Thoughts

When you look at characters like WoW (world of warcraft), it is easy to see that the ideal seems to be the greatest sexual dymorphism. Now whatever it might mean, sexual dymorphism in primates is related to non-monogamy. Today we have two seemingly different body disorders for men and women. Women having annorexia, and men “bigorexia” or muscle dysmorphia. Could this be our subliminal ideal of sexual dymorphism coming out. Do we inherently want to be different, to have our females smaller and our males bigger? Just a thought.

All quotes from the top half are taken from the book “The Marx-Engels Reader” (1978). This contains much of the writings of “young Marx”.  All quotes from the bottom half are taken from Marx’s book “Capital: Volume 1” (introduced by Ernest Mandel, Translated by Ben Fowkes) On the Jewish Question “In France, which is a  constitutional  state, The Jewish question is a question of constitutionalism, of the incompleteness of  political emancipation . Since the  semblance  of a state religion is maintained there, if only the insignificant and self-contradictory formula of  religion of the majority,  The relation of the Jews to the state also maintains a semblance of religious, theological opposition.” pg. 30 (Italics Original) “To be  politically  emancipated from religion is not to be finally and completely emancipated from religion, because political emancipation is not the final and absolute form of ...

(again from the book Democracy in America) Written between, I believe, 1830 and 1850. It is a French aristocrat who travels to America to understand their Democracy better.  “Despotism, by its very nature suspicious, sees the isolation of men as the best guarantee of its own permanence. So it usually does all it can to isolate them. Of all the vices of the human heart egoism is that which suits it best. A despot will lightly forgive his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love one another…he calls those who try to unite their effort to create a general prosperity ‘turbulent and restless spirits’, and twisting the natural meaning of words, he calls those ‘good citizens’ who care for none but themselves.” pg. 509 “Liberty engenders particular hatreds, but despotism is responsible for general indifference.” pg. 510 “Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet are in such a rush to...

So two things I want to cover briefly between class periods. One, Does rhetoric in research influence bias? By that I mean does the tone in which research is written (passive or active voice) influence subconsciously how biased the researcher is. So in positivism you write with a passive voice as though you are only an unbiased observer, a computer or robot if you will taking in data and regurgitating it so that it makes sense. The passive tone is supposed to symbolize a lack of human presence and bias (e.g. this research was conducted). However a post modernist or relativist tone would use an active voice (e.g. I conducted this research). So my question is which one is better at hindering bias if any. Does the passive voice have more subtle bias because the researcher just assumes that their judgements are objective, and so without understanding their bias (like racism) might be prone more to it? Or does the active voice cause more bias because the researcher acknowledges their ...

Alexis de Tocqueville was a 19th century french philosopher/political scientist/sociologist. (of course these terms hadn’t been invented yet, thus why it is so hard to label him) He wrote a book called “Democracy in America” in which he analyze and often criticized American democracy in comparison to french aristocracy.  “Men will never educate and develop their intelligence without devoting time to the matter. Therefore the greater or less ease with which people can live without working sets inevitable limits to their intellectual progress”  pg 197 “Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order. Peoples are lulled to sleep by the temporary prosperity it engenders, and when they do wake up, they are wretched. But liberty is generally born in stormy weather, growing with difficulty amid civil discords, and only when it is already old does one see the ble...

Article talking about discrimination in welfare reform debates “As the majority of the 104th congress insisted upon circulating misrepresentations of the poor in the context of welfare reform, Congresswomen of color felt themselves increasingly marginalized…The perception of hostility toward African Americans was heightened by several episodes involving congresswomen of color. In the midst of her floor speech addressing H.R. 4, The personal Responsilibity Act, Congressional veteran Cardiss Collins [D-IL] was interrupted by laughter from the Republican side of the aisle. Having characterized the At as a “callous, cold hearted, and mean-spirited attack on this country’s children” that “punishes Americans for being poor” at the same time Congress was considering tax cuts for the rich, Representative Collins was dismayed by the laughter and all that it betokened. Interrupted her prepared coments she addressed her colleagues directly. I see ...

I want to argue that body insecurity is related to social inequality, and the things people (men and women) are insecure about are related to their social class, gender, race, and age in ways that are unique to their sets of oppression. In all of these groups, the things they focus on and want to change are related to the privileges they seek to attain based on their current oppression. To make this point I will go through a variety of different races, genders, classes, ages, etc and analyze how their body insecurity is related to their oppression and their seek to change their body is related to trying to gain privilege.  Black women. Insecurities: Hair texture, too thin, too fat, butt shape and size, skin color, eye color. (I am sure there are more but just to name a few) most of the insecurities of black women are related to their race and gender status. Some are related to being female, and trying to gain social acceptance by gaining acceptance by males. Anot...