Societal Views on Sports and Gender Essays -- Health Fitness

Societal Views on Sports and Gender Sports have become a major part of American culture and society. It is ingrained in us as a small child that playing a sport is almost necessary. In elementary school we take physical education where we are exposed to competitive sport. But even at this level it is our genders that control which types of sports are deemed "appropriate." Since women started to become involved in sports, there have always been those who have opposed them being there. We saw an example of this in the movie Girl Fight. By allowing a woman to partake in a sport, in this case boxing, that is typically viewed as male oriented in caused society to alter its views. This created many problems though. People do not want to see woman is a fighting role. It is thought to be unladylike and too rough. Because fighting is masculine, seeing a woman in that role changes gender roles in her community. Though it is clear that the Diana can handle herself in this movie. Her culture and society does not want to see her in a strong way. She faces many obstacles in order to show that she does belong where she is. In this movie she is victorious because it is her skills and determination that win out in the end, not her gender. Both in Girl Fight and in Pumping Iron 2 the question of what is feminine and what should a woman look and act like is brought up. In Girl Fight, the idea of a female boxer is deemed not feminine. Diana is told that she is wrong for being interested in male sports. Also, her sexuality is questioned. People call her a dyke and other derogatory terms because they do not believe that she could possibly be a "normal girl". By questioning her sexuality they are saying too her that she is not allowed to be ... ...g to their sexuality. Even though the football team is horrible and the cheerleaders are national champions. It is the fact that these male cheerleaders are involved in a feminine sport that makes them subject to ridicule. There are positive things that can happen as a result of people playing sports not traditionally thought to be okay for their gender though. By having people in these roles it breaks down barriers between men and women in society. There are always going to be those that resist this, but in general people become more excepting of one another. At least that is the hope. Diana, Bev, and the others were either portraying or being, in Bev's case, pioneers in their sports field. But the fact that they got to compete at all shows us that our society has come a long way. Yet, the obstacles that they faced, shows us that we still have a long way to go. Societal Views on Sports and Gender Essays -- Health Fitness Societal Views on Sports and Gender Sports have become a major part of American culture and society. It is ingrained in us as a small child that playing a sport is almost necessary. In elementary school we take physical education where we are exposed to competitive sport. But even at this level it is our genders that control which types of sports are deemed "appropriate." Since women started to become involved in sports, there have always been those who have opposed them being there. We saw an example of this in the movie Girl Fight. By allowing a woman to partake in a sport, in this case boxing, that is typically viewed as male oriented in caused society to alter its views. This created many problems though. People do not want to see woman is a fighting role. It is thought to be unladylike and too rough. Because fighting is masculine, seeing a woman in that role changes gender roles in her community. Though it is clear that the Diana can handle herself in this movie. Her culture and society does not want to see her in a strong way. She faces many obstacles in order to show that she does belong where she is. In this movie she is victorious because it is her skills and determination that win out in the end, not her gender. Both in Girl Fight and in Pumping Iron 2 the question of what is feminine and what should a woman look and act like is brought up. In Girl Fight, the idea of a female boxer is deemed not feminine. Diana is told that she is wrong for being interested in male sports. Also, her sexuality is questioned. People call her a dyke and other derogatory terms because they do not believe that she could possibly be a "normal girl". By questioning her sexuality they are saying too her that she is not allowed to be ... ...g to their sexuality. Even though the football team is horrible and the cheerleaders are national champions. It is the fact that these male cheerleaders are involved in a feminine sport that makes them subject to ridicule. There are positive things that can happen as a result of people playing sports not traditionally thought to be okay for their gender though. By having people in these roles it breaks down barriers between men and women in society. There are always going to be those that resist this, but in general people become more excepting of one another. At least that is the hope. Diana, Bev, and the others were either portraying or being, in Bev's case, pioneers in their sports field. But the fact that they got to compete at all shows us that our society has come a long way. Yet, the obstacles that they faced, shows us that we still have a long way to go.

