Normalizing Homosexuality in Public Schools - Free Essay Example

Most people lack an understanding on how far the gay community has advanced throughout history. A factor behind this issue derives from not educating and acknowledging homosexuality within public school parameters. Instead of receiving guidance from informed individuals, students were left to interact with misleading-based evidence. Since correct information was inaccessible to students, society could not recognize the gay community with accurate lenses. The aftermath of sexual discrimination, in this case, has resulted in silencing the history of an entire minority. While normalizing its culture, this essay explores the causes behind homosexual opposition and how students obtain the potential to implement a change. First, the diverting factors to against sexual orientations must be recognized for the explanation of its corrections to make sense. The association of perv, criminality, and immorality to being gay sprung a negative reaction by America. Constantly referring to a population with these distasteful terms led to the hindering of its approval. Progressions through time, however, has revealed the falsity of these delegations. After reasoning upon this dissociation, proper education on homosexuality can strengthen the equal treatment sought to be achieved by society. Including matters of homosexuality to s exual education will assist to eliminate the promiscuous stereotype against gay men. To further enlighten students within social studies, addressing civil rights disputes of homosexual discrimination and the hate crimes prevention act help explain the significance of learning from its root problems. The aim of this demand is to improve the treatment of homosexuals by training Americas youth to standardize diversity. The LGBT community should be acknowledged in public school curriculum for the purpose of achieving a broader acceptance of homosexuality. The human race is constantly battling against labels. From rejecting unhealthy foods because of their nutritional facts to dismissing a product due to its unaffordability, there is an infinite range of responses to what labels communicate. Distinguishing labels from a stereotype, however, is that the latter resonates across society because of a commonly triggered reaction. Labels can hitherto snowball beyond its intentions to depict a false sense of judgement. Since society failed to identify homosexuality as a lifestyle, it became a sexual behavior taught in the form of anal sex. The characterization of anal sex as inappropriate led to the stereotyping of gay men as promiscuous. Emerging from heteronormative culture, the allocation of this concept reasons that any deviation from procreational sex was viewed as perverted. With a desire to exist during a time of turmoil, gay men overlooked this subjection by partaking in sexual misconduct. This disregard of the public opinion enraged oppositionists to furthermore portray homosexuals as sexually irresponsible, intimately driven, and sleazy. In The Effect of the Promiscuity Stereotype on Opposition to Gay Rights, authors David Pinsof and Martie Haselton conducted an experiment to measure the impact that this label had on support for homosexuality. Results indicate that representations of gay men as promiscuous interact with mating strategies to predict opposition to gay rights in order to exemplify the ignorance behind shaming gays for having no ulterior motives (2017, p.6). Unfortunately for homosexuals there was no displaying of facts but a reliance on the public to interpret its meaning. Prevalent among society, it is the denouncement of being ?over-sexed that has heightened hostility towards the LGBT community. Homosexual relationships did not receive legislative support since the community was portrayed as facetious in sexual matters. Constricting means of a healthy relationship from gay people only made matt ers worse. Since gays did not have the right to wed, then it became pointless to date for life. It is vital to understand that stereotypes manipulate the truth for the purpose of oversimplifying an image or idea. People tend to lose sight behind the importance of addressing sexual expression in school. Due to the fact that it is uncomfortable or contradictory to communicate, public school teachers are simply not doing enough to spread awareness about the existence of a gay population. As a result of silencing these intimate topics in school, students across America are uncertain on how to approach homosexual affairs in healthy contexts. The article Afraid of Who You Are: No Promo Homo Laws in Public School Sex Education criticizes state legislations that do not require schools to mention homosexuality in sex education. Leora Hoshall states that In addition to instructing students that homosexuality is not acceptable, teachers in Alabama public schools are required to teach that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense in order to destabilizes any attempt to normalize a minority (2013, p. 223). This misguidance eventually implied that gay people have an obscene amount of sex. The upholding of this stereotype was reinforced with the constraint that the LGBT community did seek stable and healthy relationships. Instead of helping stereotype homosexuals, teachers should encourage students to practice safe partnership with both sexual interests in mind. Not only does including homosexuality affairs within sex education derail gay stereotyping, but it also allows students to develop more support for gay marriage. The truths of same-sex marriage exploited throughout schools can guide students to adopt healthier relationship goals and understand