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How can stereotypes affect individuals
Stereotypes and their effects in society
Stereotypes and their effects in society
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Eli Clare in Reading Against the Grain mentioned that the mainstream culture has a tendency to stereotype people into eroticizes culture such as thinking all African Americans males and Latino women are hyper-sexual, perceiving Asians as passive beings, and assuming that disabled individuals have no sexual desires. Somehow people regurgitate these stereotypes as if they’re empirical facts. Objectification usually reinforces or maintains the institutionalized power differences, which can deprive some groups such as the disabled from self-determination. The section of Pride and Exile brings to light how some members of the disabled community feels that they are denied of their personal autonomy. In Clares case, she explains how the MDA fundraisers
In her article, “Lecture Me. Really”, Molly Worthen addresses the issue college students know all too well: how to lecture properly. Published in the New York Times, Worthen writes a passionate article about lecturing but from the perspective of a professor. Worthen presents the idea that lecturing, although some may think ineffective in the classroom, is a way to truly challenge and engage students into critically thinking. Worth dictates this idea with an excellent build up logical argument but lacks the proper evidence to support her claims creating a faulty argument.
In Jay Heinrichs, “Thank You for Arguing”, the Eddie Haskell Ploy was a rhetorical virtue that stuck out and closely connected to me. When unsure if you will win an argument, the Eddie Haskell Ploy explains, “…preempt your opponent by taking his side” (Heinrichs 65). This not only makes you look like you knew what you were doing all along, but it makes the opposing side respect you more and leave them feeling more cared about and confident in their side. For example, after Jay Heinrich’s daughter used this sly ploy, he stated, “Even though I saw through the ruse, I admired it. Her virtue went way up in my eyes” (Heinrichs 64). This ploy is a classic move that my siblings and I would always pull on our parents. For instance, when I knew asking
Having Down Syndrome is a Horizontal identity. Most Americans view people with Down’s to be disabled and do not thing much past that. But, many people with Down’s see this simply as a part of who they are, just as much as the color of their eyes. To them, it is not a disability, but just a fact of life. Many outsiders do not understand this, which is why the Down’s community is so important. The Down’s community provides those with Down’s acceptance to their identity. While the rest of society rejects and pities them, within their community they can relate with others and be treated equally. Unlike with vertical identities where the parents are automatically insiders, parents must choose to whether or not to support their children’s horizontal identities. Some parents choose not to accept Down’s before the child is born and terminate the pregnancy while others do their best to make sure their child is comfortable in the world. Again, in more recent years, there are movements for society to be more educated and inclusive for those with Down Syndrome, but there is still a long way to go.
Nancy Mairs, born in 1943, described herself as a radical feminist, pacifist, and cripple. She is crippled because she has multiple sclerosis (MS), which is a chronic disease involving damage to the nerve cells and spinal cord. In her essay Disability, Mairs’ focus is on how disabled people are portrayed, or rather un-portrayed in the media. There is more than one audience that Mairs could have been trying to reach out to with this piece. The less-obvious audience would be disabled people who can connect to her writing because they can relate to it. The more obvious audience would be physically-able people who have yet to notice the lack of disabled people being portrayed by the media. Her purpose is to persuade the audience that disabled people should be shown in the media more often, to help society better cope with and realize the presence of handicapped people. Mairs starts off by saying “For months now I’ve been consciously searching for representation of myself in the media, especially television. I know I’d recognize this self becaus...
First and foremost, the literary trope of disability is found in the short story, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. In summary, the story follows a couple who house a blind man for the night. The husband is our narrator and the narrator’s wife (neither of the spouses’ names are revealed to readers) declares that her friend, Robert, is coming to visit them. Robert is a blind man whose wife has recently died. The narrator’s wife met Robert while she worked as a reader to the blind. The narrator is not keen upon Robert coming to lodge at his home and is disconcerte...
