Hey everyone,
I know only four or five people have even visited my blog site, but I've decided to relocate to wordpress.
I'd like to announce that I'm going pro. Not really, but what if?
You can now see my blogs at my wordpress site.
Oren out.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Don't destroy "man"hood," embrace it
I'm going to confess that most of this content was originally intended for the last blog, but I realize that I went on a tangent here that could be enough for its own post. In my last blog, which dealt with genderless language, I asserted that there were better ways of making change in gender violence than altering the language.
Granted, most feminists do understand that changing the way we speak would only be a small step in progress. Most of them realize that our culture, mass media and entertainment industry is creating most of the negative stereotypes. I agree with them in many areas of this debate. For instance, they are adamantly opposed to the pornography industry, because it is degrading to women. They are also against certain negative influences on men, which I agree with to some extent.
LGBTQ rights supporters and feminists alike are opponents to the stereotype of men (in this blog, I'm only talking about male stereotypes here, not anything to do with women, so calm down, ladies) being strong and aggressive (because it generates homophobic and sexist tendencies). This is where I begin to take an issue. While they see the aggressive tendencies of males attributed to societal issues, I see it as natural. That is, I believe men are inherently more aggressive, due to higher levels of testosterone. They believe that this aggressiveness is the root of most sexual assault and abuse. I think I agree with them here, but their solutions are substantially different from mine. Most of the LGBTQ/feminists I have met believe the way to correct this problem is to remove aggressiveness altogether. I strongly disagree. I believe this aggressiveness should be embraced, but channeled.
While they view figures like John Wayne, Rocky and Rambo are negative because they support the notion that a man must be strong, I see these characters as paragons for manhood. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a man who is courageous and strong. this may sound harsh or insensitive, but I don't care if some males are hurt because they can't live up to the stereotype of what is "manly" (as long as "manly" is defined by positive traits). Being "manly" in our society has a lot of merit. Physical aptitude needs to be praised, and it is good for boys and young mean to have ideals to live up to. Sure, not every male is as tough as Brett Favre or Bruce Wayne, but the qualities of these heroes are much more praiseworthy than those found elsewhere in society.
The problem with our society is much more complicated than these feminists are making it out to be. They think that removing the ideals of "true manhood" they will cure most sexism. In reality, all this will do is further confuse kids even more than they already are. I guess a lot of this stuff comes down to parenthood more than society, but I would hate to see a world that praises a bunch of soft men with no assertiveness.
Kids are already growing up in a world with many conflicting ideas. Regardless of what their parents are teaching them, they are involved in our cosmopolitan society where they, too, are granted access to all the Internet has to offer.
Through MTV young men learn to idolize rappers who glorify disrespecting women, drug trafficking, and gang violence. Actually, not just music videos but the reality shows are terrible too. If it's on MTV I'd assert that it's probably not a good influence on kids. A funny example is Michael Scott's "Date Mike" character in the Happy Hour episode of The Office. Of course this situation is mostly a made-up joke for the television program. However, it is sort of satirical for our society. Reality dating shows and crap like "Jersey Shore" do dominate our culture. Our youth are berated with both subtle and patent offensiveness. I think if you want to clean up relationship violence, you should probably start with the crappy content that our music, film and television industries are producing.
Give our boys better role models and they'll treat women better. We need men. I'm seeing less and less of it in our world, and it's sad. Like I said, a great proportion of these issues stem from parenting, but we as society need to think about what kind of environment we are creating for our young boys.
In conclusion, yes. Some men need to get their act together and respect women. Yes. We need to carefully consider what ideals we are encouraging. But no, we should not remove the "manly" stereotype. Instead, let's give our young boys good role models and ideals to live up to. There's a fantastic blog called the Art of Manliness that encourages men to return to the old ideal of "manliness." I have not read everything on this site, but I recommend most of it, if not all of it.
The world needs men.
Oren out.
