, and she has a minimum wage job and won’t be able to make her life better without the help of other people.
In conclusion, I would have felt more sympathy for Tammy if she was Native American, assuming she couldn’t have done anything to prevent the situation she was in and assuming white Tammy had the chance to make her life better.

I think the main difference between helping people from other countries and helping our own is the outlook that it has for America. Not too many people know about the Native American situation. What people do know about are the needy people in the other countries. We see commercials, advertisements, things that make us feel guilty about not helping them and “all you have to do is donate 5 cents a week” to save a child’s life. You never hear about the Native Americans that need help inside our country. America is seen as the country that helps other countries in need. When the Middle East was being dictated by Saddam Hussein they looked to the United States for help. We helped them and it made us look good in the eyes of other countries. They know they can trust us and if we ever need anything they are in our debt and will help us out.
The reason that the government can just ignore the Native American problem is because they are almost insignificant. The problem has been overlooked for so long that they have become such a small population that their problems are made unimportant and they are so poor that they cannot solve their own issues. Also, no one really knows about the race issues in the United States. It seems like we focus on one issue and forget about all of the rest, only for that issue to go unresolved and be swept under the rug like all of the rest. The unfortunate thing about that is that the problems that do get resolved are usually the ones that are based on white people. The issue that is being resolved right now is legalizing gay marriage. All of the other issues have been forgotten about until we fix this problem that mostly affects white people. So once again, the problems of minorities are not resolved and are just getting worse.
My friend made a good point about the way this country handles international problems more than their own. She said “America’s government needs to work on their own problems more. You can’t tell other countries how to function when you can’t even fix the problems within your own country.” This government seems to focus on the way they are perceived to other countries more than how they look to their own citizens. Think about it. A president does a good job when they solve international issues. They have a good presidency when they can help another country or resolve any problems. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that we have issues in our own country that need to be solved before other countries’ problems.

I definitely think that nepotism is more socially acceptable than affirmative action. With that being said, I do not oppose affirmative action. I think anyone that says they do, if they were given the some kind of benefit for being a minority, they would take it in an instant. I just think it is more acceptable to give someone that you are related to a job then to give someone that you do not even know some kind of benefit because they are a minority. I have a friend who is on a full ride to college because he is part Cuban. When he tells people that, the reactions vary from a surprised look to an annoyed response because he got special treatment. When you tell someone that your relative is getting you a job their responses are more of a “good for you” than a jealousy/unfair type if thing. People are more inclined to accept the fact that family looks out for each other as opposed to helping someone who is a minority.
A statement that comes to mind that describes nepotism perfectly is “It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know.” This statement is completely true. We are taught growing up to be social, meet people, and stay friends with the people you meet. Sometimes nepotism backfires, just like the way our friendships did as a kid. I think hiring a relative can be a positive or negative thing. The family member that gets hired would either work harder to earn the position that was handed to them, or they would slack and not think they had to do much work because of the fact that a relative hired them, and it would cause problems if they were fired.
Personally, I have never gained anything from nepotism. I have never been hired because I was related to someone high up in the business. If I were given that chance, I would take it; just like I would take a scholarship if I were a minority. I think the main reason people see affirmative action as a negative thing sometimes is because it is structured.
Like one of the previous commenters said, it is weird to think that the reason affirmative action exists is to try and fix our past mistakes. “We really messed up before so let us make it up to you by giving you things and hopefully you will take it as an apology.” (We being the government) We see that the minorities have it harder than white males, so we try to make up for it. What the minorities are usually blind to is the fact that when they start to succeed it makes up white males even more successful.