that homosexuals are ordinary. Furthermore, children may be taught that homosexuality is similar to that of heterosexuality because both orientations aim towards marriage. Originating in early European governments, politicians began to publicly shame same-sex affairs by punishing those found guilty to death. The Buggery Act of 1533, implemented by King Henry VIII, established that engaging in homosexual affairs was considered unlawful and criminal (Bentham, 2006, p.1). Another major reason that led to an opposition of homosexuality was that it was criminalized. The prosecution of life or death forced early developments to obtain a zero tolerance of gay interactions. These procedures that addressed sexual orientation in a harsh manner were not only unjust, but extremely demeaning. Since citizens were taught to strictly abide by the law, it was absurd that these governing bodies were allowed to manipulate the minds of society to accept the existence of such prejudices. The repeal of this act alone did not have enough impact to fully decriminalize the implications behind being gay. In addition to the late British rule, sodomy laws in America corrupted the understanding of homosexuality as a normality. The beginning subversion to sodomy laws inaugurated a time when the government upheld the power to control Americas intimate activities. Despite the fact that these laws applied to every citizen, the focus eventually narrowed to discourage any action that contradicted public morality. A decree that once criminalized all sexual conduct soon sparked the beginning of homosexual victimization across the United States. An increasing ignorance to sodomy sparked when the heteronormative culture justified that premarital intercourse was acceptable while gay activities were not. Although regular sex became dignified, it was still considered a criminal offense to engage in same-sex relations. In a journal titled AND THEN THERE WERE NONE: THE REPEAL OF SODOMY LAWS AFTER LAWRENCE V. TEXAS AND ITS EFFECT ON THE CUSTODY AND VISITATION RIGHTS OF GAY AND LESBIAN PARENTS, Jennifer Naeger explains that intolerances remained to deprive homosexuals of their right to privacy because of the increasing support of sodomy enforcement (2004, p. 404). The author exaggerates how this shameful act restricted homosexual affairs from being incorporated to the mainstream culture. Through ridiculing certain minorities, it was reported again that being gay was a behavior and not recognized as a life choice. Although these events might be viewed as a series of fractional misfortunate events, the addition of these historical references in public schools can have a positive impact on respecting sexual orientation and appreciating the Declaration of Independence. It was indirectly established with sodomy laws that homosexuals and heterosexuals are common in deserving the right to be protected under civil liberties. Could this mean that other legislations targeting homosexuality see minimal validation? As a result of diminishing lives to a difference in sexual desires, this tragi c history exploits the importance of democracy and why students should exercise their rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The U.S claims that there are no second-class citizens, but what about homosexuals? The final contribution to discuss is how the immorality of the LGBT community enhanced its rejection by society. Cultural convergence is the key to advancing towards a collective conscience. Representing an array of ideas and beliefs is how a democratic nation achieves a better understanding of what it means to be human. Listening to the cries of injustice, acting upon the interest of equality, and fighting to obtain freedom has led the gay community to reach a time of such acceptance. Now that homosexuals are treated less harshly, it is important to acknowledge the prejudices of past and present to avoid reoccurring mistakes in accurately depicting homosexuality. Lawful discriminations such as attacks against employment and not protecting sexual orientations from hate crimes led to isolating gays from social acceptance. Americans were taught to justify against gay people in that it was right to be s traight. The Briggs Initiative was a proposition in California to ban lesbians and gay men from teaching in public schools (Fejes, 2008, p.21). Ideally, the purpose behind this restriction was to remind America to approach the LGBT community with proceeding caution. Not only did the attempted bill remind citizens that homosexuality was debatable, but it also communicated the overall disapproval of such subjects to lesser equality. This denunciation of gays in professional work environments established that it was unethical to promote variances in sexual lifestyles. Acknowledging the Briggs Initiative in history class could teach students that assumptions should not be made based on the surface image. Through normalizing homosexuality, students can be taught that the true meanings of things are found from within. The revision of what constitutes a hate crime is another example of recorded hesitation to protect the corrupt. A hate crime can ultimately be described as the terrorizing of individuals in consequence to race, ethnicity, or religion. In efforts to attain constitutional correspondence, the federal government soon expanded the characteristics of a victim to include sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. In Reconceptualizing Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes as Burdening Expression and Association: A Case for Expanding Federal Hate Crime Legislation to Include Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation, the writer explains the