My Sister Amanda

My sister-in-law Amanda Cross passed away in the wee hours of last Wednesday, March 28th after a life long battle with cystic fibrosis. I wanted to talk about Amanda because of the challenges she faced in life as a woman living with a terminal illness that not many people know much about. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease in my sister's case mainly affected her lungs and sinus causing build ups of mucus to make it hard for her to breathe. There is no cure for cystic fibrosis yet and the is very little said about it in the general media. It is interesting to me that most Americans do not know what cystic fibrosis is being that, at least for the time being, the majority of the population is Caucasian. Cystic fibrosis effects one in twenty-five people of European descent (according to http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/Cystic-Fibrosis.htm), but the fact that most patients with cystic fibrosis do not make it out of infancy and rarely childhood might make up for the lack of knowledge on the subject. The average lifespan for someone living with cystic fibrosis is now thirty-seven years old a huge increase even from 1990s when my sister was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000107.htm).
I found this article in the New York Times today (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-cystic-fibrosis-ess.html) which was a hard pill to swallow, my father-in-law had told me about a drug that was close to hitting the open market that would not cure Amanda but would cause her cystic fibrosis to not worsen anymore than her current state, if she could just pull through her most recent hospital stint. Hospitals are a place families of cystic fibrosis sufferers know well, since sinus infections and influenza can cause most cystic fibrosis patients into the hospital for breathing treatments and IVs to assist their bodies in battling common illnesses.
Although technological advancements that have brought along modern medicine to where it is today regardless most cystic fibrosis sufferers typically have multiple sinus surgeries and on most occasions need a lung transplant sometime in their life to stay alive. My sister Amanda fought her disease bravely for twenty-two years and lived a very full life but in the end her disease bested her body but I know in my heart of hearts her spirit lives on.

"Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return; they will enter Zion with a happy shout!
Unending joy will crown them, happiness and joy will overwhelm them; grief and suffering will disappear" (Isaiah 51:11 NET)

If you'd like to know more information or donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation here is a link to their website: http://www.cff.org/

Kony 2012

If you are a frequenter of mass media websites like YouTube then you might know who Joesph Kony is. Recently the non-profit organization Invisible Children posted a video on YouTube that has brought them both positive and negative feedback. Joesph Kony is the leader of a terrorist group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA henceforth) and has been abducting children in northern Uganda, southern Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and enslaving the girls as sex slaves and the boys as child soldiers. The name of Kony's terrorist organization does not reflect the actual beliefs of the group because Kony has openly stated that he has no purpose other than to be violent. When I say violent I mean crimes against humanity that have placed him at the top of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) number one most wanted list. Kony does not just abduct the children and put guns in their hands, he forces them to kill their parents and physically maim people by cutting off their lips, nose, and other gruesome acts of violence. Until recently the United States government has not been involved because what has been taking place for almost twenty-five years in Uganda, Sudan, and Congo does not effect US finances or security then it is not a concern of our nation. Invisible Children created enough political pressure and backing to prompt President Obama to send in 100 US troops to train the Ugandan people in military tactics in order to find and arrest Kony so that he could be tried in international court and found guilty of his crimes against humanity and be placed in prison. Sadly in the almost twenty-five years this is all that has been done to help the people of Uganda and these other African nations affected by Kony's reign of terror. Until the Invisible Children posted their YouTube video very few people had any knowledge of what Kony has been doing for almost twenty-five years, much like many people did not know about seven years of attempted genocide in the Sudan during the war in Darfur. Gatekeeping has kept out news that people would expect to not be allowed to take place in the world regardless of national finance or security as an American I find it appalling that crimes against humanity have been known about by our government and have been allowed to take place and displays how unimportant minorities, especially female minorities since the girls were sex slaves (which disgusts me) even within a so-called, 'global society.' Most of the negative coverage comes from backlash created against the Invisible Children organization due to the fact that their founder makes $90,000 annually when the average is $60,000, but have no problem with the founder of the Susan G. Komen foundation, Nancy G. Brinker, making $500,000 annually, until the Blogosphere pointed it out in defense of Jason Russell and has recently had people calling for Brinker's resignation. People are also outraged that 30% of every dollar goes to funding aid to the Ugandan, Sudanese, and the Congolese (again the Komen foundation 29% of every dollar goes to breast cancer research). Most people are ignorant to the what it takes to run a non-profit organization and think because the Red Cross (91% of every dollar) and Salvation Army (82%). Yes, every non-profit organization should strive to be like the Red Cross and Salvation Army, but in order to create amazing videos like "Kony 2012," the Invisible Children YouTube video, you have to put money towards paying people and buying equipment to create such videos. Money is not even what the Invisible Children is after otherwise they would not come on public and cable news stations stating, "we do not need anymore money, we need people to keep talking, to call or write your senators, and congressmen/women and ask them where they stand on what they're doing to help capture, arrest, try, and imprison Joesph Kony? The purpose of the video is to make Kony the most infamous man of 2012 to maintain pressure on world leaders to bring him to justice.