Looking back, I do not think being a white male has benefited me in any drastic way. It may have helped me out with getting my jobs when I was a young teen, but I never really thought anything of it. Being a male actually impeded me in getting one of my jobs. I applied to work at an ice cream shop where all of the employees there were good looking girls that were all around my age. When I got an application, a girl said “It really isn’t worth it to apply here. He doesn’t hire any guys.” I just thought well she has to be just overreacting and joking around. Well a couple months go by and I didn’t hear anything so I asked one of the girls what had happened. She said she had seen him look through the applications and throw a couple out, then proceed to call two other girls to hire them and see when they could start working. So in that instance being a male did not help me out.
The next incident that I can think of is when me and my friends got pulled over and searched for drugs. The police officer got our driver out and started asking him questions about the “dude with the flat brimmed hat on.” He asked what hobbies that person had and if he had ever seen him do drugs or anything like that. They said to either let them search the car, or get a huge fine for speeding. So we got out of the car and were questioned to see if we had any drugs or narcotics on us. After saying we didn’t have any in our possession, we were patted down and searched. They then searched the car and looked through all of our bags. When the cops realized that we didn’t have any drugs on us, their exact words were “Well, someone was actually telling the truth tonight!” So from that, I got the impression that before even talking to any of us, they assumed we had drugs and were breaking the law. This was in West Virginia, where from my previous encounters, some people there are very judgmental. The fact that my friend had on a flat brimmed hat was enough to assume we were involved in something illegal is something I would consider racist.
The only incident where I imagine being a white male helped me out was when I was in 13 years old. My hormones were raging and a girl asked me to come over around midnight on a Saturday. Well curfew in my town is eleven o clock. So I walked to the girls house, got some sugar, nooki, action; whatever you want to call it, and I left around 3 in the morning. Since it was past curfew, I avoided the main roads on the walk back. So I step out into a street light and I hear this car racing up the road to where I am. I play it cool and don’t run. A police car pulls up next to me and an officer asks what I am doing. My genius response was “I was going to the gas station to get some food.” To which they replied that it closes at 11. We went through all of the information parts, I gave them my name, address, whatever they asked for. When they realized that I was not causing trouble, they just told me to go home, as opposed to giving me a curfew violation. I imagine if I were a black male that they would have suspected that I was up to something and would have gotten me in trouble.

When I was younger the fear of death was a big thing in my life. It would upset me to think about my family or even myself dying, as it would for any child. I would basically just force myself to not think about it. But as I grew older, the aspect of dying intrigued me. I always laid in bed late at night thinking about what could happen to us when we die. I thought about everlasting life and I thought about everlasting punishment.
Just last year a friend of mine expressed her view of what would happen to us when we die. She said “Think back to before you were born. It’s just nothingness right?” So I tried to imagine before being born. All I could think of was nothing, if that makes sense. She then went on to say “That is what happens to us when we die, you just become nothing again.” Thinking about that made my head spin. I couldn’t wrap my head around being nothing after I die. It made sense, but we are all so used to hearing about life after death that this made me think.
On the opposite end of that, the thought of everlasting life confuses the hell out of me. Questions come up like: Where do we go? How does everyone fit there? Will my family be there? How does all of this happen? I could not imagine living for forever. I feel like people talk about life after death like it’s nothing. Forever is a long, long time. One thing I wonder about is that if all of this is true, then do we get to watch Earth after we die? Do we get to see what happens to our friends or even the big picture, what happens to the entire world, after we die?
Besides my thoughts and how I view death, I do not think it has physically affected me. I do not go throughout my day suspicious of things that are going to kill me. I obviously do the basic survival things like looking both ways before you cross a street, wearing a seat belt, and all the other things our parents engraved into our brains when we were kids. I do generally avoid danger like gun fights, police chases, and the other things that videogames have taught me to do, but avoiding all of that is common sense. Other than that, the fear of death has not made a big physical impact on my everyday life. I think if you do go out every day with the thought that you may die and you need to be super safe, then you are not living life to the fullest.

At this point in my life I do not recognize with being religious or non-religious. With all of the differences in the religions, I prefer to not choose one and just live my life. With that being said, if it were to be proven that God exists or does not exist I can only imagine the things that people would do.
If God were to be proven to exist, I think everyone would become either stronger in their faith, or “born again Christians.” People would be doing everything they could to try and get God to forgive their sins and to make sure they are seen as a good person. I think a lot of the violence in the world would decrease. I also believe a lot of this would be complete bullshit. The people who decided to become religious once they heard that God existed would have on their fake smiles and have some artificial genuine attitude towards helping people. Along with all of the benefits, there would be a lot of “I told you so” attitudes towards people who, before hand, had not believed on God. The true religious people would be accepting of the recently changed atheists and would know they have chosen the right path.
On the other hand, if God were proven to not exist, I think the world would go in one of two directions. One would be absolute chaos, and the other would be a new world where people just live their lives. If the chaotic world were to come about, no one would care about doing things for others and people. Everything would be about self-benefit and being genuinely nice to people would be gone. The religious wars would shift from which religion is the best to which race is the best. I think people would be obsessed with taking over the world by putting their country superior to others.
On the opposite end of that, God being proven to not exist could cause a lot of conflicts to be avoided. Religious wars could stop all together and no one would be worried about who was better than one another, and people would just live. If God were not to exist, people would realize that they are not that much different than each other. Everyone would accept that humans had evolved and the way everyone looks is because of certain adaptations to the environment. People would be happy knowing that they can live their lives without knowing there is some over looking supreme being watching every move they make. The genuinely nice people could do as they please, and the people who enjoy drinking and premarital sex can do as they please.
My reaction to God being proven to exist or not to exist would be somewhat similar. If God were to be proven to exist, I may do more nice things from people and refrain from drinking and having sex once in a while, but my lifestyle would not have any drastic changes, besides asking for forgiveness. If God were to be proven to not exist, I imagine I’d keep living the way I live now; being a happy, relaxed person and doing as I please.