everlasting influence of recognizing sexual orientation as a liberty protected under the law. Jordan Woods identifies that wrongful harms have psychological impacts by stating that gays and lesbians who had experienced a hate crime assault reported significantly greater levels of depression, anger, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress than did subjects who ex perienced non-bias motivated assaults (2007, p. 92). The weak security of the LGBT community withheld any protection from prejudiced induced violence. This error in the justice system can teach students that not everything restricted by laws and legislations will remain wrongful to society. The Briggs Initiative and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act give students an opportunity to learn about the importance of upholding the constitution and how these protections founded ages ago still apply to todays society. During the repeal of sodomy laws, President Barack Obama once claimed that There will never be a full accounting of the heroism demonstrated by gay Americans in service to this country; their service has been obscured in history (Obama, 2010, p. 3). Giving LGBT subjects exposure in schools can help spread awareness that homosexuality is more than just same gendered sex, but that citizens obtain the right to choose their own sexual orientation. Accurate representations of the gay community can be implemented throughout democracy for the purpose of standardizing homosexuality. It is extremely important to derail associations of promiscuity, criminality, and immorality to the nature of being homosexual in order to reach a more unified society. Teaching students not to silence discrimination and to promote the exercising of American freedom are some contributions of including LGBT topics in school. The gay community should be addressed in public school settings for reasons beyond achievi ng homosexual support.

Television Adverts Essay Example Pdf - Free Essay Example

In the age where media inhabits numerous conduits for the production of culture it is difficult to imagine culture without its mediated form, from television and comic books to fashion and postcards, culture is derived through a range of diverse vehicles. We experience our cultural life through media in various ways. Modern society is founded on universal law, enlightenment of reason and science is the solution to social problems, utopia is possible (except the poor will always be poor); Western-centric humanism will save the world; mass consumption means mass employment and modern society contained in the grand narrative of history. Progressive social transformation of the post-modern turn will take us on new adventures; resituating science, technology, society capitalism into a multi-perspective and multi-disciplinary framework. One attempt to account for the emergence of post-modern condition is the shift during the 20th century of the economic needs of capitalism from production to consumption. Reality is what we see fit by these various forms of seductive illusion. The prefix post clearly implies a break, a relation to a period that has happened before. In the case of post-modernism the previous period is undoubtedly modernism. Thus, postmodernism refers to a breakdown of the distinction between culture and society emergence of a social order in which the importance and power of the mass media and popular culture means that they govern and shape all forms of social relationships. For Lyotard, a key post-modernism theorist, the post-modern condition is neither a periodizing concept nor does it re fer to the institutional parameters of modernity and post-modernity. Rather it is: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. I have decided to use the word post-modern to describe that conditionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ (it) designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end if nineteenth century, have altered the rules for science, literature, and the arts (Lyotard, 1991, pg xxiii) Lyotard refers to postmodernism as a loss of faith in meta-narratives, the big stories that have justified the rational, scientific, artistic and political world of the modern world. Rejection of all overarching and totalising thought; Marxism, liberalism, etc. that tell universal stories which organize and justify the everyday practices of a plurality of different stories (narratives); Science, which has developed importance since the Enlightenment, has assumed the status of a meta-narrative, organizing and validating other na rratives on the road to liberation. Lyotard says since Enlightenment status as a meta-narrative has waned. Science is no longer seen to be making progress on behalf of mankind. Its a breakdown in distinction between art and popular culture: there are no longer any agreed and definite criteria which serve to differentiate art from popular culture. For example, take Warhol Velvet Underground art becomes increasingly integrated into the economy both because it is used to encourage people to consume through the expanded role it plays in advertising, and because it becomes a commercial good in its own right. Popular cultural signs and media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality, and the way we define ourselves and the world around us. The world which tries to come to terms with a media-saturated society. Mass media was once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and reflecting society. Now, reality can only be defined as the surface reflections of this mirror. S ociety has become subsumed within mass media it is no longer a question of distortion of reality, since the term implies that there