https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-real/

This week in sociology we discussed the environment. Specifically, on page 469 of the textbook it discusses greenhouse gasses, global warming, and climate change. Although it is “common knowledge” that global warming and climate change are effecting our planet, there are numerous people that deny this phenomena.

The greenhouse effect is the process by which the increased production of greenhouse gases, especially those arising from human activity, cause changes to the Earth’s atmosphere. These gases pollute the ozone and cause global warming: the gradual increase in the earth’s temperature. Global warming’s effects primarily include climate change: the increase in extreme weather patterns (droughts, hurricanes, etc.).

According to this article by National Geographic the overall temperature of this planet has only risen about 1% in the past century and a half. However, based on the evidence presented by researchers analyzing average temperatures all over the world, there is an undeniable upward trend in the world’s temperatures.

The article goes on to explain that there are other ways to determine climate change, without knowing the Earth’s temperature. For example, trees grow thicker and more rings each year. On the warmer and wetter years, the rings are thicker. Sediment found in the ocean can also help explain climate change. By sticking hollow tubes into the ocean floor, scientists can determine what particles were in the water, and possibly in the air, many years ago. The layers of sediment can show progressively, what was introduced to the air and water and when. Also, by sampling deep sheets of ice from the arctic can tell scientists what was in the air many years ago. The air bubbles trapped in the ice are actually tiny pockets of what the atmosphere was like back then, which is how we know the pollution rates rose significantly during the Industrial Revolution.  

To the people that still deny climate change and global warming: “nothing other than the rapid rise of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity can fully explain the dramatic and relatively recent rise in global average temperatures” – said National Geographic itself. It’s time we start focusing on ways to prolong the life of our planet.

An ecological footprint is an estimation of the land and water area required to produce all the goods an individual consumes and to assimilate all the waste an individual generates (Ferris and Stein 477). If we all took just a few active steps to reduce our ecological footprint, like recycling, or taking shorter showers, we would be one step closer in fighting climate change and preserving our planet.

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In chapter 12 incest is defined as “sexual contact between family members; a form of child abuse when it occurs between a child and a caregiver” (Ferris and Stein 381). Incest is a known taboo, people often joke it about when referencing the southern United States, but unfortunately for some people- not always from the south- incest is/was their reality. Incest is known to be psychologically detrimental to the victims of it; often leading to self-destructive behavior, mental illnesses (depression, anxiety, etc.), and the inability to form close personal relationships later on in life due to a lack of trust. In fact, children that are victims of abuse whether it be incestual, physical, or sexual have a higher likelihood of becoming abusers later on in life. This unfortunately keeps the cycle going.

About four minutes into this documentary the narrator says, “you wouldn’t consider that the protective home turns into a dangerous place”, perfectly capturing the essence of what the victims portrayed in the documentary must have felt. They, and so many others were betrayed by the people closest to them; their caregivers, parents, uncles, grandparents, brothers and so on.

Reports stated in the video show that more than two-thirds of sexual assaults come from within the family. In these cases, there was often a power imbalance, where the victims felt utterly powerless and had no choice but to submit to their assailant. Not only that but humiliation and intimidation went along with it; victims were sexually humiliated by being forced to do unthinkable acts at young ages, and the intimate relationships the perpetrators had with the rest of the family often intimidated victims. They were afraid to speak up because they didn’t want to damage family relationships, once they figured out that these incestual tendencies being forced upon them was wrong. Each of the interviewees claimed that their abuse became more frequent the longer it went on. “After a while the person who is dominated is no longer even dominated; that person is enslaved”.

In some cases, the domination went further than that; going hand in hand with the compassionate family relationships some of the perpetrators looked at themselves as teachers. With many of the victims unable to say no, and unable to stop their abuse they felt like partners in the very crimes that were committed against them. Unfortunately, most families won’t press charges against incestual sexual assault on the pure basis that they’re family and hopefully they won’t do it again.

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For three years I was afraid to come out. At 14, I was so scared of myself for being attracted to other girls, that when I saw Leslie (my first female crush) I would start panicking and would go to the bathroom to try and “pray the gay away”. At 16, when I had my first boyfriend I opened up about wanting to know what it would be like to date a female, and his reaction made me feel ashamed of myself, as if I was wrong. I told myself that I could just live my whole life without ever knowing, and without anyone else ever knowing.