Eli Clare in Freaks and Queers observes how individuals use certain words to reaffirm their identities and also distinguish themselves from the rest of society. Being a disabled transman, Clare mentions various words, like handicapped, cripple (crip), gimp, amongst others, which have come to be accepted by the disabled community. He says, “cripple makes me flinch…but I love crip humor, the audacity of turning cripple into a word of pride” (p. 83). Some of these words, like queer for the LGBT community, are used as a means of agency and community for minority groups. But he also turns to the ugly side of language, which can be used to decrease and erase the worth of an individual. He mentions his discomfort with the word ‘freak’ and how
An estimated one billion people are living with disabilities around the world, that is approximately 15 percent of all people on earth (United Nations, n.d.). Furthermore, in the United States, almost 57 million people, 19 percent, have some type of disability (United States Census Bureau, 2012). It is apparent that disabilities are prominent in life today, and unfortunately, the world views disability as individuals who are not abled. Eli Clare, author of "Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness", acknowledges that there is a vast majority of people living with disabilities and in light of this, he advises the world to accept irrevocable differences. In this case, Clare argues that irrevocable differences are bodily differences
In Ain’t No Making It, Jay Macleod explains his theories and findings on social reproduction of inequality. He begins by telling us more about some authors and their theories. This helped me have a better understanding on what this book is really trying to portray. One author I found interesting was Bernstein who focused on language patterns and social reproduction. By bringing up issues like this one that most people usually don’t think about, I was able to look at the problems that the Brothers and Hallway Hangers faced from a whole new perspective. I would not have noticed this throughout the book if these issues were not mentioned right away. I come from a very traditional family that believes that success depends on how much work you
It should not be a surprise that many people believe that a college degree is a necessity in today’s world. We are taught to believe this at a young age. The average citizen will not question this statement due to how competitive the job market has become, yet does graduating college guarantee more success down the road? Peter Brooks is a scholar at Princeton University and publisher of an essay that questions the value of college. He obviously agrees that college can help securing a job for the future, but questions the humanities about the education. He uses other published works, the pursuit of freedom, and draws on universal arguments that pull in the reader to assume the rest of his essay has valid reasons.
A man named Bilal Nasir Khan once said, “The most painful goodbyes are the ones never said and never explained”. In the poem “Changes” by D. Ginette Clarke, the speaker is eager to understand the reasoning behind the end of his friendship with someone who he seems to have been very close with. As one reads through the poem, the strong connection that the persona feels between him and his friend becomes quite obvious. Granting the persona’s endeavour to express his feelings towards his failed friendship in a calm manner, he essentially comes off as a curious, eager, and desperate man. Clarke represents these specific characteristics of the speaker through the use of repetition, word choice, and punctuation.
The second chapter of You are Not So Smart by David McRaney discusses the concept of confabulation, the idea that people tend to fill in the gaps of memory by making up fake information without realizing it. The fake memories may never happen or involve in distortion of previous memories. Brains always rationalize things they don’t understand. Confabulations not only occur in daily life, but also are related to serious mental illness, such as split brain or dementia.
She discussed how whether you grew up in, or joined at a young age, the LGBTQ culture or adopted it later in life and how that impacts your view things. Growing up in the culture, individuals are more accepting of disabilities and accessing services because they are comfortable with the ideas of being different and confident with themselves. They are not ashamed to ask for help and are focused on getting the help they need. On the other hand, those who adopted the culture later in life have a harder time accepting disabilities and accessing services because of their previous culture, the dominate US culture which we know sees needing services and disability as weakness and something shameful. Overall Athena believes that most members of the LBGTQ culture are much more accepting because they also understand what it is like to be different and stray away from the norm and see individuals with disabilities as
What do you do without either of your arms? What do you do for a living constrained to a wheelchair? What do you do without control over your own body? Many people in the world today spend their lives wishing things were not as they were, attempting to forget how they are, or trying to change how they are going to be. When "disabled" people succeed, it is commonly thought that those individuals are amazing for overcoming their disabilities and thriving in life. Is this really what they are doing? The following three women, Mary Duffy, Frieda Kahlo, and Vassar Miller transform their disabilities into the ability to create complex forms of art that force the audience to gain a different perspective on disabilities. Their disabilities become their power. The artists use this power to force their audiences to look at their disabilities in an utterly new way using the "stare and tell" method. These women do not succeed despite their disabilities, but instead succeed because of them
Being disabled is just a single facet of their life, and they have the same capacity to be happy as anyone else. While these three authors have different reasons to write their essays, be it media unfairness, ignorance, or ethical disputes, they all share a basic principle: The disabled are not viewed by the public as “normal people,” and they are unfairly cast away from the public eye. The disabled have the same capacity to love, desire and hurt as any other human being, and deserve all of the rights and privileges that we can offer them. They should be able to enter the same buildings, have representation in the media, and certainly be allowed the right to live.
With the acceptance of disabled people being more common you would think that you wouldn’t see any discrimination against them, but in today’s age, you still see them getting left out. It doesn’t only benefit them as people to include them in the things that normal people get involved in but it benefits you as a person as well. We, as a society, should start including them into the things that they usually don’t get involved in. Who knows, it might change your life. We should all learn about how we can affect the community of inclusion of people with disabilities and be more accepting of the