Rape V. Murder, Which is Worse?

Rape. A commonly used word in today’s social circles.  It is a word full of hate and negative energy. It is full of different connotations to different people.  All over the world today rape is frequently discussed as being the victim’s fault, as if the victim “asked for it” by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or by dressing provocatively. Typically, when people think of rape, their minds run wild, yet have one common belief: rape only happens to women, which is inherently false. Men are victims of rape, too.

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The tale of a woman who began getting raped at the age of sixteen, has gone viral on social media as a case that is vastly popular and gaining national attention. This tale is of Cyntoia Brown, a girl who escaped further victimization through sex trafficking by killing one of her pimp’s clients. She believed that by killing this man, she would be able to escape sex trafficking, and that she would be free from further harm.  However, she could not be more wrong, Brown was tried as an adult for killing the client, and was sentenced to life in prison for literally fighting for her freedom.  This leads to the question of Rape V. Murder, Which is Worse?

On the internet, a hashtag of #freecyntoiabrown has been a commonly used tag amongst several notable celebrities and the general public. Kim Kardashian has now hired her personal lawyers to help defend Brown in a trial. Kardashian is not alone in her support of Brown.  Other big name celebrities, such as Rihanna and LeBron James, have also reached out.  Women’s rights groups are outraged.

Brown is not the only woman to have recently sparked debates about rape. Other women, including a number of celebrities, have recently come forward, courageously, naming people who have sexually harassed them, including Hollywood actors and producers, senators, congressmen, and even the President of the United States. This outcry against violence towards women is clearly becoming a movement. Women are empowered and gaining the confidence to voice their concerns and problems. People are using their powerful voices as this issue is rapidly gaining attention in society, following the Deprivation Theory, which entails a strong social movement.

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The way in which the accused rapists are dealt with, in the court of public opinion, is sometimes sad, as often they are not even actually charged, although their reputation is permanently tarnished.  Still, many of the accused are aware of the deviance of their actions and have used intimidation tactics and social or political power to  keep their victims quiet.  If one applies Durkheim’s Deviance Theory, he or she would see that the flaw in our so called “social fabric,” and primarily with the rapists, needs to be repaired through rehabilitation. These accused rapists are obviously not beneficial members of society, as they can not stay within the unspoken rules of social norms. In order for these people to be able to live peacefully in society, substantial rehabilitative measures would be essential in order to transform them back into productive, non-harmful citizens.

Highways: The Great Divider

    Highways and the Interstate system are a staple of America. Started in 1950 under the Eisenhower administration, the Interstate was meant to connect America and give our military a easier time transporting itself around the nation. However the planning of where these roads should go was and still is controversial. While we today almost couldn’t imagine driving without the convenience of the Interstate, these road systems have lead to the division of neighborhoods and cities across the U.S. More insidious than that, many of these roads divided areas and residents based on race and income. The highway, a symbol of mobility, became to many, a impassable divide. Many publications have looked into the effects of highway and interstate planning but the Washington Post found that across the nation cities and areas had been racially divided by these roadways along with other planned areas.  

In this diagram,  is Rock Creek Park, which also houses a parkway on which D.C. residents get to work. On the left of the parkway is a predominantly White neighborhood and on the right, mashed together are Black, Asian and Hispanic neighborhoods. The park and parkway itself were created by the government and as the Washington Post says “became over the years a de facto buffer between white and non-white communities.”

NPR also reported on this issue of Highways and roadways. They reported that even the 2016 U.S. Transportation secretary had dealt with being isolated by two interstates as a child. It goes on to point out that many planners of the highway and interstate system understood the divide they were creating and were not deterred by it. Robert Moses, a planner in New York City in the 1960s, stated, “our categorical imperative is action to clear the slums and we can’t let minorities dictate that this century-old chore will be put off another generation or finally abandoned.”. He backed up his words with the Sheridan Expressway. He not only displaced residents with the construction but also isolated Hunts Point from the rest of south Bronx.

Even the government today acknowledges its past mistakes with the highway system. Not only are the highways and roads bad for the environment but also social environments, such as cities. The Federal Highway Administration points out that President Nixon signed into law, NEPA, or the National Environmental Policy act of 1969. In doing so it created rules stating that the government had to do studies to see how the highways would affect, social, economic and environmental factors. While this doesn’t solve the past wrongs it creates at least more barriers in stopping past mistakes being repeated.