Could or should psychology be called a science? Essay

The advantages of calling psychology a science are huge. It allows us to state that it contains objective facts, correct our mistakes and build on previous discoveries. However many refute giving psychology the tile of ‘a science’ believing that humans are far too complex in their processes to be explained in generalised terms. The key assumptions of ‘science’ are; Invariance, in science a set of laws don’t change, Determinism, meaning that everything can be explained using these laws and that there is a reason for everything and finally Operationalism, trusting in an objective and accurate set of measured variables. Many psychologists believe that these key principals conflict with those of human cognitions; which are often complex and seem to fail to follow any set rules of nature. People inevitably change over time; this fact challenges the principal of ‘Invariance’ from the scientific point of view. However there is a difference in changes found on behaviour and those found in ‘laws’. For example trends of music have changed with time and culture, but the underlying psychological cognitions behind those changes haven’t been altered; group pressure still remains. Science asserts that one set of rules can apply for everyone; determinism. However a psychologist would state that its very founding principals of the ‘psyche’ means that people follow many different sets of rules and cannot be forced into one category due to differing levels of cognitions. This might be challenged be saying that science chooses to follow a set of rules that are as simple as they can be, but that psychology might have to have a more complex set of rules in order to appreciate human differences. An analogy used to support this is that, â€Å"In spelling ‘I’ before ‘E’ doesn’t always work, but the more complex rule of ‘I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’ does. † Finally the challenge to the idea of ‘operationalism’ comes form the fact that many psychologists believe that you can’t observe and measure thoughts and feelings directly, as they are internal. However science might say that you can infer the thoughts and feelings of a person from their external behaviour. Many psychologists would state that ‘psychologies inability to predict human behaviour could be taken as proof that psychology isn’t a science because science works on the principals that if you observe something enough times you will be able to understand it and predict what will happen in the future. ‘ Science however, began like psychology; without all the answers and indeed even modern medical science cannot predict all the answers e. g. Modern medicinal science doesn’t know how to cure cancer because they don’t know how it will react to different drugs. We would demand a far more complex analysis from a psychologist than we would from other scientists. We might ask a psychologist what a human will do, this question could be considered as broad as asking a physicist what will happen to a specific drop of water in the ocean. There are a great deal of variables influencing human behaviour, therefore making it unrealistic to expect that people’s behaviour could be predicted from observing just one or two variables, similarly in physics; the behaviour of particles can’t be predicted due to the fact that not all of the determinants of the particles behaviour can be observed at once. Psychology cannot be discounted as a science just due to the fact that we don’t know the cause of something. As a psychologist you should appreciate the fact that humans have an inability to know everything and just because we don’t know the cause it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. If psychology were a science there would be some key issues that would need sorting before people accepted its status. The knowledge gained through psychological research might be mis-used. Given to those in political or economic power psychological research could mean that humans have an inability to defend themselves against certain ideas that were being forced upon them. If psychology became a science then humans would have to be tested upon to gain more accurate results and to create complex laws about them. These experiments might be unethical, for example we have seen the research that Milgram did, however even though it was controversial the participants agreed that they were unharmed and that they were glad to have participated. There would also be strict ethical guidelines should humans be tested on. Many psychologists believe that the reason psychology shouldn’t be a science is due to the mysterious and uncertain nature of it. The fact that we don’t understand ‘love’ might make it seem more magical and exciting, something that appeals to human nature. The advantages to understanding something like love would mean that we could prevent areas such as divorce, break up and heartbreak, causing a less painful world for humans. The complexity of areas of psychology, such as love and hate, means that inevitably the mystery and human mis-understanding surrounding such phenomena would be unlikely to be removed.