is a reality outside the surface simulations of the media, which can be distorted, and this is precisely what is at issue according to post-modern theory. Is the media creating reality? Linked to this is the notion that it is more difficult to distinguish the economy from popular culture. The realm of consumption is increasingly influenced by popular culture. For example, we watch more films because we have a VCR, then they reference and advertise products that we go and buy. Surface and style have become more important and evoke a kind of designer ideology. The obsession with being super-model thin, fad-diets, use of sexuality, football, designer clothing, and many more simulations that work as a network in exchange order with each other to create reality narrative for post-modern consumer. The argument is we increasingly consume images and s igns for their own sake rather than for their usefulness or for the deeper values they may symbolise. The very values that modernists used to talk about. In the production-era machines had to be built and updated, basic materials like iron and steel made, infrastructures such as roads, rail, communication had to be laid down, the work force had to be taught the work ethic: Taylorisation and Fordism. Once this was established, the need for consumption emerges. And people need to acquire a consumer ethic. The need to consume becomes equal to the need to produce. Increased affluence combined with consumer credit, advertising, marketing and design. Culture celebrates consumerism and style, therefore the media becomes more important. New occupations or changed role of older ones involved in need to make people consume: advertisers, marketing, design, journalism, television, finance, etc. Consuming images In his essays, Stuart Hall has conceptualized the production and consumption of the television message as a complex social construction of meaning within the semiotic framework. His theory of encoding/decoding is very important in the discourse of consumption of advertising in TV. The polysemic images have been encoded in a particular way and the process of decoding is not symmetrical. Looking back at the work of Barthes we understand that advertising texts are polysemic and at the connotative level of signification signs possess fluidity which enables them to be articulated in multiple ways (Barthes, 1973, pg 122). Eco argues that the viewers determination to decode the message in aberrant ways are to be found in the readers general framework of cultural references such as his ideological, ethical religious standpoint, value systems, etc, (Eco, 1998, 141). Following the same path of consumption and ideology, Baudrillard follows Althuesser in arguing that the subject is con stituted through social classifications and ideological processes. Ideology converts humans into subjects. Ideology lets us mistakenly recognize ourselves as autonomous self-determining agents, whereas in fact we are subjects formed through a social physic processes. Ideology therefore is not the mirrored inversion of the real but our imaginary or symbolic to our shared conditions of existence. Watching the latest Levi jeans advertisement we are addressed as individual consumers with our own unique passion and desires. The ideological effect of the ad lies in its ability to interpellate us in this way. Althusser complicates Marx beautifully by not accepting the concept of ideology as false consciousness. It is material practice produced by ideological state apparatuses. It makes us think are sovereign consumers rather than a member of social class. (Stevenson, 2002,150) In the age of postmodernism where the product is a sign instead of a commodity, as Baudrillard argues, th e way in which adverts are consumed by television viewers depend on the very same framework Eco talks about. Jean Baudrillards essay The Ecstasy of Communication evokes TV and its technologies as a metaphor for the regime of simulation in the contemporary western culture. A TV screen cannot be thought simply as an object to be looked at, with all the old forms of psychic projection and investment; instead, the screen intersects responsively with our desires and representation and becomes an embodied from of our psychic worlds. What happens on the screen is neither on the screen nor in us, but in some complex, virtual space between the two. Marshall McCluhans notion that the medium is the message is clearly related to consumption theory. McCluhan argues that television influences viewers thinking processes and leads to alienation and individualism. But McCluhan sees this not as the result of television content but rather caused by the sensory nature of the medium itself. It is the form of the medium, according to McCluhan, and not its content that influence viewers (Mcluhan, 2002, pg7). TV advertising is a representative part of the arena where the post-modern scene of simulation takes on the relationship between the product and consumer. Baudrillard has contributed significantly towards the theory of consumption. He abandoned Marxist analysis after his book called the Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976). He argues that through a more explicitly post-industrial analysis the real relations of production and consumption have been replaced by a sign system. According to Baudrillard the arrival of consumer society requires a radical reconstruction of critical theory. Baudrillard argues that before goods (objects) can be consumed they must become signs (Baudrillard, 1988, pg 23). The meaning of the objects is established through the organisation of signs into codes. It is only through these codes that people realise their sense of self and