Granted, most feminists do understand that changing the way we speak would only be a small step in progress. Most of them realize that our culture, mass media and entertainment industry is creating most of the negative stereotypes. I agree with them in many areas of this debate. For instance, they are adamantly opposed to the pornography industry, because it is degrading to women. They are also against certain negative influences on men, which I agree with to some extent.
LGBTQ rights supporters and feminists alike are opponents to the stereotype of men (in this blog, I'm only talking about male stereotypes here, not anything to do with women, so calm down, ladies) being strong and aggressive (because it generates homophobic and sexist tendencies). This is where I begin to take an issue. While they see the aggressive tendencies of males attributed to societal issues, I see it as natural. That is, I believe men are inherently more aggressive, due to higher levels of testosterone. They believe that this aggressiveness is the root of most sexual assault and abuse. I think I agree with them here, but their solutions are substantially different from mine. Most of the LGBTQ/feminists I have met believe the way to correct this problem is to remove aggressiveness altogether. I strongly disagree. I believe this aggressiveness should be embraced, but channeled.
While they view figures like John Wayne, Rocky and Rambo are negative because they support the notion that a man must be strong, I see these characters as paragons for manhood. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a man who is courageous and strong. this may sound harsh or insensitive, but I don't care if some males are hurt because they can't live up to the stereotype of what is "manly" (as long as "manly" is defined by positive traits). Being "manly" in our society has a lot of merit. Physical aptitude needs to be praised, and it is good for boys and young mean to have ideals to live up to. Sure, not every male is as tough as Brett Favre or Bruce Wayne, but the qualities of these heroes are much more praiseworthy than those found elsewhere in society.
The problem with our society is much more complicated than these feminists are making it out to be. They think that removing the ideals of "true manhood" they will cure most sexism. In reality, all this will do is further confuse kids even more than they already are. I guess a lot of this stuff comes down to parenthood more than society, but I would hate to see a world that praises a bunch of soft men with no assertiveness.
Kids are already growing up in a world with many conflicting ideas. Regardless of what their parents are teaching them, they are involved in our cosmopolitan society where they, too, are granted access to all the Internet has to offer.
Through MTV young men learn to idolize rappers who glorify disrespecting women, drug trafficking, and gang violence. Actually, not just music videos but the reality shows are terrible too. If it's on MTV I'd assert that it's probably not a good influence on kids. A funny example is Michael Scott's "Date Mike" character in the Happy Hour episode of The Office. Of course this situation is mostly a made-up joke for the television program. However, it is sort of satirical for our society. Reality dating shows and crap like "Jersey Shore" do dominate our culture. Our youth are berated with both subtle and patent offensiveness. I think if you want to clean up relationship violence, you should probably start with the crappy content that our music, film and television industries are producing.
Give our boys better role models and they'll treat women better. We need men. I'm seeing less and less of it in our world, and it's sad. Like I said, a great proportion of these issues stem from parenting, but we as society need to think about what kind of environment we are creating for our young boys.
In conclusion, yes. Some men need to get their act together and respect women. Yes. We need to carefully consider what ideals we are encouraging. But no, we should not remove the "manly" stereotype. Instead, let's give our young boys good role models and ideals to live up to. There's a fantastic blog called the Art of Manliness that encourages men to return to the old ideal of "manliness." I have not read everything on this site, but I recommend most of it, if not all of it.
The world needs men.
Oren out.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
My first opinion blog
So I guess I'm going to try out blogging as a means of expressing my opinion. Also, I think want to link a little more than I did on my first blog.
The UNC campus seems to always have some sort of controversy surrounding it, whether it be a religious, racial, socioeconomic, national, local issue or whatever else people find to be important. The three years I have spent on this campus have taught me that some people just want to debate. Our university has raised up students who question every sort of institution, practice, or policy. And if these students don't happen to agree with the way things are, you'll hear about it. I guarantee it. You'll be asked to sign a petition, join a Facebook group, "take a minute for the environment." In some extreme cases, you may even get to see a protest. And if you're really lucky, you'll see a crowd get teargassed. The point is: people take social justice pretty seriously around here. Now don't get me wrong, I think it's great that we have people wanting to change the world. It's just sometimes their overzealous behavior gets old and frankly, annoying.