Linsanity

In case you do not follow what has been going on in the world of sports I will do my best to inform you briefly on the recent sports' culture phenomenon that is Jeremy Lin. Jeremy Lin is the first American-born National Basketball Association (NBA henceforth) player of Chinese or Taiwanese decent (he's Taiwanese) to play in the NBA. Jeremy has been catching headlines from coast to coast in the U.S. as well as, the world. Lin is a global phenomenon because of his Asian decent, drawing crowds from the Asian markets that were losing interest with a lack of presence in the NBA with the retirement of Yao Ming. Jeremy Lin is the point guard for the New York Knickerbockers (The Knicks, henceforth). The Knicks had acquired talented All-Star caliber players Amar'e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, and Tyson Chandler in the last few NBA seasons. With such talent New York, a large market for all facets of the basketball industry, was looking to be relevant once again in the quest for a NBA Championship. The problem was they did not have a solid starting point guard to dictate each game in the way the Knicks operate offensively and defensively under Coach Mike D'Antoni. Jeremy Lin, who came out of Harvard University undrafted by any of the 30 NBA teams was given the chance to play in a game against the New Jersey Nets due to the large amount of injuries to the team in this shortened 66-game regular season (normally 81-game regular season). Jeremy took full advantage by coming off the bench to lead the Knicks to victory. The phenomenon aspect comes in the fact that he continued to lead and sometime be the reason the team achieved victory until after seven straight wins mostly without the recent All-Star free-agent acquisitions. Finally, Jeremy Lin could not guide the Knicks to victory over the New Orleans Hornets and Antony Federico shocked the online sports world with the headline on ESPN's website following the Knicks defeat, "Chink in the Armor."
As an Asian-American, I initially understood the uproar for Federico's head. His obvious and blatant disregard to be socially and politically correct. After listening to Federico's side of the story, and the history of his 20-plus-year editorial career where he has on 100-plus occasions used the same phrase in reference to sports phenomenons once they finally shown some form of weakness.
Using the phrase in its intended meaning, a vulnerable point in a suit of armor. Granted, I can still understand the other side of the argument in that he was being socially irresponsible by not identifying the racial slur. ESPN promptly issued a statement on their website apologizing for the incident, and stated that the editor has been fired and a ESPN commentator that had stated the same phrase has been suspended for two months. Another aspect of understanding Federico is that he is a practicing Christian and apologized to Lin for the misunderstanding and complimented him on being open about his own Christian faith and recent success in the NBA.
Lin's comments about the situation I found interesting in that, he instantly forgave Federico and was sorry that Federico lost his job over a seemly trivial misinterpretation of a choice of phrasing. After talking about newspaper in class and readings recently discussing the newspaper industry for women and minorities, the racism and sexism they continually face with white-male gatekeepers from the beginning of the industry. By the same token, it is both nice to see action taking place in defense of minorities such as Asian-Americans like Jeremy Lin, but it does seem extreme to fire someone who has been working for your company for over 20 years. Federico did not have prior inappropriate instances either which, does not seem fair. I find it very hard to not to judge ESPN's justification for maintaining political correctness, when maintaining the family image is most likely the company's top priority for their public relations. Opposed to actually caring about the Asian-American culture.

