Article of the Day 3/31/17

Girl v.s. Women

Think of examples from your own lives, think of other examples of language that perpetuates stereotypes, prohibits social growth and/or keeps groups of people subordinate.

"language matters, words have meaning" 
Calling women girls is a unconscious way of making them subordinate or inferior. You don't call men boys because it's demeaning. It's the same for women. The intentions may be good but some things can be unintended and hurtful. Let's start being more careful about our language because it matters to what we make of people and how they make themselves. Meanings are hidden and unintentional and subtle but they can still effect someone - even if you don't intend it. 
"The way things are are not the way they have to be"

Article of the Day 3/28/17

Danger of a Single Story

I loved this Ted Talk so much I actually ended up including it in an essay I wrote for my Anthropology class. I think this is so important because a one sided story leaves out so much information and perspectives that are valuable to the entire picture. There isn't a single story for everything. History, Experiences, Relationships, People. Everything is made of layers and layers of stories and limiting ourselves to a single story also limits our ability to gain knowledge and gain a valuable and wider view of life and our surroundings. You can't just focus on the tree when there's a forest around you.

Music

I love music. I love music so much. I'm addicted. I walk down the hallways every day listening to music. You can count on me having a new song playing through my headphones every week. I find new music so easy. I used to be so pretentious about music and believed that my music was the best and good music was only one thing. If you looked through my music on spotify, you would know that's not true any more. I love music from all genres and languages. I don't limit myself anymore because there is so much good music and it's not defined by a genre or language or time of release. Music is atmospheric. Music can teleport. Music can give tranquility. Music is a necessity.

Traits should be Flexible

Traits should be flexible. They shouldn't be restricted to one type of person. If you really think about it, there are never types of people. People can't be put into categories no matter how hard we try. I once went on a date with a boy and I was extremely frustrated with how he would constantly try to categorize me. He was trying to "figure me out" and I found it incredibly annoying. There is no "figuring someone out" because that's trying to place or categorize someone. Everyone is so vast and deep and varied that they never quite fit in the category you place them in. You might say I'm a girly girl because of how I love the color pink, makeup, wearing dresses, and hate sports. Except, I don't quite fit in that category since I mostly wear black, enjoys violent video games, loves horror movies, and my favorite foods are foods typically found at a sports grill (I can eat the hottest hot wings at buffalo wild wings, don't fight me). I'm a mix and so are we all. We all have a mix of our definitions and categories. No one fits in any of them so why do we try to hard to place them there? Traits should be flexible and be allowed to apply to anyone. Nothing should be restricted to a particular gender or type of person.

My Car is a Boy

There are so many things surrounding us that's defined as for girls or for boys. We gender almost anything we can. We gender colors: pink, purple, yellow and orange are "girly" colors while blue, green, and red are "boyish" colors. We gender music: boy bands and pop music are for girls while rap and metal is for boys. Why are we gendering things that have no actual gender? People have genders. Colors and music were made with no gender. Another interesting aspect is how we also give sex to things. When talking about various feelings or objects, they are sometimes given female or male pronouns. A politician talking about The United States of America refers to the countries beauty as "her beauty" implying that the country is female. A man talking about his truck refers to "his strength" implying that his truck is male. My car is named Angry German Boy. I've assigned my car several human aspects that wasn't actually inherent to it. My guess is that we do this to humanize objects and it's fun to personify them in reality like how we do in stories.  Although, my point of this is showing how we gender ourselves and others and how it shouldn't be such a hard concept to grasp when people don't identify as the one assigned to birth. The maker of my car could've said it was a girl when made but I went and decided it was more of a boy.

Article of the Day 3/3/17

Americans Ignoring Facts

The article discussed how they believe people are ignoring facts and believing in "alternative facts" is because of "the backfire effect". This effect says that misinformed people will become more attached to their mistaken beliefs. People typically do not change their minds when they've already established facts in their mind and someone changes them, they only become more strong about those beliefs - whether or not they are true. In an experiment, the facts they chose to belief or agree with (whether or not they were true or not) aligned with their political beliefs.

Honestly, I think that the facts should matter more than where you stand politically or ideologically. The truth should matter more than if it agrees with something you already agree with. You can't ignore the truth because you don't want it to be true or because it doesn't align with something you already agree with. Truth can change and so can you.