Back to Mississippi

Paul M. Murray in 1966, along with 11 other members, went to Mississippi to make changes, whcih they definitely did. They all worked under the Local Head Start Program where they remodeled peoples homes, helped tutor and work with children, and worked to make to make the area a better place. This Head Start program focuses on working with and assisting children from low-income families and. This past summer, Paul Murray and most of his friends who came on the first trip all decided to travel back which they were very excited about. The video is very entertaining and really cool showing the changes they made. They remodeled one familys home and decided to visit them last summer and seeing how happy those people are now and how nice of a home they currently live in brought smiles to all their faces. It was funny how they talked about getting arrested during the protests and a bunch of other fun memories they shared.

Michael Walzer

Michael Walzer is a leading American philosopher and had been on a quest throughout many years of his life for a more just society and how exactly that can be achieved. The lecture I went to that Michael Walzer spoke at was known as "Beyond Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights in a Global Society." What I got out of this lecture was that global human rights are a limited set of rights aimed at protecting the people against things such as ethnic cleansing and mass murder. He talks about how the state should interevene, usually military if needed, if the people are suffering from things such as mass murder and even famine, Salzer explains.

Venus Boys

This movie was about drag kings who don't want to conform with society and want to express their female masculinity. The main thing in this movie that the drama kings say is that you must at all times be ready to identify yourself and you need to adjust to different stereotypes. Fighting, in many cases, is necessary to do so. This one lady Diane really stuck out for me in the movie. She was a crossdressing man and also a loving mother. She explains the fact that when she crossdresses as a man she gets more power, attention, and credability that she could have ever imagined, which goes hand in hand with Tough Guise. The problem with crossdressing as many of them explain in the movie is that you can often forget who you really are. So it is therefore important to have a strong personality and don't let who you dress as become who you are. One girl felt that she was losing her female innerself and therefore dressed up as half man and half woman to express herself.

Tough Guise

There were many things that I found to be interesting in this movie about the crisis in masculinity and how it is occurring in our world today. For example, when they show famous people from twenty years ago compared to today, the women are skinnier and the men are more muscular. There are people like Howard Stern who is considered a "bad-boy" or a "Rebel", when in reality he is nothing but flat-out sexist and treats women horribly. He has made them strip on episodes and the will criticize their body and make fun of them or even ask them personal questions about their lives. When the Columbine shooting was taped, there were girls running with their hands over their head. After Stern saw that he commented on how the boys should have taken advantage of that and had sex with them before they killed them.
Violence in our world has gotten worse because of the media. Video games and films make people, especially young boys who are just learning, think that violence is the way to handle everything. Sports such as wrestling show grown up violence and how increasingly aggresive it is getting. Boys think that being big, strong, and muscular gains respect. This is because it does in our world! The solution to this is that we must look at new ways of viewing masculinity and acknowledge vulnerability. For example, Mark McGuire who actually started crying during an interview when he was explaining how he was donating money to children sexually and physicially abused. Another example is in movies such as Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor when the actors show emotion and fear. WE must make that the norm. Men aren't the only people who can contribute to this change. Women have to show that they value beyond masculinity and we need courage to make that change.

Brothel

Something that I was impressed with in Brothel was the comradeship as was explained in the chapter of Sisterhood. Obviously a brothel, as anyone would expect, does have competition and animosity. The older prostitutes are hostile towards the younger ones, as the uglier members are hostile towards the prettier ones. Tanya (an older member) at one point warns a younger member of the weird noises of one of the customers just to warn her, even though she didn’t particularly like her. The author even feels at home at one point, which seems odd to anyone thinking of the idea of a bunch of prostitutes living together. In the Extended Family chapter, I think the camaraderie is shown even more, how the vendors, nail lady, bartender, and Bashful (the website man) get overprotective of the women. The bartender even admits to defending the women on multiple occasions. When the brothel got shut down everyone was saddened because that was their family and who could imagine being forced to separate from their family.

1984

In 1984, Winston has been subject to control under the party for all of his life. All he wants is freedom because he thinks he will be happier. A part in Book One that really struck me as ridiculous was when they talked about “Junior Spies” who were children of the Parsons family. These children were so crazy and ridiculous and were trying to catch people who they considered disloyal to the party. When Winston helps Mrs. Parsons the children basically attack him because they are suspicious of him. Their father later apologizes for their harassment but is very proud of his children’s spirit and devotion to the party. This just proves how in control of every single person’s life the Party was and because people were starting this at such a young age, it showed it was going to continue for many years to come. Another thing that I couldn’t believe was the telescreens that were inserted to watch the members of the party so that they were being watched under authority at all times. Instead of using technology to benefit the society and civilization, the Party is taking advantage of it to spy on people of their party and having complete control, giving them absolutely no independence. At one point Winston got yelled at for “not working hard enough”. The Ministry of Truth consisted of thousands of workers who corrected history so that they live in false versions of records that they themselves tainted. One man because of this was actually executed. This can relate to our world because we are so completely unaware of “coincidental” things that have happened in our history that have strongly affected society. Even today with the war in Iraq we are not being clued in completely.