I was raised by my sweet southern Christian mother, and my drill sergeant father. Neither of whom really know much about the LGBTQ+ community. So, I grew up hearing that it was a choice; that being gay was an active decision one makes because biologically men and women are meant to reproduce.

In this chapter of sociology, we discussed heterosexism: the “belief in the superiority of heterosexuality and heterosexuals”. It also briefly discusses the act of coming out as “to openly declare one’s true identity to those who might not be aware of it” (Ferris and Stein 263).

The people in this video shared their coming out stories; but we only have coming out stories because of heterosexism. As a society, we have historically assumed that being heterosexual is normal, and that any crossover with gender roles or homosexual tendencies is wrong; leading heterosexuals in our society to believe that they are superior or somehow better than non-heterosexuals. A clear example of this was the fight for gay marriage rights. The fact that there was even an argument about whether or not gay people should be allowed to be married shows that we live in a heterosexist society.

The interviewees of this video talk about the fears they had when coming out. This is the result of heterosexism. One woman was afraid that her mother would not love her anymore, and the man wanted to educate himself first, so he could properly inform others on their misconceptions when he came out. Heterosexism in our society has made many people, to include myself and the individuals depicted in this video afraid to open up about our true sexual identities. Often times there is backlash including microaggressions, but in extreme cases people can become violent towards the individual that is coming out.                             

Fortunately, like one of the women in the video my mother was understanding (eventually). I had no reason to fear coming out to my friends or peers, it was really just my parents. I had always been told that they would love me no matter who I loved but growing up hearing the misconceptions and microaggressions from my parents had caused me to feel “less than” for not being strictly heterosexual. Heterosexism is rooted so deep into our society that we typically don’t notice it unless someone (usually the person effected by it) points it out.

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Recently in one of my religious studies courses we discussed the genocide currently going on in Myanmar against the Rohingya people. When we discussed racism, prejudice, and discrimination in sociology the Rohingya immediately came to my mind. As a society we don’t really like to concern ourselves with problems that do not immediately affect us; but racism does. Racism affects everyone somehow, whether unknowingly being racist or having been a victim of racism; and that is why we should talk about it. Being able to point out racism globally helps us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

In this chapter for sociology we have been studying racism and discrimination. Racism can be defined as “a set of beliefs about the claimed superiority of one racial or ethnic group; used to justify inequality and often rooted in the assumption that differences among groups are genetic” (Ferris and Stein 224). Discrimination is defined on the same page as “unequal treatment of individuals based on their membership in a social group; usually motivated by prejudice”.

Although it is not blatantly stated in the video, the Myanmar Buddhists do believe they are ethnically superior; this can be seen in their denial of the historical citizenship of the Rohingya people and the laws passed to help drive them out by any means necessary. The “clean and beautiful nation” act implied this presumed ethnic superiority because only a group of people that truly believe they are better than another, could try to exterminate an entire group of people. The Rohingya’s also have different Asian features to them physically, more closely resembling people from Bangladesh, which sets them apart from the rest of the country’s citizens and has sparked the untrue ideas that they are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Therefore, this ethnic cleansing is a racist act.

The discrimination is a lot more evident in the video: the burning of Muslim villages, forcing out the Rohingya’s, putting land mines on the border to ensure that they do not return, and the mass killings of innocent people- are just a few examples. The Rohingya people can trace their heritage back many generations in Myanmar, but the government does not even recognize their citizenship because they do not identify with the nation’s Buddhist identity. This is a clear example of discrimination because the Rohingya are literally being forced out of their homes, losing entire villages, because they are Muslim, not Buddhist. They have become a stateless people at the hands of their government.

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 This video shows the horrors that the citizens of Yemen faced during their recent civil war. Not only did the war leave families homeless, it left many of the country’s citizens in poverty. This video specifically focused on the starving children. Families were too poor to feed their children, and the hospitals often times did not have the medicine available to treat the malnourishment once it had gone too far. A simple case of lactose intolerance became nearly fatal for an 18-month-old. He was the size of a 6-month-old and could not walk or talk yet. Unfortunately, he was born about a month after the war started, so the milk he needed was not as available to the villagers as it had previously been. Because of this, the boy was starving and in need of imported lactose free options for milk.

