In one of our EN 102 session, we watched the documentary “Middle sexes, Redefining He and She” which educates us about inter-sexed people. Filmmaker Antony Thomas explores the issue of gender and sex, presents facts and imagery of varying expressions of gender in various cultures, and introduces scientific studies that support gender roles are not as simple as male and female. This powerful film evokes strong emotions; it is troubling to witness the intolerance and aggression that the characters and their families have to deal with every day.
In the film, Noah’s parents and stepfather fear for Noah’s safety because he does not behave or dress like a typical 8 year-old boy; ironically, they live in a “God loving, church going tight knit community”. As Noah’s father states “We live in a community where there is a strong religious belief that Noah should not be this way.” Additionally, Noah’s mother feels isolated from her community and overwhelmed by her family because “The Bible teaches us specifically that God made a man and a woman, they then procreate.” She is well aware that there is more than a 50% chance that others would hurt or even murder her son because of his undefined gender role. Unfortunately, the fear Noah’s mother has for her son’s safety is a tragic reality for Gwen’s mother.
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Gwen, a teenage transsexual, was murdered by four teenage boys in El Dorado County, California. These teenage boys had punched and beaten Gwen with cast iron, strangled her with a rope, then dumped her in shallow grave and crushed her to death with rocks. Interestingly, El Dorado County is a picturesque town where its residents are predominantly white Christians. After the film was over, we had a class discussi...
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Singer, Peter and Hauser, Marc. “Godless Morality.” Utilitarian.net. Project Syndicated,
Jan. 2006.
In this column written by philosophers, Peter Singer and Marc Hauser express religious people are no more altruistic and virtuous than non-believers after they conduct their experiment. Singer and Hauser describe three scenarios which are presented on their web-based moral sense test and examine the reactions from the participants. Through their explanations and reasoning, the authors conclude that it is our nature, not God that is the source of our morality. This column explores the source of morality and the motivation to do good deeds; furthermore, it dispels the myth that atheists lack a moral compass. This article includes scientific studies that can be used as credible evidences to support my argument in my research assignment.
Killbourne mentions, “Many boys grow up feeling that they are unmanly if they are not always “ready for action,” capable of and interested in sex with any woman who is available,” (285). The constant need for physical attention in pre-pubescent and teenage boys has always been in an issue that all generations have witnessed. Boys are pressured into lusty situations by their peers and peer pressure leads them in to what become habitual actions. Stalking, assault, affirmative action and other acts of degrading women are all actions that are completely avoidable when individuals are properly informed of consequences and how these actions can affect others, especially women. The news is a source filled with negative instances of gender-related which include domestic violence, rape, and many other violent
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
Across the globe, gender systems vary in ways that often exclude individuals who don’t identify within their realms. From the binary structure of the West, to the ternary system of India, there are many ways in which societies conceptualize gender. Gender systems are generally considered inherent to humanity, and are seldom questioned or altered. This has led to the marginalization and discrimination of individuals who diverge from the implemented structure.
Morality and ethics have always been a large source of debate and contention between different factions of various interests, beliefs, and ideals due to its centrality and foundational role in society and civilization and incredible importance to everyday life and decision making. In many of these disputes religious belief, or a lack thereof, serves as an important driving force behind one or both sides of the argument. In the modern world, one of the bigger instances of this can be seen in the many debates between Atheistic and religious individuals about the implications of religious belief on morality. One of the most famous Atheists, Christopher Hitchens, asserts that religion is not only unnecessary for morality, but actually impedes it. In his work God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens challenges religious believers to “name an ethical statement or action, made or performed by a person of faith that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer”, and proudly states afterwards that many have made the attempt but no one has given him a satisfactory answer. However, the best response to this challenge is to point out the inherent flaws in his logic, the unfairness of his challenge, and the fact that Hitchens is asking the wrong question in the first place.
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
In an organized religion debate, Alan Dershowitz and Alan Keyes contended many issues on religion and morality. Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, believed that "morality can be maintained without religion." He also stated that it must be maintained without religion because times have changed. He said that if religion is not separated from state it could have severe damage, such as the Crusades and the Holocaust. Dershowitz believes that there is a difference between morality and religion. When people are moral without religion, they are being virtuous on their own, not because they are afraid of God. He stated that religion should not consist of a Cost-Benefit Analysis. Alan Keyes, a former Republican presidential candidate, stated that religion sets the standard for what's moral. Keyes argued "power only ultimately respects another power," and Martin Luther King Jr. was not a preacher by accident. Dershowitz also stated that not everything in the Bible should be believed word-for-word, even George Washington said "indulge religion with caution." Keyes believed that if state and religion should be separated, then why does the Declaration of Independence contain so much about religion? Alan Dershowitz and Alan Keyes would have argued endlessly about religion's role in society if there were not a moderator to stop them.