For myself the Highways are essential. On road trips with my father I saw the old “highways” of his days and couldn’t imagine going anywhere in the U.S. like that. However being a middle class white kid, I never saw how the highways separated people. To myself highways were always just tools for me to get around. I find myself most comparing the highway and the problems it created to environmental sociology, more specifically the idea that they were created as services for people, but ended up discriminating the population it was meant to help. Where planners consciously divided up the population as they, well off white men, saw fit. There is hope now that as we recognize the problems and activists continue to speak up, old highways will be torn down and built again in a manner that truly connects people. With a nation whose infrastructure is crumbling and deteriorating, we are presented with a rare opportunity to completely overhaul our highway system and make it into the thing that reconnects the people it originally displaced and bring back together our fractured cities and neighborhoods.  

Make the Dollar Equal

Discrimination and oppression of women is present all over the world. Women play a very important role in society and the empowerment we are trying to produce to is help achieve equality between men and women by reducing the gender wage gap and stopping harassment of women.

This picture from, What The Gender Pay Gap Looks Like By Industry, helps paint a better picture for the gender inequalities present in the world today.

Recently there have been many successful male actors, comedians, public figures being accused of sexual assault. While this is more of a recently addressed and public issue, the gender wage gap has been an ongoing popular topic and is still a very present issue. Female athletes are some of the people standing up for equal pay. The United States Women’s National Soccer Team is one of the most successful teams in the world, they have won three World Cups, four Olympic gold medals, seven Gold medals and ten Algarve Cup medals. They are one of the most decorated teams in the world. Unfortunately they do not get the pay they deserve. According to, Time.com, each club team part of the NWSL, National Women’s Soccer League, has a salary cap of $265,000, while men make well over 3 million. The gap is incredible, a statistic on PBS.org states that players on the Women's National Soccer Team make $15,000 for making the World Cup roster, on the other hand, men make $76,000 for making the roster. Women get paid significantly less and are not as well advertised compared to men. Gender typing is a sociology term described as women having much less pay and a lower status in the working place; while men typically have higher paying jobs and have more professional positions. Women's sporting events are usually not put on the popular channels or sometimes are not shown on TV, most times for NWSL they are streamed on YouTube or an app. Women are not even given the chance to get as much attention as the men do in athletics.

This poster comes from the Australian Human Rights Commission and it shows that this issue is not only happening in America, but gender inequalities is very present Australia as well.

In the last couple of months lots of women have came forward and said they have been taken advantage of unwilling and been exposed by powerful men in the entertainment industry. In a recent article from, The Sun, around sixteen celebrities say they have been victimized by Harvey Weinstein, an American film producer. Men believe they can take advance of women because they think women are less powerful and can easily be controlled. Values are definitely not being followed here by these men who say that their importance sources of value are family, religion, politics. They are disrespecting women by harassing them, they are embarrassing their family and fans are not setting a good example for younger generations. Unfortunately, these terrible habits and assaults that these powerful men are doing may becoming the norm for other powerful people and may think it's okay to take advantage of women; or that younger boys and girls may think it's okay to have relationships like these. A norm is a typical or expected pattern of behavior. We do not want our future generations growing up thinking this is okay. A recent hashtag, #MeToo has over 12 million uses on Facebook and is blowing up the social media world. Those who are or had been sexually harassed or assaulted use the #MeToo to help spread awareness and knowledge to this horrible topic and on-going theme in society. Women empowerment is an important topic that needs to be talked about more and educated in our community, state, country and the world. Awareness needs be spread for women's equality by not being passive, but by being assertive and doing the right thing to help make equality the new norm.

Addiction as a Social Process

The use of e-cigarettes has skyrocketed over the past decade, global sales reached USD $7.1 Billion in 2016, and are expected to grow considerably in coming years. The rising popularity of electronic cigarettes has created an intense debate within public health and and tobacco control, and there are two clear opposing arguments. The most prevalent view is that e-cigarettes pose a threat to health by maintaining the addiction of tobacco addicted users and their potential to weaken the denormalization of tobacco usage. Critics of electronic cigarettes often bring up their appeal to children due to their discrete nature and easy access. On the other hand, e-cigarettes have been known to reduce tobacco harm by assisting smokers to quit. From this perspective, it can be seen that the use of e-cigarettes is a safer way to consume nicotine, appealing to smokers who have not been able to quit using other methods. Research supports how e-cigarettes can be useful as a smoking cessation aid. Users have reported that the use of electronic cigarettes has assisted them to quit smoking, consequently improving their well-being.