their nee ds. The codes themselves are hierarchically ordered, being used to signify distinction of statue and prestige. As Baudrillard argues a need is not for a particular object as much as it is a need for difference (the desire for social meaning) only then we will understand that satisfaction can never be fulfilled, and consequently that there can never be a definition of needs. A subject whose needs are fixed by human nature does not consume the object. Social goods are consumed not to satisfy pre-existing needs but to signify social distinctions. We have become completely absorbed by adverts, images and simulation. Baudrillard would call this simulation as an ecstasy of the real. In Baudrillards hyper-reality and simulacra terms, the storied images of Nike sports heroes are more real than the reality of Third World workers to millions of consumers. However this consuming condition is an obsession and the product of late capitalism in Western societies. Digitally created commercials Faking the real When we examine television advertising we once again find art and technology being used to create simulations that tell stories in an effort to evoke desired reactions from audiences. But in advertising we see a strange new cultural creation: the 20-second cinematic production full of dancing, singing and joke-telling characters playing physicians, housewives, and used car salesmen, with ultra-abbreviated plots and quick resolutions of conflict in which the characters overcome obstacles and fulfil their desires in record time with the help of the product. Unlike movies, which will evoke the wrath of the audience if the unfolding of the story is interrupted, in commercials there is virtually no story to interrupt. The entire commercial is a dynamic, graphic, field composed of images, music, theatrical performances, superimposed illustrations, narration, and other elements, which reinforce each other to achieve their effect. Commercials also include another kind of simulatio n in the form of digitally manipulated images that are used to portray another realm of fantasy in which the limits imposed by the physical world no longer seem to be in effect. As a result, they are full of talking dogs, giant sized children, products that zoom into space, dancing credit cards and scenes that suddenly become two-dimensional which spin out of existence, creating a virtual world that surpasses anything produced by Imax or Nintendo. Commercials take these elements visual fantasy, deceptive images of the products, and false claims and weave them into their various approaches. There are, perhaps, a handful of approaches that they rely on and put together in different ways, just as theme parks, video games, television and news fall into a few basic categories. The product, no longer able to offer satisfaction on its own ground (a potato chip is a chip is a chip), instead offers the consumer a chance to be part of a certain crowd or scene. They belong to a c ool product tribe, revelling in the image and sensibility that the product somehow mystically confers the fetishism of commodities. More and more people are being sold style, image, and celebrity, since there is no substance or material satisfaction to the product-in-itself. Concealed within the jump-cut flash of post-modern advertising is a simple code: consumption is a mode of transcendence, a way to take part in something larger than yourself, the Pepsi Generation. Today, ads are filled with a strange sort of rugged selfishness, misanthropy, and mean-spirit people (touch my Doritos and die.) A person is told sternly to buy as much as they can of the product but never to share with friends. Get your own, theyre told. Latest ads on TV have that narrative that goes on and on and takes the form of a mini soap or a series of short cinematic films. The product is like a movie star. The product has taken the stand of the character in the commercial. It has become another simulati on for audiences. Small Nokia phones that are given a character play a different role in each different Nokia commercial. Digital technology has given designers the ability to make real characters and models that we see in everyday TV. The big entities spend millions of pounds in one 60 second commercial. The commercial has the production company behind it; director, actors and the whole set that would normally be used in film production. Many television commercials thus give us another variation on Umberto Ecos absolute fakes; they are false promises that make everything seem better than it is. Like theme parks, they make mundane realities look like transcendent utopias. All cultures place people inside invented worlds, so that in itself, isnt what is new about all this. The human world is by nature full of fictionalization and metaphor and drenched in stories and metaphysical assumptions, much of it contrived by conscious and unconscious design to support the claims of those in power. But never before has a culture been scientifically invented in this way, using the tools of rationalization including marketing studies and computers to sell products and a way of life. These tools of rationality extract the essence of our own irrationality our fantasies, imbued with fears and desires and give them back to us in the form of their invented worlds. Real experiences and things have been replaced with simulacra copies without an original. Due to the power of mass media advertising, our relationship to the signifier has changed. Now it hides the absence of a signified: conceals the inability to deliver real satisfaction by cleverly simulating it. Part of our hyper-real lives is the fact that our simulations are more real than real.