In A Call to Men, Tony Porter talks about growing up as boy and turning into a man in the Bronx NY. Mr. Porter tells the audience about the man box, which is a great descriptive analogy to what our culture tells young boys and men how they should act throughout life. Men should  be heterosexual, dominant, have no fear, and be tough and strong. From a very young age, boys are socialized to internalize expectations from family, school and numerous different institutions. 

When Tony Porter's brother dies, his father emotionally broke down. Completely suppressed his emotions at the funeral until all the women in their family were no where to be seen. This is a perfect example of how our culture almost de-humanizes humanity's natural need to feel emotion. In the Johnny and Sheila story Mr. Porter had a moment of resocialization when he was invited to have sex with a girl without her consent. By the end of the TED talk, there was a sense that the speaker Tony was speaking about promoting equality. He let the audience know that our young sons need to know that they don't have to be Superman and that even Superman gets emotional sometimes. 

In Killing Us Softly by Jean Kilbourne, she talks about the media and advertisements turning women into objects. These ads are something that are not there in real life. Women don't actually look like what they portray women in ads in magazines, on the Internet and in life.

Jean Kilbourne's talk tells us that everyday at every moment, women are bring de-humanized, being attacked and looked at as objects. She shows us how some advertisements replace food parts with women part. There are examples of beer bottles as women. Chicken buckets as breasts. The list goes on as to how the commercial industry depicts beautiful women. Sex sells... And it creates public health problems for many women.

Socialization is the basis for both of these videos. We learn as people from early on what to believe is right and wrong. Sometimes what we are taught actually hinder us in the long run. That's what these videos tell us. What we are taught to know at a young age may very well be misinformed. We learn new things about ourselves everyday and as we grow we understand that many things aren't as they seem. Men can be emotional and not dominant. All women don't, can't and will never look like women in magazines because even the women in them do not look like that. Socialization isn't only positive as we both heard in the assigned videos. It is very much negative as well.

The Retro Wife and Parents' Socialization of Children are articles about parenting. Retro Wife is about the woman in the household and the feminism behind it. The article follows a family with a mother and wife who decides that being a mom at home with her kids is her first priority. Society tells her that yes this I'd her role but feminists would tell her otherwise. They would tell her that she is being socialized into thinking  that her role in life is to be a good mom and housewife. For Kelly Makino that is perfectly ok, if that means she can raise her kids the way she would like. Parents' Socialization of Children explains in depth from numerous sources around the world the different parenting styles which are all cultivated from each owns society and culture. 

Culture shock is something that hasn't resonated with me as much as it has with other people. Coming from a multicultural family of Ethiopian and Jamaican descent, I think I may have been exposed to culture shock early on. Moving to New York could have been a huge culture shock for me, but it wasn't because I was brought up knowing that every place and everyone has different beliefs and ways of life that may seem strange to me but perfectly regular to them.

I moved around a lot as a kid, about 13 times, not including my independent move to New York. It definitely felt like I was living a gypsy lifestyle. As soon as I would make friends and get comfortable somewhere, my parents would then tell me we were heading out. Not only did I have my parents languages to understand, but when we moved to Houston, the dialect and accents were very different. I had to adapt to Houston's cultural relativism. Houston's dialect was different, a long southern drawl. Not like a South Carolina or Mississippi accent but more of a country drawl that you can find in Arkansas or Oklahoma.




But moving to New York City was a completely different story. Everything that seemed norm to me changed when I moved to New York. New York City is a melting pot of multi-cultural ethnicities. People in New York definitely don't share the same beliefs, languages or behaviors, but the people that inhabit New York share the same city and have to evolve in each others space. This is in turn makes everyone in this city exposed to many, many different cultures. The natural ethnocentrism that comes along with living amongst so many different cultures was mind blowing to me. There are more people from different countries living in New York than anywhere else. The dominant culture permeates the United States no matter where you are in it. The difference about it in New York is that many second and third generations keep the language, all of the material cultures and their real culture is valued deeply.

Traveling to different countries has taught me that every country has some of the same exact ideal cultures with or without knowing it but behaviors are something no one can hide from when traveling into another country from their own. When I was in Berlin, it is like a sin to cross the street even when there were absolutely no cars, the cross walk signal had to be changed. There also was a huge subculture of Turkish communities all throughout Berlin.

My own culture is very hard to define, I am constantly changing and learning who I am. As I am doing that, I am learning from other people who live elsewhere. This helps me understand how big and vast the world is. Acknowledging other cultures, the different freedoms other cultures have, has brought on a different perspective on all angles of my life.