While there is an abundance of literature on the health effects of vaping, it is important to explore the use of electronic cigarettes through theories of practice. If we look at vaping as a social practice that interacts with other social practices, it can be revealed why e-cigarette use has translated itself in the patterns of everyday life. In a recent article, Blue et al. contend that theories of practice give us an effective model for responding to public health issues such as smoking. They argue there are two superior approaches to health-related risk factors, an individualistic focus on behavior, and a structural focus on social determinants that have not been able to successfully curb patterns of consumption. Many health campaigns focus on make assumptions about habits and choice by putting blame on individuals, and this method has been widely critiqued as ineffective. ‘Social determinants of health’, in response to the drawbacks of targeting individuals, approach this issue by emphasizing the role of wider social structures. Though Blue et al. points out that a structural approach still involves targeting the individual. Rather, they suggest that theories of practice are more apt to alter the public health field by directing attention to social practices in place of individual behaviors.

Blue et al. supplies an effective and brief case study of smoking as a social practice that illustrates what happens when we view ‘the smoker’ as a target of intervention. They focus on the life course and historical development of smoking and how it is tied to other social practices such as consuming alcohol. Blue et al. points out that practices such as smoking often continue due to their ability to ‘bundle’ with other practices, therefore the fate of one practice is prone to affect the fate of other practices. Analyzing smoking as a social process is particularly interesting because of its persistence despite regulatory intervention and health warnings. Following this discourse, it appears individuals have a difficult time quitting because the addictive properties of nicotine have created both psychological and physiological dependencies.

The relation between smoking and vaping as practices that co-exist is very complex. For many smokers, vaping has pushed smoking out of their lives. This reality demonstrates competition between two methods of consuming nicotine, where one has been forced out by society and led to the growth of the other. The use of e-cigarettes also changes the symbolism of smoking and the experience of nicotine addiction. Analyzing nicotine addiction as a social practice gives insights on how health behaviors are experienced in daily life. A survey of Australian vapers suggests vaping takes on positive meanings such as health and freedom and creates a different experience of control and choice. Practicing adaptability and responsiveness to change when dealing with smoking and vaping is particularly important in order to magnify desired outcomes.

Transgenders...Is It A Disadvantage to Compete?

This photo represents the confusion about transgenders and where they belong regarding athletics.

How Transgenders are Treated For Athletic Competition at All Levels

Where should transgender athletes be placed for sport competitions? Do they fall into their birth gender category or with the gender they now identify with? The New York Times article states in the youth leagues, there was absolutely zero talk of what to do with kids who took estrogen and testosterone shots or those who had a sex change surgery. The rule was if you were a boy, you played on boy teams and if you were a girl, you played on girl teams. There were no categories for transgender athletes or one’s in the process of transitioning. The article covers the issue of not knowing what to do with transgenders. A group of Texas school superintendents took a vote on what to do with transgender student-athletes and they chose to look at the students birth certificates. Whatever your birth certificate said, was what sports team you played on. Whereas, California schools gave students the opportunity to decide what team they played on and Indiana schools allowed students who looked a certain way to play on that sexes sports team.

A common concern arose with these decisions and that was, “Won’t girls who are not transgender be at a disadvantage with transgenders on their team or opposing team?”.  Boys who transition to girls are thought to be at a higher advantage because of their testosterone levels. In early stages of the transformation process not all patients take hormonal shots, which is why girls would be at a disadvantage playing with transgenders who were boys first, according to competitors, coaches, and fans. Excelle Sports wrote an article that focuses on a specific transgender woman who was allowed to participate on a womens volleyball team. The people of Hawaii were not pleased with the decision for transgenders to play on regular sports teams as the competition would be “unfair.” Transgender females are disliked in sports competitions because they are seen to possess different skills than biological women. Transgender women have more testosterone because they were originally men. Transgender women ingest testosterone which enlarges muscle mass and strength, hence destroying the false idea that women were at a disadvantage competing with transgenders.