Lately, due to a significantly large proportion of LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersexual, Queer, and I think there may be more letters I'm forgetting) and feminist students, the gender issue has taken center stage. More specifically, there has been a push for gender-inclusive language. Our school paper, the Daily Tar Heel, has published a number of letters to the editor this week involving this topic.
What happened was a group of journalism students and professors had signed a petition in favor of changing the DTH's style to conform to the university's gender-neutral policy. Then, they held a forum in which the issues of gendered language were discussed. Apparently the editor-in-chief of the DTH said he wasn't invited and didn't go. That's not what homegirl who organized the meeting said. Anyway, drama has ensued and this whole genderless language question has risen.
Before I start ranting I'd like to say I don't consider myself a sexist. I'm all about women getting equal treatment and equal pay and equal opportunity, but I find this language proposal a little disturbing.
The first issue I have is that the advocates for genderless language want to change "he" and "she" to "they." As a news editor I like grammar. I like the consistency of it, and I believe it is a tool that humans use to communicate effectively. Consistent grammar helps everyone understand each other easily. My girlfriend Jessica, who is a linguistics major, would say that I'm a "prescriptivist," which means I believe that words and grammar should be set. I have a respect for the language and view it as an art that should be revered. Others, including these people think that grammar should be allowed to evolve. Now here's my thing: I'll go out of my way to say "you all" instead of "you guys" and even "first-year student" instead of "freshmen." But this is absolutely ridiculous. You would think at a university with the reputation of UNC that there would be some sort of respect for the English language. I guess gender issues supersede that respect.
Also, "mankind" is apparently sexist. I don't know how saying mankind is interpreted to be degrading to any woman. Any person (see what I did there? person instead of man or woman) with a fifth grade education understands that mankind does not apply to gender and carries no derogatory connotation.
Like I said, I don't want to disrespect women, and I believe I do my best to support their equality in society. What I don't like however is over-sensitive feminists. They drive me insane with their irrelevant arguments. Check out this article published by the DTH in the fall of 2009: Slurs only reinforce gender labels. It was probably the most heinous and obnoxious article I've ever read in the DTH (and I've read some pretty ignorant columns). I highly doubt a woman heard all these slurs at a single football game; in fact, I know she lied because no student would have said "we got raped by them last year" at that game. It was against ECU and they certainly haven't "raped" us in the past few years. It's just blatant ignorance like this article that gets on my nerves. Apparently telling someone that they "suck" is offensive to women (because they are traditionally in that position?) Give me a break UNC. UNC sucks. Did that hurt all the women's feelings? Maybe not, but I probably did propagate some sort of underlying hidden message in society that women are inferior (sarcasm).
Also according to the claims of the gender-neutral advocates, by using gendered language I apparently advocate rape and other relationship/sexual violence on campus. Call me crazy, but even if the DTH starts using plural pronouns for singular antecedents, women will still be raped and taken advantage of.
Gender is necessary for distinction in many languages. For instance, Spanish requires giving objects gender. I suppose once the feminists spay and neuter the English language Spanish will come next. Though romance languages rely on gender much more than English, it is an important part of our language. It is necessary to understanding each other. I guess I just like having some sort of standard. It’s almost like the way I am weary of women dressing like men and cutting their hair short. It’s not that I have moral qualms against this. It’s just that it makes it more difficult for me to identify the gender they want to be. I guess gender-free advocates wouldn’t call this a problem. However, it is a problem. It’s a problem because people still care about their gender (and I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there will always be people who care about their gender), and no matter what the feminists or LGBTIQ rights activists say, I can hurt someone’s feelings by inaccurately identifying his or her (see? I said his or her, not just his) feelings. Some women would be offended to hear me say “sir.” I understand that advocates for gender-inclusive language would tell me to just remove words like “sir” and “ma’am from my vocabulary, but where I come from, it is proper etiquette to say “yes, ma’am “and “yes, sir.” I suppose there is no genderless alternative to these phrases short of omitting “sir” and “ma’am” altogether, which I suppose would detract from the respect that those phrases inherently have. Basically what I’m saying is that I already have a difficult enough time trying to figure out if certain people are men or women, and this whole gender-inclusive kick isn’t really going to help that.
