Kristen

2/7/14 [|"Brother Ali: The Intersection of Homophobia and Hip Hop: Where Tyler Met Frank".]

Society is teaching that it is alright to swear vehemently in ways that will hurt other people. They use the words without knowing what they actually mean. I have heard cringe worthy sentences from young children that have heard the words from their older siblings and parents or the music they listen to. There should not be swears in culture, at least not swears that are racist or insulting to groups of people. In the article, Brother Ali says "Racism and homophobia are social diseases. When only symptoms of these contagious diseases are treated, they spring up in other less obvious incarnations. No matter what we tell ourselves, we have not treated these ailments, we've merely mutated our racism and homophobia. We've trained ourselves not to use easily recognizable hate speech." It spreads like a disease. When someone swears a lot, other people will learn the use of the word and may use them by mistake. I try really hard not to swear or use slurs but it just slips out and I can't stop it. The more it happens, the less I care. If everyone keeps doing this, it seems every one of our sentences will have one or more racial or ani-gay slurs that we didn't entirely mean to say. In music there are many songs that drop such horrible slurs that people boycott the artist or album. Ali says that he regrets the slurs in his earliest songs. If one artist feels this way, many others probably do too. He says, But we as a society, particularly those of us who care about human dignity, we've got some serious work to do in embracing and nurturing young people even when they show evidence of the blind spots our society has cursed them with.

2/21/14 [|"Gendered Politics and Clothing"]

The shirts are saying that boys are the heros and the girls need they boys to save them. This is giving a bad message to girls, because they grow up believing that they are inferior to males and need help. The other problem mentioned is the fact that one can no longer find 'decent' clothing for girls in the stores. Young girls are wearing outfits that make them look unintelligent or as the article writer put it "I don’t want them to leave the house dressed as pole dancers." In this society, girls choose to wear clothes that expose more than some think is decent of their bodies. In stores, almost everything for girls is skimpy and frilly and in the teenage section, see through. When I go shopping I have a really hard time finding the clothes that are both comfortable and don't make me look like I belong in a certain type of club. Womens rights seem to be either in limbo or backpedaling slowly, like a clown on a unicycle that may eventually crash. The clothes makes it seem like young girls are more objectified and should be pretty and not go out and play with the guys. Most of the stuff my sister buys is either impractical or bad quality. She often ends up ripping her pant legs.

5/12/14 Project reflection

The project was to create propaganda for a imaginary election for mayor. At the end of the week there was a mock election and the person who won the most favor with the voters one. In our group we attempted to use another candidate's past mistakes against them. We also used a promise of a better tomorrow and made promises that would strike a cord with the voters. Coming up with a slogan and coming up with things that would boost our defense while weakening other candidates. The project could be made a bit easier to understand. Hlaf the time I was unsure of what was going on.