This is a photo of Chris Mosier, the first transgender athlete to compete for the United States.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2003 allowed transgender athletes to participate in the Olympics only if they had hormonal injections two years before the competition started. In order to be completely cleared to play, transgenders also had to have genitalia surgery and to change all legal documents to their new gender. After studies showed that transgender women do not have a higher advantage in competition, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) changed their rules for participation. Transgenders looking to compete did not need genitalia surgery and sex reassignment surgery, as it has nothing to do with how one performs. Most transgender athletes who have the opportunity to participate in the olympics do not do so because they afraid of the hate and the possibility of being exposed that they are transgender.

The Washington Post wrote an article about transgender athletes in the Olympics and how transgender men had no restrictions for competition because they were seen as never being able to compete equally to biological men, since they were originally born women. Cisgender women who competed in the Olympics spoke out about how they found it unfair to compete side by side with a transgender because the transgender women still have bone structure and characteristics of men. Studies showed that transgender women are actually the ones with the disadvantage as estrogen shots suppress the testosterone. A cause of the supressants decrease muscle mass, making it harder to strengthen the muscles. Speed and strength are also lost due to the testosterone suppressants transgender women have to take.

The Washington post article points out that being transgender does not mean you are the only one with a disadvantage. In all sport competitions, cisgender or transgender, every sport has disadvantages: short, tall, skinny, fat, slow, fast, etc. Being transgender does not indicate you are less likely to succeed. It simply is an obstacle one must overcome the same as any person in life, it is a small set back that will be conquered with the right mentality.

This Title is Boring but Environmental Sociology is Not

Environmental sociology is when sociologists think about the biophysical world and how it performs “services” for humans. There are three main parts of this topic. First, the biophysical world provides necessary things for life. This means sustenance based things. There are some issues arounds this involving transportation, conservation, and extraction. The second service is that the world is a repository for waste. The issue that comes from this is pollution. The final service is that the earth is our home. Something to think about in this context is how urban spaces are designed, deforestation, and climate change. An acronym used by some sociologists is POET (Population, (Social) Organization, Environment, Technology). Closely tied in with these subjects is environmental justice. Environmental justice is the concept that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection by environmental health laws and regulations. One theory about why this doesn’t happen is called the “treadmill production thesis.” This thesis starts with capital expansion. This required energy and expansion of the economy, and this creates wealth and negative byproducts. The wealth and negative byproducts are unevenly distributed between the classes. There are also a small number of plants creating a huge proportion of waste. Another theory is that the inequalities we see surrounding class and the environment are discrimination based. This is because of the stark racial divides in environmental policy.

There are certain things that are heavily affecting the environment today. The increasing size of concentrated populations and very uneven access to resources are a couple of issues that are affecting imbalance in the environment. This includes pollution, climate change, and deforestation. Humans have the ability to create environmental problems far beyond their ability to fix them. For a long time people took natural resources for granted. We are at a point where we need to start conserving our resources.

A lot of the pollution and imbalance of the ecosystem is from big companies and plants, and these companies don’t want to spend more money trying to conserve resources. A lot of the issues come from companies wanting to do things in the cheapest way possible. In the book Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina some of the main actors are big agribusinesses. These businesses would ignore the complaints of the locals and deny the contamination of the environment. They did what was the cheapest option, and they also exploited the people who they thought wouldn’t be able to fight back.

I think that a lot of environmental injustice comes from systemic inequalities in our society. I don’t think that the treadmill production thesis does not fully account for systemic oppression of lower class communities. The theory makes sense, but it is missing a lot of important social factors. The discrimination based theory also fails to recognize the interests of the companies. These two theories are very well thought out and they make sense, but they make more sense together than apart.

In conclusion, I agree with most of the theories I stated above. Some of them are a bit lacking in explanation, so it is a bit frustrating to read theories that disregard some crucial reasons for inequalities.  

Does “crazy” lead groups or do groups lead “crazy?”

