Nichols Article

I found the Nichols article highly interesting and thought that Sharon Nichols brings up an important issue about how one's sexual preferance can cause someone so much pain and how someone's own private and personal pereferance can be used against them just because they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. I found it extremely alarming when the article mentioned that many adolescents who are in school are "emotionally and socially at risk of depression, suicide, dropping out, failing, or committing crimes." I think Sharon Nichols did a brilliant job on introducing the concep0t as to why this is a social problem. I also agree with the fact that the article mentions how adolescents should not have to negotiate their homosexual identity. However, I also agree with the fact that our societal values and the media, televesion, books, movies, and magazines all contribute to the problem because sometimes they don't stress or emphasize on the important facts and issues enough they are very influential and sometimes I don't think the media always realizes this. People should not be killed and have violence committed towards them because they are homosexual and because of something that is private and personal to them. People do not only discriminate against homosexuals at school but they discriminate against homosexuals on the internet even the military the don't ask don't tell rule that you can be discharged from the military because of your sexuality. I even heard on televison from a comedian one time that some interpreters were fired because they were homosexual. I personally do not agree with these kinds of metalities and ideologies we are all humans and like Mr. Martin Luther King and our presidents have said before us in the past we all need to be treated equally. Furthermore, I believe the theory that best expalins why this social problem exists is the symbolic interactionism theory because they look for symbols and meanings within a social problem and this particular article was all about symbols and meanings and "norms".

High School Students More Accepting of LGBT Peers Than the School Officials Are

During the past couple of weeks, there has been some publicity about high schools and homosexuality. During the weekend of October 30, 2011, a major breakthrough occurred for gays, and mainly for gay teens; one of the first lesbian couples was crowned homecoming king and queen in the nation. The girls are seniors at Patrick Henry High School in California. They received a lot of support from their peers and teachers, and also received a lot of negative feedback. The fact that the girls were nominated and received the most votes to be the homecoming king and queen by their peers suggests that they had a significant amount of positive support.

Another homecoming incident involving a lesbian couple did not receive so much positive support, however, it did receive the attention of the ACLU. A high school in Mississippi, Itawamba Agricultural High School, canceled its prom this when school officials learned that a female student intended to attend prom with her girlfriend. In this situation, the ACLU stepped in and filed a law suit against the high school alleging that the high school officials violated the students’ first amendment right to freedom of expression.

These events show that there is a growing acceptance and tolerance of gays and possibly other minorities in high schools. The fact that the student body is leading in supporting their peers by voting the lesbian couple in as homecoming royalty shows that perhaps this younger generation of students is really learning some acceptance or even embracing diversity. Compare this situation to the situation in Mississippi where we have information that the school officials (the older generation) were the ones that perhaps were a bit homophobic…whereas, we don’t know from the CNN article what the other students’ reactions were.

In order for minority groups to be accepted by the majority group, there is some type of revolution or years, sometimes decades, of social change. We may very well be at the cusp of social change in relation to the acceptance of gays and lesbians. It may be that our high school populations are showing indicators of acceptance and are the leaders in this social change.

References:
http://news.yahoo.com/high-school-students-crowned-americas-first-lesbian-homecoming-140805984.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-11/living/mississippi.prom.suit_1_prom-students-aclu?_s=PM:LIVING

Internship Update

In our weekly blog posts we've been asked to reflect and share specific experiences that come up in our field work as well as comment on the articles we've been assigned to read for the week.

I wanted to share some of the fulfufilling experiences I've had working with the single refugee mothers at Catholic Community Services. I'm a Job Developement Intern and I've been assigned 6 women to tutor in ESL or Job Skills depending on their English competency. It's been Symbolic Interactionism at it's best.

I've learned so much from these strong wonderful women. I've learned as a mother myself how we view and interpret our reality has many similarities and differences. We all value our children and we know that their education is important to their success in this country. The power we feel as parents is vastly different. I have no qualms about marching into my sons school to ask questions about scheduling, curriculum, or volunteering opportunities. These women, however, are intimidated and unsure of themselves and the role they play in their childrens education. Something as simple as their child's birthdate being incorrectly listed on their identification has caused some real problems that have kept one of their children out of school for months.