From watching football in Texas to eating my way through New York and dancing to electronic music through Germany. I am becoming more multicultural than I ever thought I could be.

Sad souls

Teenage Wasteland by Donna Gaines was a little hard for me to get through. She asked a lot of questions and investigated suicidal, depressed kids who live in a suburban area of New Jersey. After finishing the reading, I then was able to understand the sociological imagination of her research.

The teenagers that committed this group suicide were labeled as outcasts and losers. They did not fit in with the normal conformities around them. This would either lead to a depressive state or some outlet to put that negative energy somewhere else. Some kids who are told they are outcasts and different don’t always submit to suicide as a way out.

These teenagers didn’t excel in their studies. They were brought up in broken homes. They knew other people who committed suicide. They had many financial constraints. They hated the environment they were brought up in. All of these points were necessary to try to answer Gaines questions.

These four teenagers were so lost that it was enough for them to commit mass suicide. This brings up many questions that only the dead kids can answer. What happened? How sad are you? What’s going on with you? These basic questions may have prevented some of these deaths. How did their community attribute to their suicides? Did their communities reject them?

People need to feel loved; they need solidarity within their lives. We find people who like the same things as us. Some kids have their heads in comic books, or play an instrument, some paint or draw. Some kids play X-box together or online games. These kids who committed suicide came together for the sake of losing the feeling of helplessness. 

Association is Not Causation

           

          Halfway through reading Association is Not Causation, I came to the realization that the research done for the study clearly states that alcohol and drugs are not the direct cause of family violence. There are many other social factors that aren’t closely related to drug or alcohol abuse. The reading gave me an understanding on why society heavily relates alcohol and drugs to domestic violence and violence in general.

          In our culture it is widely believed that alcohol and drugs cause violent tendencies. I work at a big restaurant that has a club atmosphere to it and I could count numerous times where people have gotten into fights because they were “intoxicated”. Regardless of how much they drank or how drunk they thought they were, most people who come out and get into fights were actually looking for one before they had their first sip of alcohol. In the reading Association is Not Causation they do a lab experiment where subjects were put into two groups. One group received vodkas tonics and the other tonic and water. The group that was the most aggressive was actually the group who were drinking tonic-waters. 

      The study concluded that people are going to act out of expectancy whether they’re drinking or not. The effect depends I believe on personality factors. If you’re an aggressive person then you should know that and have limits for yourself. What I have grasped from reading the article and real life instances is that within our culture, people tend to act the way you think they’ll act. If in our society, people cut themselves off after a few drinks and realized when enough was  enough then I don’t think violence would be relevant. Understanding sociology helps understand that most people are products of their environment and will act accordingly.

Who am I?

Who am I? This is such a hard question to answer. Each and everyday I am continuing to figure out who I am. I am a lot. There is a lot to me. I am many things and I am one thing. I am not something lying around like a book or a scarf or a blender. I am a living, breathing woman.

I am Germawit (Grrr ma wit).

I am a Texan who was born in Rochester from a beautiful Ethiopian lady and a handsome, glamorous Jamaican Rasta.  I have a younger sister who is a lot taller and skinnier than me. I was raised to love both of my parents’ cultures as one melting pot of African culture just from different parts of the world. I grew up around almost every kind of person growing up. My parents enrolled me into an urban suburban program where I woke up at 5 am every morning to get on a bus to drive an hour out of the city to go to school with white kids. All white kids. I may have been one of the three or four black children in the whole school. Early on I had to learn how to adapt to a different environment and communicate with kids whose cultures I didn’t know much about. Being that I am pretty social, I didn’t have much of an issue making friends and joining some sports teams. Up till high school I moved to a district where the school was much more diverse than my last and had people from every corner of the world.

I’ve been in love with food for most of my life and decided I wanted to become a chef. The day after my 18^th birthday I got on a plane to NYC to attend the French culinary institute. As soon I managed to walk around the city alone when I got here, I realized that my life would never be the same and that amazing, fun and interesting things would happen. I also realized that if I hadn’t come to NY and stayed in Houston, that I’d probably be married, with a child and a mortgage. Moving to New York helped me further realize that there is never a “proper” way of doing things. Everyone creates the paths that they want for themselves.

For me, almost everything that I have done and all the people I have met here has helped shape who I am at this moment. Every day I am changing and learning.