I Am a Promise

After viewing the movie today, what are some of your initial reactions to what you heard/saw? What did you feel after watching the movie? What are some insights you received that you perhaps have never thought about before?

-Also, can you name some of the reasons other than education that the film identified as impacting the children at Stanton Elementary? There are many aspects of our life and many possible outcomes. Identify some of those from the film.

Ungendered child

So if you've taken Dawn Graff Haights Human Sex class, you might recognize this story. It's about a child that was raised completely ungendered. It's kind of silly, but very pertinent to our earlier class discussions. I was reminded of it in Wal-Mart today while I was looking at toys, and thought I'd share. It's kind of long, but funny and interesting. What do you guys think?

http://etransgender.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1850

Dissolving Gender Roles in the Family

I found these videos on youtube and thought they really pertained to what we talked about in class. They show how current economic struggles are affecting the family unit and gender roles.
Have you seen any of these gender roles changing among your own families or in families of people you know? Do you think some of these current changes will re-define how we view gender roles in the years to come? How does the redefining of gender roles contribute to positive or negative aspects in the family unit? Just wondering what everyone thinks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YlR0_pVyCI (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l51rxnKJRfk&feature=channel (Part 2)

Social Institutions

In preparation for Tuesday’s class, I did some reading of chapter 6 in the Korgan and White book, The Engaged Sociologist. And in this chapter, both Korgan and White covered a topic that we had been focusing on the past few weeks: family. But more importantly, how social institutions affected family and life in general. In the chapter, it was stated that, “The makeup of your family, the laws you must follow, your professional career, your schooling, and even whether or not you believe in a higher power (and, if so, what kind of higher power) are all based on the social institutions in your society” (Korgan and White 73). They also brought up the thought of what would happen if one of our rights were upheld (like freedom of speech). Since everyone is different, I wanted to know how social institutions (like government, religion, or the education system) have had an affect on you. How have these social institutions affected where you are today? How might these social institutions affect you later in life as you start your professional career? What challenges might you face? And how might future generations be affected by the many changes that are happening in our social institutions?

Media and the Missing

I was just on logging onto the internet and this was the first thing I saw. I read the article from news week and knew it related perfectly to what we have been talking about in class. It is a great article and I think it's something we do not see alot of in the media. Read it and post what you think!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/218911?GT1=43002

This is awesome.

This video isn't really related to what we've been talking about in class, except I guess it brings up issues of class, but it is amazing and I am interested in what you all think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQmz6Rbpnu0

Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113974893

Why do you think different social groups tend to use different social networking sites? What does this tell us about our society "off line"? In what ways does it reinforce intragroup solidarity and perhaps prevent intergroup interaction? Is this a a troubling trend or simply a reflection of a class and racially segregated society?