As we've gotten to know each other and worked with the language barrier we are beginning to understand the meanings behind each other's actions. I don't take it personally when they've made a Dr.'s appointment on the one day I can visit their home. They've come to understand that I just can't come the next day to tutor them. I have school, work, and a family of my own to care for.

I've come to appreciate the symbols in their lives that hold special meaning to them. Most of the women I tutor cover their heads and are never comfortable with company seeing them unless they are properly covered. I make sure to dress conservatively, although I cannot bring myself to wear a dress.

We do a lot of laughing and smiling when things get confusing and even though we come from very different places of the world that laughter breaks through all the barriers. I've shared pictures of my son and I've met some of their children. I interpret their actions with their children as a fierce pride and love for them. They want their children to learn with them and I've instructed them to practice their new English skills with their children throughout the week. Their overall skill improvment has been promising.

As I've come to learn more about their complicated relationships with children, friends, and their support systems I've learned why they've adopted certain attitudes and expectations with the United States. I've learned that at first they believed that all people from the US have an abundance and can give to others continuously. As they've learned about my tight budget, financial responsibilities, and the expenses of school for me and my son they are learning that not everyone has it easy here in the U.S.

I've really enjoyed being one of their many links to life here in the U.S. We've learned a lot about each other and have begun to develop trust and respect that comes from honesty, tolerance, and a willingness to learn. It's been a two way street, for sure. I value all that I've learned about how these strong women view the world, interpret their reality, and adjust their perceptions and attitudes as they learn more about living in the U.S. I too have learned how to better understand the meanings behind their actions and my own, become more aware of the world view concerning refugees, and learned to respect the symbolism in their daily lives.

Transgenders and Healthcare

A few weeks ago a lady named Pauline Park came and talked with my Gender and Social Change class about the struggles that transgender people go through to not only be able to change their sex and their name to go along with it, but also how they struggle within the healthcare system. When transgenders want to get a sex reassignment surgery (SRS) or hormone replacement therapy (HRT), they first need to to be diagnosed with gender identity disorder (GID). This "disorder" was introduced in 1974 in the Diagnositic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. And this GID can be taken even further in that to obtain the papers that claim whether someone is male or female, one has to show intent on recieving SRS. This means that the person has to be diagnosed with GID in order to claim themselves as the sex they see themselves as. And usually when one wants to get paperwork showing their legal sex designation, they usually want to legally change their name as well. This causes problems when places require an ID and the person's claimed gender does not match their picture. This can cause barriers with employment, housing, public accomidations, healthcare, and social services. So what Pauline states is that, " if the apparent ’solution’ is to go for a change of legal sex designation as well as name, and if the former change – and in some cases, effectively, the latter – requires the diagnosis of GID; then in effect, the ability to access health care as well as employment, housing, and public accommodations requires a diagnosis of GID as well."
This is interesting because this "diagnosis" of GID is something that most possibly not exist at all. It is just something that the wealthy and educated doctors at the time decided was a mental disorder that need to either be diagnosed or treated. It's kind of like the sickness we talked about in class on Monday about the slaves that got both their big toes cut off because they were diagnosed with a sickness that caused them to flee. The GID just may be a modern day version of this. What the educated wealthy doctors may see as a disorder, I dare say that all of the LGBT community and many others outside of it see as just someone who define themselves as a gender different than what they were born. It's not something that can be diagnosed and treated. Because of the GID, transexuals face many difficulties when it comes to accessing health care or getting and keeping a job or recieving housing. They face difficulties with things that the wealthy, educated, and majority do not usually have struggles with at all because they have to first be deemed menatally ill before they can recieve some of their basic rights as humans.
If you want to read the whole article, here it is:
http://www.paulinepark.com/index.php/2011/04/transgender-health-human-rights-harvard-4-20-11/
This can be looked at through the symbolic interactionism theory. Transgender people are percieved by society to be different, odd, ill, or needing help. The labels placed on them were not made by the transgendered themselves, but by those around them. It's the majority who have claimed these people ill and different. So what part of our sociolization has created these labels and perceptions? I believe that most of society has a hard time accepting things that don't fit into the norm and their way of showing their disapproval is through teasing, name calling, bullying, and at a more advanced level, denial of healthcare, housing, jobs, and many other basic human rights.