Whitney Houston Queen of Pop

I am a frequenter of YouTube.com and noticed a interesting trend in the popular music scene. Two weeks ago was what most men (and some women) consider the most coveted day of the year, the Super Bowl. Between the actual game and the much anticipated "Super Bowl commercials," there is the Half-time Show. This year was Madonna which leading up to was being celebrated as the Queen of Pop Music. Everything was looking good for the 53-year old entertainer until Whitney Houston's sudden death. The death of Whitney Houston recreated her relavance in the world of popular music once again. Instead of only hearing of Whitney in the tabloid magazines as cracked up with, or smacked up by Bobby Brown. The world saw Whitney Houston as the could have been tragedy of stardom. For once the Tabloid magazines and media outlets like TMZ were not focused on the negative aspects of her life, rather the amazing ability gift of vocal range she displayed singing timeless songs like, "I will always love you" from the film "Bodyguard."
Sadly, this time of reminence of Houston's great talent did not last as I personally discovered doing our Magazine Article assignment. Most stories of Whitney Houston did not display her as this week's queen of popular music, and an incredible talent, instead there were stories of how the hotel Houston was found dead in will not be open to the public "for the foreseeable future." It was hard to find out how badly women have been treated in journalism, not being able to work in the newspaper industry with white males as journalism gatekeepers. These men would not allow most women to become accredited as journalists. In 1943, during World War II men were off at war and women had to keep the United States running. Of course, when the men returned, they went back to work and the majority of the women went back into the home.
While participating in the assignment it was obvious to see how women are negatively protrayed and sometimes by the few women journalists in the industry because mostly men are gatekeeping the stories that are published.

Parential Influence on Gendered Sex Roles

In Susan D. Witt's article, "Parential influences on children's socializations to sex roles" really had me examine my own parenting style. Being that I have a son who will be three years old in April, I really wanted to pay close attention to how my wife and I treat him, since the article talks about how parents teach their children because you are a boy, you have to be this certain way, typically, tough. In our house, when my son falls down or hits his head playing under the table, which seem to be a part of daily three year old activities, we tell him to "dust it." Upon hearing "dust it" he repeats the phrase and physcially dusts off his hands as if they were dirty. When it is a serious injury and he is immediately crying, or it is just obvious he is really in pain, there is a different parential protocol to console him, as it should be. It is a very cute idea that we came up with because we did not want to baby him.
Being that my wife and I recently had another child, who is a seven month old baby girl, we discussed how we would treat her. Obviously, she is a girl and girls are treated differently in society, especially American society. Girls tend to be "delicate" not because they are infantle but, because she is a girl. We decided we would treat her the same as we treat our son in an effort to stray away from stereotypical gendered sex roles of boys being tough and girls being fragile. It is hard to image what it was like to grow up as a female in the 1950s, and to have those sex roles gendered to way more of an extreme than in today's society. As a father to my daughter, it is also a very hard truth to swallow that we live in a society were women are going to be getting paid 30% less than males with the same creditials, doing the same job, just because they are females. The fact of the matter is without someone taking a stand against this blatant sexual discrimination my daughter will be in the same situation as women coming out of college today, and that is just not right.

The Female Gamer Stereotype (blog 1)

