Film review #1 Middle Sexes (correction)

Justin Orndorff

SOC 360

Film review #1

Middle Sexes

1. The thesis of “Middle Sexes” is how society perceives and determines the transgender life style.  Transgender has nothing to do with being gay or straight, it’s about how a person or transgender person wants to live their life.  Biology creates sexual diversity.  Biology gives birth to children born everyday with both sexual organs.  As I watched Middle Sexes it bothered me when they described how an Army soldier was beaten to death because he was dating transgender women.  
2.  Transgender is described as a transsexual or transvestite who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person's sex at birth. (1)  The film Middle Sexes discusses transgender as the brain not developing along with the sex organs.  The main arguments that support the thesis would be the death of the soldier, the two young men that killed Gwen and the way young Noah is treated by peers. Gwen was beaten, strangled and her head smashed in so bad that her face was undeniable. Society perceives transgender as deviant.  Noah the young boy who lives in the Midwest and is very feminine and enjoys playing with dolls and wearing girl’s clothes is ridiculed as and asked repeatedly if he is a boy or a girl or gay or straight.  Even Noah’s dad states “I hope when his hormones kick in that he’ll change and start acting more like a young boy should.”  (1) (2)
3. This film relates significantly to this course by just the subject of transgender.  Transgender itself is seen as deviant or a deviant lifestyle hence the course entitled Social Deviance.  But being born with both sexes termed “Intersex” isn’t deemed as deviant as being transgender because it’s more biological related and something that is considered ascribed meaning you were born this way while transgender is something achieved meaning it’s a personal choice seen as a more deviant act in societies eyes.   
4. What I found most convincing of the film Middle Sexes was the devotion of the Hindu women who sacrificed her male genital organs.  This Hindu women’s mother, father, and family was beaten and thrown out of her home because her parents believed that her transition would bring shame upon their family.  This Hindu women graduated College but had only two choices prostitution or begging and she choose prostitution over begging.  That’s how important it was to this Hindu woman to be who she knew she had to be, a transgender.  This entailed losing her family and a life of prostitution.     
5. What I found least convincing of the film Middle Sexes were the laws set by the British government in pre-colonial times of life in prison with homosexual acts with a transgender person.  In a way it demonstrates just how far society has come since those times.
6. As I watched Middle Sexes I reflected on the notion why would a transgender woman get breast augmentation, Adams apple augmentation, facial reconstruction, and other body modifications but keep their male penis?  Why not get the complete sex change surgery and have the penis removed?  I would enjoy finding empirical data on this subject, and interviewing transgenders who have not fully committed to the full sex change operation.

(1)   http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transgender Feb 2012

(2)   Thio, Alex, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers. Readings in Deviant Behavior. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.

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Film Review "Live Nude Girls"

Justin Orndorff

Soc 360

Film Review “Live Nude Girls”

            This film documentary “Live Nude Girls” begins by discussing how stripping or sex work can help many young women work their way through college or start small businesses.  The women in the film describe it as a “sexual service.”  The documentary focuses on a strip-club located in Seattle Washington called the “Lusty Lady.”  The women explain that you can make up to twenty dollars per hour working at the “Lusty lady.”  The women then explain how the management at the Lusty Lady discriminates against them buy firing and re-hiring them because their overweight or not pretty enough all just to lower their working wage.  So basically when the girls start to earn top wage management looks for any reason to fire them so they don’t have to pay them top dollar wage.  Management would also only schedule one women of color per shift to have predominantly white girls working at any one given time. 

            One of the main problems at the Lusty Lady was that there was one way glass so the customer could see the stripper but the stripper couldn’t see the client.  The client would come in and put money in and the client could watch the stripper dance but the stripper couldn’t see what the client was doing.  This caused problems.  The girls were turning up on porno videos on the internet.  Management didn’t do anything about the one way mirrors for the strippers.  This in turn caused the strippers to try and start their own union.

            The strip-clubs and the Lusty lady wanted to remain a union free workplace.  Most strip-clubs only hired girls or strippers as individual contractors this enabled the strip-clubs to remain a union-free workplace.  The stripper hired a lawyer named Stephanie to represent them and help them start a union after being turned down by many lawyers. 

            To prevent to the strippers from forming a union they used reverse therapy by increasing the strippers pay, but they were still unwilling to give the strippers health insurance.  Many of the managers tried to “pimp-out” the strippers as prostitutes to make more money. 