Wallace Article

The financial fact may be one of the reasons why non-whites in USA don’t put their elderly in group home because being able to afford good group homes with good care is so expensive for them, but the biggest fact is that most of non-whites have large families therefore chose to help each other and take good care of their elderly instead of sending them to cheap group homes with bad care. This is due to conflict theory where power and inequality plays the big role. The other fact is the culture of non-whites that requires people to take care of their elderly till their death. Most of immigrants (especially refugees who were forced to leave their countries) feel like USA is not their home and they always seek the pride of dying in their countries, therefore they come to America, go to school, make money and go back home before they get old and this is related to structural functionalism.

Other immigrants may not feel comfortable with food that is provided in group homes because they normally eat their traditional food and don’t like American products. There is a funny story of a Latino elderly woman who was in a group home and around 3:00pm, a staff member knocked at her and said “Marie I have a snack for you here”, but instead of snack Marie thought staff said “snake” then immediately Marie got out of her bed running. In her life it was the first time for Marie to hear the word “snack” all she knew was “snake” and she was afraid of it. This is an example of how differences among whites and no-whites can prevent each of them being comfortable in the other one’s society.

Article and Poverty

After reading the articles, I wanted to introduce a new idea. I have discussed multiple times in my posts the idea of isolation and domestic violence. I think this could directly relate to health and minorities. For some Latino families, it is possible that they have moved to the United States from somewhere else. Sometimes in domestic violence situations, there is the idea of isolation and moving the woman out of her comfort zone where she does not know language, resourceful information, etc. By not properly acculturating, which typically persecutors try to avoid and to continue the isolation, women can easily become depressed or gain other mental and physical health issues. This obviously is a dominant effect towards health in our country. Domestic violence does not discriminate, but being that there is a correlation between health and minorities, I would assume domestic violence does play a role in this concept that Latinos may have poorer health.

On a separate note, today in class we discussed the difference of absolute poverty and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is the actual resources that one has, such as income or education. Whereas relative poverty is one’s poverty in relation to other people. For example, if everyone in a community makes a dollar a day, you could have a better outcome in certain situations because your relative poverty is lower. Or, in the US if you make $20,000 per year, and you live in an area where that is the average income, you will also be in a better situation with lower relative poverty than if you made $20,000 and lived in a place where everyone $100,000 the relative poverty would be very high and create a negative effect on society, creating conflict-“the haves and haves not”, being conflict theory.

Health and Minority Populations

This article is very interesting since during this month as a Latinos some organizations are asking us to get more involve in health issues.

Just like the article describes about acculturation is one of the issues among the Latino community. For some Americans they expect every culture to assimilate the system, unfortunately for some of us is not easy. Since there are a lot factors that affects our health, first the kind of food we are use to eat in our countries is very different, the way the health systems is in this country is totally different for example in some Latino countries medical service is free for most of the population as well most of the medicines if you qualified for; another factor for health issues among Latinos is depression, etc.

Culturally the care for elderly is different from the US since Latino countries have a very difficult time to pay for others to do it and not only that but family take cares of their own family including elderly.

The American health system is sometimes hard to navigate, I had bad experiences and it didn’t matter that I have an American husband I couldn’t get health care when I really needed, I was devastated and I didn’t want to continue looking for help since Medicaid didn’t want to help me and it was very expensive my treatment. After a few months on trying to understand the system I was able to get the care I needed but some Latinos prefer not to do it and if they do it sometimes is late.