When I think of a place I would like to travel my first thoughts are Peru, Italy, and France; all of the countries that are well known to tourism. Up until watching that video, Iran would not have been anywhere near the top of my list. I always pictured Iran as a run-down country with dirt roads and bombed out houses, where the Iranian people hate Americans and are not free to have any sort of entertainment. The reason for this is the way the media has skewed my vision of how Iran is; portraying it as a place where violence occurs often and the people are not happy. Watching the video really changed my perspective.
I realized that although the government is really strict and the media has shown me some of Iran, there is a lot that I have been oblivious to about learning about the country. It seemed like the young adults in the video were like us American college students. They wake up in the morning the same way we do, wondering what they will wear that day and how to go about their business. They got all dressed up to go out for a night and party with their friends, just like we do. After seeing the video my perspective changed. Now I would love to go to Iran and spend a night out at the clubs and various festivals they have.
The media has a big impact on what we think about every day. Growing up my parents talked about the news at the dinner table. They talked about it with family friends. They made it seem like everything in the news was accurate and very important to how we think and act. With that in mind, when I saw the news I would think that is what life is like in that country. I was blind to the fact that not everything you see in the news is completely true in portraying how life in another country is.
One main point we brought up in our discussion was “if they are so like us, why is it that they want to visit America, and Americans are afraid of going to Iran?” As I mentioned earlier, I think it has a lot to do with how the country is made out to look through the media. To Iranians, I believe America is made out to be this great country, which in some cases it is. Our government is less strict than theirs and we are almost allowed to do as we please. Iran is portrayed to us as this country you do not want to go to. The circumstances are bad and the people are poor. Imagine if the only thing that other countries saw about America was the homeless people, the shootings, the drugs, prostitution, and violence. I don’t think very many people from other countries would want to come visit us either.

I think the main reason guys do not tell other guys they look “hot” is because of how other people would take it. Telling another guy he is hit, as we saw in class, can make that guy feel uncomfortable and leave him stunned and without words. If I were to walk up to a group of my friends and tell one of them that they look hot, it would make quite the awkward situation for not only the guy but the rest of the guys in the group. I think one of the main reasons if how guys and girls use words differently. When a girl says someone looks hot it is usually a sincere compliment on the outfit they chose to wear that day. When a guy tells a girl she looks hot, it is usually because we want to be with that person sexually; saying her features make her look sexually attractive. With that in mind, if a guy uses the word hot to describe another guy, it is seen as gay and in the world we live in now, being homosexual is looked down upon.
Me being a straight male, I say girls look hot all of the time. When I think of myself telling another guy he looks hot, I get uncomfortable. I have found other ways to get around the uncomfortable feeling of complimenting another guy by saying “Lookin’ fresh to death” or something along those lines. I’ve only said it to my closest friends though, just so it doesn’t make them uncomfortable. Imagining saying something like that to someone I just met makes me feel awkward. If a guy I had just met said “you’re looking good tonight,” my first thought would be “This guy is weird. He might be gay. I’m going to avoid him for the remainder of the night.” With that said, I am not homophobic and I am completely fine with people being homosexual. I just don’t feel uncomfortable being told that I look good by another guy.
With society’s tight grip on how everyone acts, we associate different words with different motives. Telling someone of the opposite sex that they are hot is a way of telling someone you are attracted to them. So when a guy hears another guy call him hot, they get the impression that they are attracted to them. A girl can say another girl is cute, but not be considered a lesbian, whereas if a guy does that, he's 'queer' or 'not quite right' and it's something to do with masculinity. It may be that a lot of men don't feel masculine enough, comfortable in their own skins, and therefore cannot accept a compliment of that kind.