The central theme of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky deals with conformity’s role in society. Dostoyevsky uses conformity to make Raskolnikov mentally ill and eventually turn himself in to face the punishment for his crimes. Religion influences every character in the book, but none more ardently than Raskolnikov. Understanding religion’s role as a force for conformity in Crime and Punishment provides a powerful insight into character motives and, furthermore, philosophical influences.
With this week’s readings, many interesting articles were discussed but the one that struck me the most would be Christine Delphy’s article, “Rethinking sex and gender.” This specific article brought about points and perspectives that I had never experienced before prior to the reading. What was even more shocking, however, was when I discovered that some of the fallacies that Delphy had mentioned in the article were already ingrained in myself. For example, within Delphy’s first examination she points out that there is a hidden assumption that sex precedes gender since it is a biologically derived characteristic and this was an assumption that I found to make myself. Even though I thought that this article would just be another simple read for me, it turned out that it was quite the enlightening experience as it provided insight into how gender roles and classification developed as well as providing a lot of interesting arguments. However, what I connected with most would be the later part of the article that specifically focuses on the topics of hierarchy and division.
Typically many religious people claim that ethics and morality relies on what God rules them to be and fail to see that morality can still be just as significant to a person that doesn't believe in God. Theists, followers of God presume religion to be a substantial reason for our moral conduct. Nonbelievers such as atheists are still capable of understanding the difference between what is right and wrong without religion. John, believes that if there wasn't a higher power to give us the set rules and reasons of how to behave then anything we do would be measured equally. Whereas Andrea, who is against this theory points out that God is not the key for having moral values. Her argument seems to be more convincing because an atheist can still to do the right thing based on their own interest if it has a rational explanation for moral values. The only difference is that non-believers don't have a supreme ruler to measure the intensity of how moral their actions are. Doing the right or wrong thing should be justified on a level of whether or not your actions hurt or harm someone in any w...
Religious leaders ought to be the epitome of goodness and morality and are supposed to live lives worthy of emulation. Yet, in Voltaire’s Candide and Goethe’s Faust, the church is infested with hypocrisy what with religious leaders being hypocritical characters that are corrupt, greedy and immoral. These are seen in so many instances in both texts as will be discussed below.
Kendal, Diana. "Sex and Gender." Sociology in Our Times 3.Ed. Joanna Cotton. Scarborough: Nelson Thomson, 2004. 339-367
complete lack of it if the idea of God has not come into existence. To
Identities are an important part of the human experience. One of the many identities that creates a person is gender. Society, being the entity establishing social norms and social roles, plays a part in effecting the individual’s gender, and how they choose to express themself. The underlying or overlying identities also have the same effect. Gender is not only an identity, it is a lifestyle inside and out. Gender, like race, class, and sexuality; is not limited to the binary scale, and that is normal, natural, and human. The concept of gender is man-made, but it forces one’s hand to analyze the thought processes behind an individual's perception on gender through self, through society, or through the dichotomy and/or correspondence of the
One important thing to understand is that these acts of gender are not done in isolation or done on an individualistic level – this cannot be targeted merely by changing actions on that level. Acts are a shared experience and a collective action – and since gender is understood as an act, gender is never one’s alone. While every single individual acts out gender in their own one, but it is still done in reference to certain sanctions and prescriptions that it is never fully one’s own. Acts are in themselves public, as the choice to ‘perform’ such acts means to render implicit social conditions explicit. The “play” of gender requires both the ‘script’ of gender, and the personal interpretation of acting out such a
When considering morality, worthy to note first is that similar to Christian ethics, morality also embodies a specifically Christian distinction. Studying a master theologian such as St. Thomas Aquinas and gathering modern perspectives from James Keenan, S. J. and David Cloutier serve to build a foundation of the high goal of Christian morality. Morality is a primary goal of the faith community, because it is the vehicle for reaching human fulfillment and happiness. Therefore, great value can be placed on foundations of Christian morality such as the breakdown of law from Aquinas, the cultivation of virtues, the role of conscience in achieving morality, and the subject of sin described by Keenan.