           The main stripper in the film was a lesbian and had a famous mother that was a doctor and an advocate for gay rights.  So the main stripper could tell her mother that she was gay but couldn’t tell her that she was a stripper.  Her mother could accept the fact that she was gay but couldn’t accept the fact that she was a stripper.  Strange I know but as a father myself I can understand her opinion. 

            Society views most strippers as lower-class and that they have to strip because it’s their only option in life and that most strippers are prostitutes.  I thought this documentary depicted the life of “sex workers” or strippers especially good.  The documentary demonstrated that all levels of class have to deal with the issues these strippers were going through by using the main strippers mother “Dr. Wallis” as an example.  The documentary did this when the main stripper told her mother “Dr. Wallis” that she was a stripper at the 1997 prostitution conference. And Dr. Wallis replied to her daughter that “it’s better to get money using your mind rather than your body.”  Dr. Wallis was a hypocrite.  How could she accept that her daughter was a lesbian but not a stripper?  At the end of the conference Dr. Wallis told her daughter that she wasn’t proud of her even though she was there to advocate for the “sex workers.”    

Blog # 4 an illness “Crohn’s disease”

Justin Orndorff

Blog # 4 an illness “Crohn’s disease”

            Before I dive into the details of Crohn’s disease ill let you know how it affected me as a child growing up.  My father suffers from Crohn’s disease which entails having a colostomy bag which I’ll briefly describe.  A  proctocolectomy is a procedure that involves the removal of the colon and rectum resulting in the patient having to use a colostomy bag to collect their waste.  My father’s colostomy bag would fill up with human waste and you could physically see his clothes rise and hear strange sounds.  My friends would ask questions and when they found out what was going on with my dad they would tease me and so on.  But the worst part about it wasn’t the teasing it was that everyone knew me as the kid whose dad had the colostomy bag.  That’s not only how my dad was labeled by his illness but it was how I was labeled by his illness.   

Crohn’s disease is an illness that produces inflammation in the digestive or gastrointestinal tract. Crohn’s disease can occupy any area of the gastrointestinal tract, first, from the mouth all the way to the anus, but it most often it includes the lower portion of the small intestine, called the ileum. The inflammation attacks the lining of the ileum or affected organ.  Crohn’s disease affects men and women and seems to be congenital in a number of families. 20 percent of people with Crohn’s disease have a family member with an inflammatory bowel disease, usually a brother or sister and occasionally a parent or child. Crohn’s disease can occur in people of all ages, but it is frequently diagnosed in people between the ages of 20 and 30.

The etiology of Crohn's disease is unknown.  Crohn’s disease is an idiopathic disease. There a several theories about what causes Crohn’s disease.  Some researchers believe that it may be triggered by a bacterium or virus.  There is some data that suggests that the disease could be an autoimmune disorder. An autoimmune disorder is a condition in which the body's immune system attacks itself.  It starts to attack the body’s tissue as if it were attacking an invading bacteria or viruses. One theory is that the body’s immune system responds abnormally in patients with Crohn’s disease, confusing bacteria, foods, and other material as being foreign. The immune response attacks the foreign invaders. During this process, the white blood cells accumulate in the lining of the intestines, generating inflammation, which leads to ulcerations, fistulas, and bowel injury. 

Crohn's disease starts as small, scattered inflamed sores on the surface of the intestine.  These inflamed sores then become large ulcers that penetrate deep into and occasionally through the intestinal walls.  Patients can often have ulcers in their mouth similar to canker sores.  Abdominal distress, cramping and the inflammatory effect in the wall of your bowel can influence your appetite, your ability to digest food, and the ability of your small intestines to absorb food properly.  Inflammation from Crohn's disease may burrow through the wall of the bowel into adjacent organs, such as the bladder or vagina, creating an abnormal connection called a fistula.  Fistulas can lead to an abscess or pus-filled sores.  The fistulas can also tunnel out through your skin; a general surface for this type of fistula to form is around the anus. When this type of fistula develops, it's called perianal fistula. 

My father suffered from severe Crohn's disease where experienced fever, fatigue as well as problems that occur outside the digestive tract, that include; arthritis, eye inflammation, skin disorders, and inflammation of the liver or bile ducts. The course of Crohn's disease differs significantly. Crohn’s disease patients may experience long periods without symptoms, or experience frequent episodes of symptoms including abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, and bleeding as my father did.

  Some patients with Crohn’s disease may need a proctocolectomy, which is a procedure that involves the removal of the colon and rectum that is performed along with an ileostomy. An ileostomy is performed after the proctocolectomy and entails bringing the end of the small intestine, the ileum, through the stoma, in the abdominal wall, which allows drainage of intestinal waste out of the body through the colostomy bag. The stoma is usually created in the right lower abdomen near the belt line.  A colostomy bag must be worn over the opening to collect the waste, and it must be emptied daily.