To hear of mass death within abusive cult groups is not a rarity. However, when said groups use deception as a tool to guide those members towards what Jim Jones said was “the last orgasm” I begin to wonder if we see charismatic leaders as the deceptors or perhaps our society as the ultimate tyrant. Jim Jones, of The Jonestown Massacre, began his life as a religious man of the midwest. He familiarized himself with positions of power from a young age. In his early 20’s he opened the doors of one of the only diverse churches at the time to people of all walks of life. Coming at a time buried in controversy, a gathering space that welcomed diverse racial groups formed a type of oasis with Jones at the center of the idealistic vision as the friendly savior. It seemed as if he kept this title and transformed it into a complex as he not so quietly built his empire of loyal followers. Moving to San Francisco, almost a decade later, he would be seen in clubs partying with people who would later listen to his sermons and pay all of their respects to him with their lives. He began speaking at his Peoples Temple, which was endorsed by many northern california liberals whose age ranged from very young to very old.

Many believed he would save them from each specific hardship they had been faced with. Believing, full-heartedly, in a man who they knew only stories of 1,000 or so people flocked to their new home in Guyana where they could live peacefully for the rest of life on Earth. Jones often spoke of taking his life with joy because he knew Jesus Christ was waiting for him. As he gained power he began including his followers when speaking of suicidal tendencies. He manipulated the people who cared about him most not only by physically torturing them, but more than once playing mind games with them. He set up, what everyone thought was, a drink containing a poison that would kill them. To prove loyalty they would drink the mixture, although if they hesitated the deadly liquid would be forced into them. Only later, when they hadn’t all collapsed, did they recognize that Jones was only invoking fear in them to test their sense of commitment. Unbeknown to anyone else Jones had been shipping in off brand Kool Aid and cyanide so he could conduct an actual murder suicide. He uttered similar words to these often, “We didn’t commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” He administered the lethal batch in the same way he did when he conducted his previous loyalty test, with misplaced joyous words and comfortable smiles shared between him and his disciples. This event killed over 900 people going down in history as the largest mass suicide and largest loss of Americans due to non-natural disaster related effects.

The United States Government was ultimately fearful of individuals accessing so much power after these casualties took place. People spoke of The Jonestown Massacre as a terribly embarrassing moment in history. Linked to this is the stigma of mental health. Jones committed this terror on his own and should not be forgiven, but he embodied a stigmatized part of society that in the 60s and 70s was kept in darkness. Outsiders often build resistance towards flourishing establishments. In this case Jones saw society as something to build a cult against. The people who craved worship, but weren’t allowed to partake fled to him.

Time elapsed and our culture moved on. However in the past few decades media and pop culture have licensed the story as their own and began using it at free will. Associating an icon, like Jones, with the outsiders we see in TV and in our favorite bands has implications of positivity while the original event was nothing less than a tragedy.

Parents re-coined the term “Don’t drink the Kool Aid” referring to staying out of trouble. Our parents know we aren’t going to go drink poisoned juice, but it has acted as a “be careful” sentiment for years.

In the 90s an explosive crowd of groupies followed The Brian Jonestown Massacre around the world to hear their favorite songs performed and their insane frontman takeover the stage. Their fan following was rather cult-like in itself which you can see in the documentary made by and with them called Dig.

The newest season of American Horror Story focused on cults. The main character of the show began the season with an already weak mental state that rapidly deteriorated to a point in which he embodied Jim Jones and even had the loyalty test administered to his deviant followers and minions.

In class we spent a day focusing on Durkheim's theory of social deviance. The opposite of this is social control which is essentially the rules we all base our morals off of. This can be exemplified in our interactions with strangers on the road, allowing others the right to take their turn across the street even if it doesn’t directly benefit us in that situation. Also shown in the ways we speak to our closest friends and family. Of course once we become comfortable the boundaries between what is socially acceptable and what is not get smaller and smaller. However, it is normally seen as socially deviant if we blatantly disregard someone’s beliefs or subject them to torture. We don’t do that because we have these unwritten rules. Durkheim says that when someone goes against these rules “a gash forms in the social fabric” which can only be repaired through punishment or rehabilitation. In the case of Jim Jones, he wasn’t socially deviant to begin with. He had good intentions of helping groups come together. Although he later led these people towards suicide, he developed his deviance through obtaining too much power. He of course died along with his followers so he could neither be punished nor rehabilitated, however when we see this type of behavior now we often send people to clinicians. This forms a space in between punishment and rehabilitation.

I believe that the “crazy” we see in cult leaders or celebrities or teenagers with anger management issues isn’t a product of their own, but one of the society we all live in. It is in fact crazy making. I hope that we as sociologists and our peers as psychologists can form a new comfortable arena for those struggling.