I recently watched a video on YouTube called "The Truth About Girl Gamers" (here is the link: http://youtu.be/6IH_BUIjPaw). Ms. Hikroka is a female gamer commenting on the reason there are not as many females video-gamers. A primary reason there are not as many female gamers and males is because females are not marketed to by the video game companies to the same degree and boys and young men. She specifically states when this occurred with the release of Pac-Man in 1980. Although Pac-Man is a male in title the game was not marketed for just for male players. Pac-Man is actually shaped specifically after a pizza and all of the enemies are globs of ice cream, as well as, bonus points marked as fruits. Mr. Iwatani, the game's designer initially was thought of as a
progressive thinker for asking women at cafe's what they enjoyed talking about which happened to be food. All of that changed upon the release of Ms. Pac-Man the following year forever placing women back into their subservient role in the video game world. By releasing Ms. Pac-Man the video game producers were telling females that this is the way they were supposed to look and these were the types of games they should only like. Ms. Pac-Man is overly-sexualized in appearance seen in her make-up, red high heel shoes, and subservient body positioning of Ms. Pac-Man displayed on the arcade style game system. This has lead to the idea that female gamers will only play games that have bright colors like in Barbie video games. Games intended for females also tend to have to do with tending to stereotypical nurturing qualities creating current games like "Kinectimals" where the player selects an animal to take care. Other female stereotypes intended for female gamers include games that include other subservient acts like cooking or other kitchen related duties seen in Fruit Ninja available on Apple products like iPhones. Fitness games involved with motion gaming, as well as, dancing games and Disney sing-a-longs telling women to either that they fall in line with what the boys and young men like or, play overly stereotypical feminine games relating back to stereotypical roles of servitude and/or objectify the female sex. Ms. Hikroka is asking that there be more variety for a growing market that is female gamers. She states that, "if there was a more games marketed to a general audience there would not be this idea that video games are only for a male audience." There have been a few games to break the mold, but they are few and far between and there are many more games that are geared toward the a male audience when the amount of players are almost equally spread. There is hope for the video game market to change for the better, since the electronic video game market is relatively young having only become mainstream in the late 1970s to early 1980s and hopefully more people speak up for female gamers and make their voices heard to help the trend along.

My Other-Gendered Lifestyle (blog 2)

My day-to-day life experience is different from what is social norm. During the day I am at home taking care of my two lovely children while my wife is at work. For the most part my current lifestyle is only socially unacceptable in certain circles. For example, in class we discussed sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists believe that gender roles are entirely biologically preordained. The stereotype is that women are more nurturing than men therefore by having my wife work while I stay at home as a homemaker and caregiver to our children is biologically incorrect. Although this is something that my wife and I discussed, and ultimately decided on as a temporary lifestyle while I'm finishing my undergraduate degree, to my grandmother and wife's parents what we are doing is biologically wrong. Our families have very conservative social values that have been passed down from generation to generation. Whereas, my wife and have becomes adults in a society that may not be perfect when it comes to social equality, but has vastly improved from the 1940s and 1970s when my grandmother and wife's parents were in adolescence being that, the 1920s was when womens' rights movement began, and civil rights movements began in the 1960s. I have intimate knowledge of my family's childhoods, but to think why this is true in terms of gender role theories explains their reaction.
Someone who practices a belief in social learning theory would argue that during our families' childhoods that they learned their current social values from their parents who were also very conservative. Unlike my father-in-law, who was not a homemaker and caregiver for my wife or her two sisters in the stereotypical sense a woman is supposed to be, he provided monetarily the way the stereotypical gender role for a man is supposed to. He did not change diapers, he did not watch his daughters as infants and toddlers without his wife present because those are the social gender roles of a woman. My father-in-law's social values dictate the idea that female gender roles were and are beneath him socially, and cognitive developmental theory would back his belief. My grandmother's life is very similar to my father-in-law's being that they are a little more than 15 years older than he is. She grew up in a home with a mother that was a homemaker and caregiver for my grandmother and siblings and had a father that worked to "put food on the table" so to speak.

I find it strange that my mother-in-law's social values in gender roles are extremely strong being that she was born in the 1970s, more so than my grandmother and father-in-law's who were born in the 1940s and 50s. Until I think in terms of social learning theory and reflect on the fact that my mother-in-law grew up in a Mormon household. The Mormon religion values men over women, and truly treats women as purely vessels for childbearing to the point that in heaven the women are forever pregnant.

These facts about my grandmother's and in-laws' social gender values fall in line with gender schema theory in their view of our current lifestyle, being that the social gender roles of cognitive developmental and social learning theories respectively. This of course does not make my family less respectable members of society, but proves that is it hard to break from values learned in childhood as seen in the gender role theories of cognitive developmental, social learning, and gender schema theories.