The unpredictable nature of Crohn’s disease and its symptoms, such as diarrhea, gas and abdominal pain may depress and discourage some patients living with Crohn's disease from leading healthy, active normal lives.  I remember being known as the kid whose dad had a “shit bag” at school and how embarrassing it was.  My dad’s master status was his Crohn’s disease and his colostomy bag that he had.  Now that im an adult it doesn’t bother me at all, but as a child it was very embarrassing and I hated being known as the kid with the dad with the “shit bag.”  It just shows how powerful being labeled can be.  I was labeled through my fathers illness as a child.   

Reference:

1.      <digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/crohns>.

2.      < emedicine.medscape.com/article/172940-overview>.

3.      < www.CrohnsOnline.com>.

Film Review Generation RX by Justin Orndorff

Justin Orndorff

Soc 360

Film Review #4

Generation RX

1. The Thesis:  The medical community is over prescribing our children with mild altering drugs such as, Ritalin, Prozac, and many other anti-depressants.  These drugs are the fastest growing drugs in the world and were giving them to our children.  Medical providers want the money or grants, so they overlook providing our children with simple blood tests and x-rays that may or may not lead to a diagnosis of ADHD or depression.  Some of these so called medical providers are willing to make up new diagnosis to so they can prescribe our children with anti-depressants.  I really enjoyed this documentary.
2. Main arguments that support the thesis:  Medical providers are masking our children’s personalities with anti-depressants and other mind altering drugs causing our children to commit suicide. The point is apparent that ADHD has become an immediate and simple solution to treat and diagnosis our children with drugs. The symptoms are so general that it appears any child may be diagnosed with ADHD or depression, or any other mental disorder. The film explains that most of these drugs block the neurotransmitters of the frontal lobe kind of like giving a young child a frontal lobotomy.
3. Relating the film to the course:  When you label or diagnosis a child as having ADHD you are stigmatizing that child for life.  That child is then seen as a deviant and then prejudged by his or hers peers and not accepted by the majority.  Social internalization set the norms for our society.  So by stigmatizing a child by labeling them as different hence having ADHA were saying that their different or deviant causing an uncomfortable reality for our children.  
4. Most convincing arguments of the film:  The film justifies how children need to learn the basic copping skills of life instead of just writing them a prescription.  Such as, if a child’s best friend moves away or their dog is ran over by a car and dies.  The child should learn how to deal with these situations and not just swallow a pill every time their feelings get hurt or so kind of tragedy strikes.  In the film a child is prescribed Prozac and that very same night the child stabbed his father as he lay in bed asleep.  Law officials later wanted to press attempted murder charges against the child, but the child was placed in a mental hospital and later committed suicide.
5. Least convincing arguments of the film:   There were hardly any arguments in the film that didn’t convince me that we as a nation are over medicating our children.  I really can’t say that I found anything throughout the film that made me think otherwise.
6.  Further consideration:  I think it’s quite obvious that we should put more money into studying the side effects these drugs have before we decide to distribute them to our children.  Let’s focus our attention on the FDA for a moment. The film explained that German doctors in the 1980’s found that Prozac can lead to suicide in young adults and children.   The FDA new about this deadly side effects and mislead and hide this information from the public.  Who polices the FDA? Who regulates the regulators?  Why not put a little more time and effort into overseeing the FDA and how they operate.    

Film review #3 Tough Guise" by Justin Orndorff

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Justin Orndorff

Soc 360

Film Review #3

“Tough Guise”

1.      The thesis of “Tough Guise” is how men gain respect through signifying violence through the means of aggression, body size, and gun size.  Signifying to society that you’re a “real man” is to be considered tough, masculine, and not put up with anything.  Fag, sissy, wimp, and wuss are insults that are often used to keep you boxed in as a man.  Where do boys learn this?  The media.  The media constructs violence as a cultural norm; especially American men who are usually abused as children andcontinue the cycle throughout life.  Most men hurt other men, but on the other hand 99.8% of men in prison are in prison because of rape.  (2).

2.      Some of the main arguments that support the thesis of this film were the statistics that were shown about men hurting men, or hurting women, or even children.  School shootings shown in the film Tough Guise, which are usually committed by men or boys was another argument that supports the thesis of the film Tough Guise. Another example that supports the thesis is men bodies.  Over the past twenty years men’s bodies have gotten bigger and more masculine.  Guns are yet another example how size for some reason is better when bigger.  The bigger the gun the more masculine the man holding it is.  Binge drinking is another way the film gives a good example of a male’s way to be masculine or to prove their manhood to their peers and society.  The more you can drink the more masculine you are, this occurs mostly in College.