In conclusion, I am in opposition to changing the gender language policy of the DTH. Not only does it disrespect the concept of language itself, but it also accomplishes very little in the scheme of things. In my next blog I’ll discuss some different issues of gender in society.
Oren Out (how's that for a sign off?)
The UNC campus seems to always have some sort of controversy surrounding it, whether it be a religious, racial, socioeconomic, national, local issue or whatever else people find to be important. The three years I have spent on this campus have taught me that some people just want to debate. Our university has raised up students who question every sort of institution, practice, or policy. And if these students don't happen to agree with the way things are, you'll hear about it. I guarantee it. You'll be asked to sign a petition, join a Facebook group, "take a minute for the environment." In some extreme cases, you may even get to see a protest. And if you're really lucky, you'll see a crowd get teargassed. The point is: people take social justice pretty seriously around here. Now don't get me wrong, I think it's great that we have people wanting to change the world. It's just sometimes their overzealous behavior gets old and frankly, annoying.
Lately, due to a significantly large proportion of LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersexual, Queer, and I think there may be more letters I'm forgetting) and feminist students, the gender issue has taken center stage. More specifically, there has been a push for gender-inclusive language. Our school paper, the Daily Tar Heel, has published a number of letters to the editor this week involving this topic.
What happened was a group of journalism students and professors had signed a petition in favor of changing the DTH's style to conform to the university's gender-neutral policy. Then, they held a forum in which the issues of gendered language were discussed. Apparently the editor-in-chief of the DTH said he wasn't invited and didn't go. That's not what homegirl who organized the meeting said. Anyway, drama has ensued and this whole genderless language question has risen.
Before I start ranting I'd like to say I don't consider myself a sexist. I'm all about women getting equal treatment and equal pay and equal opportunity, but I find this language proposal a little disturbing.
The first issue I have is that the advocates for genderless language want to change "he" and "she" to "they." As a news editor I like grammar. I like the consistency of it, and I believe it is a tool that humans use to communicate effectively. Consistent grammar helps everyone understand each other easily. My girlfriend Jessica, who is a linguistics major, would say that I'm a "prescriptivist," which means I believe that words and grammar should be set. I have a respect for the language and view it as an art that should be revered. Others, including these people think that grammar should be allowed to evolve. Now here's my thing: I'll go out of my way to say "you all" instead of "you guys" and even "first-year student" instead of "freshmen." But this is absolutely ridiculous. You would think at a university with the reputation of UNC that there would be some sort of respect for the English language. I guess gender issues supersede that respect.
Also, "mankind" is apparently sexist. I don't know how saying mankind is interpreted to be degrading to any woman. Any person (see what I did there? person instead of man or woman) with a fifth grade education understands that mankind does not apply to gender and carries no derogatory connotation.
Like I said, I don't want to disrespect women, and I believe I do my best to support their equality in society. What I don't like however is over-sensitive feminists. They drive me insane with their irrelevant arguments. Check out this article published by the DTH in the fall of 2009: Slurs only reinforce gender labels. It was probably the most heinous and obnoxious article I've ever read in the DTH (and I've read some pretty ignorant columns). I highly doubt a woman heard all these slurs at a single football game; in fact, I know she lied because no student would have said "we got raped by them last year" at that game. It was against ECU and they certainly haven't "raped" us in the past few years. It's just blatant ignorance like this article that gets on my nerves. Apparently telling someone that they "suck" is offensive to women (because they are traditionally in that position?) Give me a break UNC. UNC sucks. Did that hurt all the women's feelings? Maybe not, but I probably did propagate some sort of underlying hidden message in society that women are inferior (sarcasm).
Also according to the claims of the gender-neutral advocates, by using gendered language I apparently advocate rape and other relationship/sexual violence on campus. Call me crazy, but even if the DTH starts using plural pronouns for singular antecedents, women will still be raped and taken advantage of.