Whiteness Definition in Sociology

In sociology, whiteness is defined as a set of characteristics and experiences generally associated with being a member of the white race and having white skin. Sociologists believe the construct of whiteness is directly connected to the correlating construct of people of color as other in society. Because of this, whiteness comes with a wide variety of privileges. Whiteness as Normal The most important and consequential thing that sociologists have discovered about whiteness—having white skin and/or being identified as white—in the United States and Europe is that whiteness is perceived as being normal. White people belong and are therefore entitled to certain rights, while people from other racial categories—even members of indigenous populations—are perceived and, therefore, treated as unusual, foreign, or exotic. We see the normal nature of whiteness in the media as well. In film and television, the majority of mainstream characters are white, while shows those that feature casts and themes geared toward non-white audiences are considered niche works that exist outside of that  mainstream. While TV show creators Shonda Rhimes, Jenji Kohan, Mindy Kaling, and Aziz Ansari are contributing to a shift in the racial landscape of television, their shows are still exceptions, not the norm. How Language Codifies the Races That America is racially diverse is a reality, however, there is  specially coded language applied to non-whites that mark their race or ethnicity. Whites, on the other hand, do not find themselves categorized in this way. African American, Asian American, Indian American, Mexican American, and so on are common phrases, while European American or Caucasian American are not. Another common practice among whites is to specifically state the race of a person with whom theyve come into contact if that person is not white. Sociologists recognize the way we speak about people signals sends a signal that white people are normal Americans, while everyone else is a different kind of American that requires additional explanation. This additional language and what it signifies  is generally forced on non-whites, creating a set of expectations and perceptions, regardless of whether those expectations or perceptions are true or false. Whiteness is Unmarked In a society where being white is perceived as normal, expected, and inherently American, whites are rarely asked to explain their family origins in that particular way that really means, What are you? With no linguistic qualifiers attached to their identity, ethnicity becomes optional for white people. Its something that they  can access if they  so desire, to be used as social or cultural capital. For example, white Americans are not required to embrace and identify with their British, Irish, Scottish, French, or Canadian ancestors. People of  color are marked by their race and ethnicity in deeply meaningful and consequential ways, while, in the words of late British sociologist Ruth Frankenberg, white people are unmarked by the kinds of language and expectations described above. In fact, whites are considered so void of any ethnic coding that the word ethnic itself has evolved into a descriptor of people of color or elements of their cultures. For example, on the hit Lifetime television show Project Runway, judge Nina Garcia regularly uses ethnic to refer to clothing designs and patterns associated with indigenous tribes of Africa and the Americas. Think about it: Most grocery stores have an ethnic food aisle where youll find food items associated with Asian, Middle Eastern,  Jewish, and Hispanic cuisine. Such foods, coming from cultures composed predominantly of people of color are labeled ethnic, i.e., different, unusual, or exotic, whereas, all other food is considered normal and is, therefore, unmarked or segregated into one centralized separate location. Whiteness and Cultural Appropriation The unmarked nature of whiteness feels bland and unexciting for some whites. This is largely the reason why its become common, starting in the mid-20th century through today,  for whites to appropriate and consume elements of Black, Hispanic, Caribbean, and Asian cultures in order to appear cool, hip, cosmopolitan, edgy, bad, tough, and sexual—among other things. Given that historically rooted stereotypes frame people of color—especially Black and indigenous Americans—as both more connected to the earth and more authentic than white people—many whites find racially and ethnically coded goods, arts, and practices appealing. Appropriating practices and goods from these cultures is a way for white people to express an identity that is counter to the perception of  mainstream whiteness. Gayle Wald, an English professor who has written extensively on the topic of race, found through archival research that renowned late singer Janis Joplin crafted her free-wheeling, free-loving, countercultural stage persona Pearl after Black blues singer Bessie Smith. Wald recounts that Joplin  spoke openly about how she perceived black people to have a soulfulness, a certain raw naturalness, that white people lacked, and that resulted in rigid and stuffy expectations for personal behavior, especially for women and argues that Joplin adopted elements of Smiths dress and vocal style in order to position her performance as a critique of white heteronormative gender roles. During the countercultural revolution in the ’60s, a far less politically motivated form of cultural appropriation continued as young white people appropriated  clothing and iconography such as headdresses and dream catchers from indigenous American cultures in order to position themselves as countercultural and carefree  at musical festivals across the country. Later, this trend in appropriation would move on to embrace forms of African cultural expression, such as rap and hip-hop. Whiteness is Defined by Negation As a racial category devoid of any racially or ethnically coded meaning, white is defined not so much by what it is, but rather, by what it is not—the racially coded other. As such,  whiteness is something loaded with social, cultural, political, and economic significance. Sociologists whove studied the historical evolution of contemporary racial categories—including Howard Winant, David Roediger, Joseph R. Feagin, and George Lipsitz—conclude the meaning of white has always been understood through a process of exclusion or negation. By describing Africans or indigenous Americans as wild, savage, backward, and stupid, European colonists cast themselves in contrasting roles as civilized, rational, advanced, and intelligent. When slaveholders described the African Americans they owned as sexually uninhibited and aggressive, they also established the image of whiteness—especially that of white women—as pure and chaste. Throughout the eras of slavery in America, Reconstruction, and well into the 20th century, these last two constructs have proven especially disastrous for the African American community. Black men and youths suffered beatings, torture, and lynching on the basis of even the flimsiest allegation that theyd paid unwanted attention to a white woman. Meanwhile, Black women lost jobs and families lost their homes, only to later learn that the so-called trigger event had never taken place. Continued Cultural Stereotypes These cultural constructs live on and continue to exert influence in American society. When whites describe Latinas as spicy and fiery, they, in turn, construct a definition of white women as tame and even-tempered.  When whites stereotype African American and Latino boys as bad, dangerous kids, they counterpose white kids as well-behaved and respectable—again, whether these labels are true or not. Nowhere is this disparity more evident than in the media and the judicial system, in which people of color are routinely demonized as vicious criminals who deserve whats coming to them, while white offenders are routinely regarded as merely misguided and let off with a slap on the wrist—especially in cases of boys will be boys. Sources Ruth Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. University of Minnesota Press, 1993Wald, Gayle. â€Å"One of the Boys? Whiteness, Gender, and Popular Music Studies† in Whiteness: A Critical Reader, edited by Mike Hill. New York University Press, 1964; 1997