3.      The film “Tough Guise” relates to our course by stepping outside the cultural norms through violence is unacceptable and labeled deviant.  As a man if your not considered tough or masculine by society you’re labeled a wimp or a pussy.  The Labeling Theory by Howard S. Becker defines deviance as the infraction of some agreed-upon rule. (1). Society according to Becker “creates deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders.” (1).

4.      Society has taken the poor lower class African American men’s respect away by providing them with less educational opportunity, and lowering their access to a good career. The idea that men of color need to gain respect by the dominate white middle class culture is ridicules.  Men of color shouldn’t have to become violent to be seen as masculine.  The normalization of violence through pornography is another problem the film discusses.  Portraying violence through pornography is a crude way young teen boys are seeing violent acts for the first time in their lives, almost to say that it’s ok to hurt women.  

5.        What I found least convincing about the film “Tough Guise” is the statistics the media provides us with.  We need to read between the lines.  There are plenty of violent women in society as well as men.  We not need just focus on the lower-class and African American men but we should focus on normal middle class American men, hence, the Columbine High School massacre. (4).

6.      Reducing violence through the media would be a great area to start.  Unfortunately we get most of our information through the media.  We could study prisons across Americaand why most convicts are there.   The media constructs violence as a cultural norm; particularly males that are generally physically abused as children.  Most men hurt other men, but on the other hand 99.8% of men are in prison because of rape.  I think more research should be done in prisons and what leads these physically violent males to prison. (3).    

Reference:

1.) Becker, Howard S. "Chapter 7: Labeling Theory." Readings in Deviant Behavior. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2010. 39-41. Print.

2.) <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/masculine>.

3.) < http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/813/719>.

4.) < http://history1900s.about.com/od/famouscrimesscandals/a/columbine.htm>.

Blog post #3 “Fat”

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Justin Orndorff

Soc 360

Blog post #3 “Fat”

             I can’t eat that it’s too fattening. Do I look fat? I wish I had his body. How many times can we listen to men and woman say the same thing over and over again, do I lookfat?  It is words and phrases like these that seem to plague over 7 million people across the United States.  65% of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight. (1). Obesity is the fifth leading risk for heart disease in the United States.  2.8 million adults die each year as a result of obesity.  In addition obesity causes 44% of diabetes, 23% of heart disease and between 7% and 41% of certain cancers are do to obesity. (1).

            I’m not saying being overweight is ok or not.  I’ve just decided to choose the word “fat” for my blog.  Calling someone fat dehumanizes them to some extent.  Should we just decide how we are going to treat someone based on their appearance alone?  How dehumanizing is that?  I’m sure being overweight is hard enough, but having people look at you as lazy and unmotivated just stigmatizes that obese person even more.

            It’s easy for a thin person to call someone fat because they themselves are not fat.  But surely most of society realizes that it’s not acceptable to call someone fat.  It’s degrading, dehumanizing, humiliating, and hurtful.  But for some reason I hear the word “fat” or “fatass” being tossed around all the time.   Why do we stigmatize and dehumanize obese people all the time?

            From a social view someone who is fat or obese can send a message that they have given up on life or don’t value themselves which creates low self-esteem in the obese person.  Society can also view the fat or obese person as stupid or having a lack of intelligence.  Maybe society thinks that the fat or obese person is too stupid to even know how to go about losing their weight in the first place.  But calling someone fat certainly isn’t motivating that person to lose weight.  I have a friend who is very overweight and he gets so depressed sometimes he won’t even leave his house in the fear that people will call him fatass or laugh at him.  My friend isn’t lazy or unmotivated he just has slow metabolism.  That’s what his doctor told him.  My friend exercises and eats healthier than I do it’s just his slow metabolism that keeps the fat on him.   But he shouldn’t be labeled as deviant or dehumanized because of his weight.

            Bariatrics is the field of medicine that deals with the etiology, prevention, and treatment of obesity.  Bariatrics has become a surgical specialty in the United States. (3)  
In fact, most people who are fat or obese already realize this and when they are mocked and called fat it just lowers self-esteem.  You can correlate this to Howard S. Becker’s labeling theory that states “Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders” (Howard S. Becker, as in the book Readings in Deviant Behavior). We label fat or obese people as the outsiders labeling fat people as deviant.  (2).