Gender is necessary for distinction in many languages. For instance, Spanish requires giving objects gender. I suppose once the feminists spay and neuter the English language Spanish will come next. Though romance languages rely on gender much more than English, it is an important part of our language. It is necessary to understanding each other. I guess I just like having some sort of standard. It’s almost like the way I am weary of women dressing like men and cutting their hair short. It’s not that I have moral qualms against this. It’s just that it makes it more difficult for me to identify the gender they want to be. I guess gender-free advocates wouldn’t call this a problem. However, it is a problem. It’s a problem because people still care about their gender (and I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there will always be people who care about their gender), and no matter what the feminists or LGBTIQ rights activists say, I can hurt someone’s feelings by inaccurately identifying his or her (see? I said his or her, not just his) feelings. Some women would be offended to hear me say “sir.” I understand that advocates for gender-inclusive language would tell me to just remove words like “sir” and “ma’am from my vocabulary, but where I come from, it is proper etiquette to say “yes, ma’am “and “yes, sir.” I suppose there is no genderless alternative to these phrases short of omitting “sir” and “ma’am” altogether, which I suppose would detract from the respect that those phrases inherently have. Basically what I’m saying is that I already have a difficult enough time trying to figure out if certain people are men or women, and this whole gender-inclusive kick isn’t really going to help that.
In conclusion, I am in opposition to changing the gender language policy of the DTH. Not only does it disrespect the concept of language itself, but it also accomplishes very little in the scheme of things. In my next blog I’ll discuss some different issues of gender in society.
Oren Out (how's that for a sign off?)
Blogging?
You know, I guess it would be a good idea to get involved with this whole blogging thing.
God Bless,
I want to stay informed and keep up with what's going on in the world, particularly the "blogosphere." All of my journalism classes have gotten me excited about the new technology we have today. I'm excited about what this technology is allowing us to do.
I remember at a scholarship interview during my senior year of high school I was asked, "What is your generation's greatest strength?" After thinking for a few seconds I answered, "our ability to connect," and then I proceeded to explain. Yeah, most of what I said was a bullcrap answer that I was just making up on the spot because naturally I thought of what I personally spent time doing, which was Internet browsing, text messaging, and using myspace (back when it wasn't the graveyard of social networking). I don't think I responded as eloquently as I could have, and there probably wasn't enough thought put into my response. Needless to say, I didn't get the scholarship. However, I have since thought about that answer, and realized that it surprisingly contained a lot of truth. In a sense, it is my generation's greatest strength.
My generation has been inundated with SMS, blogs (although I'm a little late), iPods, and social networking since late middle school and early high school. We've grown up relying on Google for information, iTunes for music (after we found out that the government was actually serious about their online piracy laws), YouTube for entertainment, and Lord help us, Wikipedia for everything else. We get the information we want when we want it.
I guess I could ramble about this stuff all day, but my point is that where some see my generation as technological addicts, I see us as being blessed with opportunity. An opportunity to connect.
This excites me because I love learning. The Internet lets me get the facts when I want them. I don't have to thumb through an encyclopedia or scan several books to learn what I want. Besides connecting to resources and books, the internet lets me connect to people, which incidentally is another passion of mine. It's pretty obvious that people are making connections on the internet. It started out with chat rooms, and it has since evolved into AIM, Google Talk, Facebook, and for those interested in 32 levels of compatibility, e-harmony. I see the great potential for connection and I realize that we need to capitalize on this potential.
Alright I'm going to stop writing because I think I'm just rambling or writing like I'm writing a paper for class. I think I've restated obvious facts that anyone who stumbles on this blog would already know. I'm probably not really using this medium of blogging to its potential, but I guess that's something I should figure out. I will figure it out. Instead of writing a paper I should write to the people, at least on stuff like this. Unless I'm writing reflectively, in which case I don't need to state facts.
OK, that's enough for this bloggy blog. I'm hungry.
I'll need a trademark sign-off. I guess for now this will have to do:
God Bless,
Josh
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