Socialization

               In this video, A Call to Men by Tony Porter, our minds are opened wider as we gain more knowledge about the "man box," a box full of rules on how a man should behave, what is his property and dominance over. Mr. Porter explained his childhood with his father and the life lessons that was taught to him by his father and how he somewhat incorporated it into his son. When his son, one time, went to M. Blair crying he yelled at him, "Why are you crying?" He sent him to his room telling him to come back when he's [ready] to speak to him like a man. "Oh my god, what am I doing?" He asked himself as he noticed that what society has taught him about being a man is completely wrong. "Men have to be tough, courageous, dominating, no pain, no emotions, with the exception of anger,and definitely no fear. Women are inferior property-like and a sex object." He recalled a moment in his childhood where he was at his friend's house and he had just raped a girl (of whom he claims he didn't because she never said no, nor yes) and wanted Mr. Porter to have sex with her. He didn't but try to play it off as if he did. He claims to have seen him calling up a few guys friends and within moments his living room was filled with their guy friends all waiting to have sex with this young lady. His biggest fear was getting out of the man box. He didn't want to be seen as a wimp in front of all of his guy friends for NOT actually having sex with the girl but feel good that they think he did.
              Overall, Tony make a call to all men, that it is OK for there for be equality, it is OK to have girlfriends who are just friends and nothing more, that it is OK to have feelings and emotions, that it is OK to be whole, "that my liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman." Mr. Porter recalled once asking a young boy in a sports team about how he would feel if the coach told him, "you play like a girl!" He was expecting an answer more along the lines of, "sad, embarrassed" but instead he got, "I'd be devastated." If men are "devastated" about being called a girl, what, he asked, do they think (feel) about girls? We see that this way of thinking, this "man box" we've become more aware of is drilled, almost forced, into boy's head thus leading to violence and powering over women us abusing them. What's the solution? To exit, break out of this mentality.
       Women have been targeted as sexual objects by not only men, but by advertising companies. In Killing us softly we come to know that the main purpose of Ads are to sell something. A company once advertised, "'In your face, all over the place'," implying that it had the power to advertise anywhere. They do sell products but what do they tell us about women? They're often used to sell product and women wind up getting lost in advertisements. Advertisements for women often involve depicting the "perfect" woman ultimately teaching our younger generation that what is most important about a woman is how they look, thus, teaching them from an early age what it takes to be beautiful. It's purpose? Be objects—men's "property." Ultimately it leads to failure because such desired "perfection" does not exist and what is this "perfection?" A woman without any "lines, wrinkles, she never has any blemishes, (and) indeed—she has no pores." As I had mentioned before, this justifies how a woman feels and how men view women. Advertisements often incorporate women into (literally) their products thus turning them into objects. Killing us Softly also explained how women of color are also shown as "animals" in leopard skin, violent. The final message is—not fully human. This objectification is a huge form of dehumanizing women, (and) "not only is she a thing but a part of a thing that is focused on." All this perfection leads to change in how women act as well as how they physically look. Breast surgery implants material that limits sensibility doesn't pleasure the woman but the man transitioning her from a subject to an object. We see in this video that both men and women inhabit very different worlds. Men do not live in a world in which their bodies are routinely, constantly criticized and judged, where women do.
               As women reach adolescence they get the message that they should not be too power and take up space. Not to be full of themselves. Ads with both men and women also show how men and women differ. Boys are shown to be active, full of life and explorers while girls are shown to be passive and not doing anything. This video showed us an ad of a boy looking "tough" towards the little girl next to him. We're already teaching, showing that the boy should be tall, powerful, he's looking down at her while she looks up with a smile. We learn that this is the case in almost all of the ads with little children unless it involves race where virtually it is turned around—colored look up at the whites. Ads continue influencing women and girls ultimately telling them that they are to be beautiful, a sex object. Ultimately Advertisements show us that sex is everywhere, its a part of our culture, used to sell products. This objectification of the female body through the sensual ads depicts violence, most often tied to men manipulating tithe woman looking, again, like the dominant figure. Ads give implications that women want to have sex. This video also tells us that there are also ads that normalize battery, the physical beating of women—it is the single cause of injury to women here in America. There was an image of a woman being used as a foot rest and a man sitting on a single chair with his feet on her, another advertisement saying, "...it won't talk back, and it has no opinion...the perfect companion" with a man in a bathrobe and a woman in the background with her hands on her hips (signifying anger or aggravation on her part). Boys live in a world where they are constantly shown as perpetrators of violence. I believe that the overall lesson in this video is to teach us that human qualities are often divided, polarized, categorized "feminine" and "masculine" leading to the consistent devaluation of the feminine quality, an ad showing a man with a girls tattoo and quotes that followed "you're looking at my feminine side" causing the man to devalue anything feminine and he woman any feminine quality we wind up being half of what we are. Advertising is a powerful tool to display the very differences between femininity and masculinity. Ultimately advertisements target women, and along with "Call to men" it identifies how the woman is indeed dehumanized, thought to be an object of men by this "man box" and women taught that without beauty they'll be ignored. There is a huge inequality between men and women even though it it thought that women are equal to men in this 21st century. We still have a long way to go.
                The chapter on Socialization helps us understand better these two videos we watched. In both videos we encountered culture and how one's culture helps define what we view. Men is viewed as the superior sex and women are viewed a little less. Social interactions at home also help shape what is right and wrong and even though parents in this 21st century "think" that they are raising their sons and daughters the right way, in reality they're just fueling this huge inequality that exists between the two sexes. Tony Porter's "A Call to Men" relates to this chapter by him explaining his childhood experiences and how his father implemented certain ideologies into Mr. Porter on how a "man" should behave. This social interaction instilled in him what it takes to be a man, made Mr. Porter look at the "Self Glass". (153) This concept defined on chapter 6, "looking at self glass," as the idea that our sense of self develps as a reflection of the way we think others see us (1902). (A Looking glass is a mirror [153, Experience Sociology, First ed.]) That definition itself backs what Mr. Porter told us was the fear of getting out of the "man box." The fear of allowing other "men" look at him and think he's feminized, that it is okay to be whole and not view women as an object but as another human being.
                 Unfortunately "looking at self glass" fails and we see it in Killing Us Softly. Still unknowingly some men objectify women and the Advertising industry does it all the time. Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) brought the previous concept up and stated that our interactions with other humans that involves three steps:

1. We imagine our image in the eyes of others.
2. We imagine the others making some judgemet about us.
3. We experience a feeling as a result of the imagined judgement.

Women and young girls are targeted by the advertising industry and this "man box." Both of these aimed at women are still unequal even though 80% still think women are at a 50/50 par with men. Justifiable violence is the result of #3: We experience a feeling as a result of the imagined judgement.




"DIFFERENT, BUT WHY?"
Image: Evelin Elmest/iStock

To gather a few pictures to identify how both sexes are differentialized and labeled I came accross this picture of a girl and a boy yet the website's article read, "Girl Brain, Boy Brain?" A section in the article that I took out was, "Females of all ages outperform males on tests requiring the recognition of emotion or relationships among other people." This can be related to Tony Porter's video about the "man box" and how a "man" isn't to display any type of emotion, with the exception of anger. It's instilled from a very young age. Here we see the little boy with a fruitful smile and what may look as a desire to be active and happy, yet the girl looks passive and a bit shy.





GAP Kids

This is a clothing advertisement and again we see how the girl and the boy is socialized, the boy being active with a skateboard and the girl passive, inactive, involved in photograpy.

















A search on bing.com for "girl and boy advertisement" turned up results that backs Jean Kilbourne's "Killing Us Softly" film about how in turn porn has become global in ways that are not viewed as porn. The search pulled up suggestions such as "Girl boy make love", "Almost kiss boy and girl", "Boy kiss girl", Boy and girl holding hands", and "Boy and girl hugging."



Parents' Socialization of Children is an article by D. Terri Heath that explains different parenting techniques used throughout much of the Western world and the rest of the world as well. We come to the realization that parents are the core of a childs socialization and their job as a parent impacts the world we live in today. This article focused on parenting styles of parents in Japan, China, Israel, and the United States. The different techniques were Authoritative parents who are the ideal parents whose children are happy, cheerful, cooperative with adults, self-reliant, self controlled, and friendly with peers (1). Permissive parents of which allow autonomy, and Authoritarian which impose and enforce strict rules. The way the child is brought up was different in all the studied region. In the western world the child is brought up using the authoritative technique. In China the children spent minimal amounts of time interacting with their parents because they spent most of their time at an educational institution yet Chinese parents still appeared to be powerful socialization agents for their children. (2) In Japan and Israel, what is viewed as independence in Israel is viewed as obedient in Japan. (Independence being a child waking up, showering, eating, and getting ready for school all by his or herself. All in all, the way the parents bring their child up, the amount of interaction they have predicts the way society behaves.
Indeed parents have a major impact on how their child is raised and that is addressed in the article, "The Retro Wife" by Lisa Miller. This article focused on the mother herself and her role in her childs life. Instead of being a 21st century mother, one who works, some mothers are deciding to stay home full-time. Always being there for a child and taking care of her/him along with the previous article parenting techniques can bring up a child that if a boy will not adhere to the "man box" and if a girl, will try to be active instead of passive. Since the father isn't home as much as the mother, what equality the mother believes should be instilled in her children will come to play. It is up to the parents to take a close look at what they might be doing wrong and try to correct it to prevent violence in society as it exists today.