References

1)      http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html

2)      Becker, Howard S. "Labeling Theory." Readings in Deviant Behavior. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2010. 39-41. Print.

3)      http://www.answers.com/topic/bariatrics

Murderball film review 2

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Justin Orndorff

Soc 360

Social Deviance

Film review #2

“Murderball”

            The thesis of Murderball disrupts many stereotypes society has about people with disabilities.  Society looks at the disabled as weak and feeble, Murderball contradicts their perceptions on what a quadriplegic can actually achieve. Murderball attempts to humanize societies view on the disabled and opposes their views and labels regarding the disabled community.  What can be done about our perceptions of the disabled?  I believe the answer lies in Evidence-based practices.  Evidence-based practices utilize an assortment of research methods involved with theirtreatment programs.  These research methods include; contingency management, motivational interviewing, and cognitive behavioral therapy. (Glasner-Edwards, Richard Rawson 1).

            As I watched Murderball I thought about how society views someone born disabled meaning they were “ascribed” a disability at birth, or someone who “achieved” their disability as their master status?  Mark Zupan an “achieved” quadriplegic got drunk at a party and passed out in the back of his best friend’s truck.  Mark was later thrown from out of the truck after his best friend who was also drunk got into the truck and crashed the truck leaving Mark a quadriplegic.  So in this scenario, Mark Zupan achieved his master status of being disabled by making a choice.  Do social constructions judge the disabled population in different spectrums such as, “ascribed” being born disabled, or do they judge them differently when their disability is “achieved” becoming disabled by a choice made regardless if the disabled new the outcome of the decision?

            Society brands and labels the disabled as helpless and vulnerable.  Society also assumes that everyone in a wheelchair could walk if they wanted to.  This statement isn’t necessarily true for some disabled.  Society values able bodies over disabled bodies.  Why?  Murderball challenges society’s assumptions about being disabled.  Murderball shows in detail just how the disabled are able to drive cars, have sex, have jobs, and of course play sports.  So why consider them deviant and if so how can we change this perception?   

            The main idea behind the film Murderball is how we as a society label or brand the disabled.  The norms society has about the disabled are due to the concept of social internalization.  Social internalization is a set of norms that are pre-determined by society which are significant to that particular individual being labeled or branded as disabled.  Steven J. Taylor states “from a sociological or anthropological perspective, disability can be viewed as a social construct.”   FromTaylor’s standpoint it would be the same as if you were analyzing homosexuality or the mentally retarded; we as whole label and brand the disabled in the same way we do anyone that’s outside the norm. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2).

            Internalized ableism is defined as discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities.  (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2).  The arguments I found to be most convincing were the fact that all the disabled in the film could do day to day activities.  They could drive cars, have sex, play sports, and have jobs.  The name itself “Murderball” supports the entire idea about how the disabled can accomplish anything. 

            I’d like to study and how society views “ascribed” disabled versus an “achieved” disabled.  Why would someone brand or label an “achieved” disabled person or an “ascribed” disabled person differently.  Just because someone becomes disabled via an “achieved” status why would society judge them differently or more harshly then someone born with their disability via an “ascribed” status of disability?  Evidence-based practices could be a possible means to understanding society’s bias about the disabled and why there seen as deviant.  Evidence-based practices are derived from Evidence-based medicine and focuses on treatment effectiveness, aid in constancy, institute responsibility of health service providers, help decrease societies views of the disabled. treatment and increase the general quality of treatment. (Glasner-Edwards, Richard Rawson 1).

Train the providers to utilize evidence-based skills using conventional methods.  Data suggests that supervision and criticism enhances a providers post-training ability, compared to providers who receive their skills training through a workshop or class without feedback or supervision.  There needs to be more access to informational training methods that providers can utilize in order to implement Evidence-based practices and enhance the provider’s exposure to Evidence-based practices. (Glasner-Edwards, Richard Rawson 1).

I believe that by incorporating Evidence-based practices into a clinical setting or educational setting will enhance society’s view of the disabled.  Possible outcomes could range from the dehumanization, stigmatization, and fetishism people see and seek from the disabled.

 References

1. Glasner-Edwards, Suzette., Rawson Richard. “Evidence-Based Practices in Addiction Treatment: Review and Recommendations for Public Policy.” Health Policy. (2010): October; 97(2-3): 93–104.
2. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2012.  Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ableism>.
3. Taylor, Steven J. Readings in Deviant Behavior CH. 26 You’re Not a Retard, You’re just Wise. Boston: Pearson, 2010.