         

Power / Pouvoir (Autorité)

                        We can all agree on the fact that Power is such a significant word with a versatile bank of meanings from the electricity from out wall outlets to the ability of human beings. How able are you to do something have have a major impact on others around you? Can power be good, bad, or both? The answer is yes—it can be both. Based on the article, "Five Faces of Oppression," we learn that power is, in term, the oppression. It touched base on slavery and how those enslaved were oppressed and were overpowered by their masters who had a broad sense of knowledge. These slaves could be categorized into those who knew they were slaves, those who didn't know they were slaves, and those who clearly thought they were not being oppressed and that their way of living was absolutely normal. Now, not only did it touch base on slavery but it also gave us a look at exploitation. The employment or profits gained by having an individual provide services and not paying fairly is exploitation. This type of situation is more common (nowadays) if that single person does not have the right documentation to work legally in a country, therefore, giving the employer the power of oppression. Not only does exploiting others oppress them, it creates a sense of fear in that person. Exploiting gives the employer the chance to destroy the person getting exploited. This article also broke down oppression into two categories--the least oppressed "haves" and the "have-not's" (2) who wind up getting exploited by the "haves."
                       Marginalization is a form of power. It is a process of (racial) exclusion and is seen in the United States with Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and Middle Eastern. Oppression in this form can be found in the education system and jobs. Most jobs, even though some pay equally, still marginalize  it's employees by paying slightly less to those of minority groups and if not paying then restricting the height of their career ladder. We see that wealth-holders have a significant amount of power when compared to the "have-not's." This becomes serious when the powerless believe that because they're powerless, their participation wouldn't matter. The reason? They feel they would not be heard. An example in the United States would be voting. "Powerlessness is the strongest form of oppression" (3). Speaking about the slaves once more, powerlessness prevented a lot of other slaves to be freed because they were aware of their situation but they were so marginalized, so exploited, very oppressed that it became their reality.
                   In this exercise I also watched "The Milgram Experiment." This short clip explored the world of violence and how it's not something that's out there in the real world just by nature but that violence is within us. A group of people were taken in to be part of an "experiment" unaware that it was an experiment inside an experiment. The main points I gathered from the video were belief--the belief in science to be a good thing in life to bring about positive changes in the human race has significant power. The people who were chosen to participate in the fictitious experiment were told to do a certain thing the authoritative figure was the scientist pressuring the participants to resume the experiment (administering electric shock to another person upon release of wrong answers). Tied to belief is ideology. The people who were participating had power because it was up to them to continue administering the electric shock to the subject being tested, whether or not to succumb to the indirect pressure mounted by the scientist and being told that it is very important to continue and give a potentially deadly dosage of 450 volts of electric shock, or choose to halt the experiment because they know what's morally right and wrong. It all came down to violence the key source of power. Whether we're aware or not, violence is always giving us power.
                 Violence referred in the book (114) by an image of the Egyptian police, using violence to disperse pro-democracy revolting people. I believe the significance of attaining power is violent. Many people fall into different categories and with it, their corresponding power, for example--a referee uses his authority to justify what is fair and what isn't during a game. Power can have positive and negative effects in the economy, with the government, and culture. The economic condition of one can impact others. I believe a terminology that can combine "The Milgram Experiment" with the reading, "Five Faces of Oppression" is Ideology because it becomes of second nature when an idea becomes reality, whether its factious or fictitious, non-violent or violent. No matter the circumstances, the outcomes, and effects, once you're told something you're most likely to believe (with lack of appropriate knowledge), that there becomes your reality, becoming powerful or powerless.