In Chapter 7 we discuss poverty, and the different forms of poverty. The situation in Yemen, as perceived by all standards, is absolute deprivation. Absolute deprivation can be defined as “an objective measure of poverty, defined by the inability to meet minimal standards for food, shelter, clothing, or health care” (Ferris and Stein 201). It is clear that under these circumstances the residents of Yemen were enduring absolute deprivation. This is apparent in the lack of food available to feed the families, and in the lack of medicine available to treat the malnourished and sick children. At the end of the video a woman describing her own child says, “I never thought I’d see a child look like this in Yemen”.

Yemen has always been a desperately poor country. However, the lack of resources after the war was absolutely devastating for this society, as it is for most societies that survive after a war has been had on their land. The children in Yemen were effected the most, with a starvation that could have wiped out an entire generation. A mother, Sara, is too malnourished to breast feed her malnourished infant. Together, her and the baby survive on water because Sara is too poor to afford milk for her child. With frequent air strikes, it was too dangerous for people to leave their areas; nowhere to escape to, nowhere to run to for freedom. This kept many people in poverty, and still keeps people in poverty because they had no option but to stay during the war.

Poverty is something that Americans often look down upon because we think that the victims inflict it upon themselves. This scenario in Yemen, disproves our American beliefs. Not all situations of poverty are self-inflicted, and it is a vicious cycle to try and escape; sometimes there is no way out.

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This show is what peaked my interest in sociology, more so social psychology, than anything else, truthfully. I had no idea what sociology even was before agent Ford’s girlfriend mentioned that she was studying sociology with a specialization in deviance and criminology. Mindhunter is an exciting show on Netflix following the way the FBI formed the Behavioral Science department in the 1970s. It is based on real stories, including interviews with Ed Kemper, Dennis Rader, and Jerry Brudos. The agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench, based on John E. Douglas and Robert K. Ressler, travel across the country interviewing serial killers, before the term “serial killer” had even been coined. The show is not so much about catching these serial killers, but more about how Douglas and Ressler pushed the FBI to utilize social psychology to better profile these types of people in order to be more effective in catching them in the future.

Deviance is a behavior, trait, or belief that departs from a norm and generates a negative reaction in a particular group (Ferris and Stein 153). However, as discussed in class deviance is not always criminal. Although the majority of the examples in the series are of deviance and crimes, because murdering people is not normal nor legal, agent Ford exhibits deviance in his methods of interviewing. This can be specifically seen in his engagement with Gene Devier: agent Ford was trying to connect with Devier, a suspect in the rape and murder of a young local girl. Ford showed an unhealthy interest in young girls and quoted a line Ed Kemper had said to him in a previous interview “You got to make it with that young {word that means cat and also vagina} before it turns into mom.” This is extremely unprofessional and unconventional of agent Ford. Defying all of the performance norms of an FBI agent, Ford did not conduct himself in the expected manner by saying these things. However, he succeeded in gaining Devier’s trust. In fact, that very statement made Devier comfortable enough to confess to the crime eventually. This was the perfect example of non-criminal deviance. Literal criminal deviance can be seen in the interviews, as expected, where Ed Kemper admits to enjoying necrophilia, including a time with his mother. Necrophilia, especially incestual necrophilia is taboo, to say the least. To better understand these criminals though, we would need to look at deviance from all three angles: biological, psychological, and sociological.

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In January 2018 a teenage girl who had been raised in an isolated abusive home made her escape and saved her twelve siblings. After having been physically tortured for years she stole a cellphone from her phone and made a mad dash for freedom, taking one of her siblings with her. This plan to escape had been a process that was two years in the making, and almost fell through when the sibling she took with her was overcame by fear and returned home. When far enough away from her house the girl dialed 911 and told the authorities of the horrors she grew up with: being chained to her bed for prolonged periods of time, starved, sometimes even strangled. She told them that she and her siblings were only allowed to bathe once a year. When the police asked if there were any medications in the home she had no idea what medications were. When the police arrived at the home to rescue the other siblings, some had no knowledge of what a police officer was. The Turpin children, ages 2 to 29, were seemingly uneducated of the real world because they had been forced to live a life in isolation.

Socialization is crucial to the development of an individual as a functioning member of society. Socialization is the process by which a society, culture, or group teaches individuals to become functioning members, and the process by which individuals learn and internalize the values and norms of the group (Ferris and Stein 99). With that being stated, it is clear that the Turpin children suffered from a lack of socialization due to their isolation from the world beyond their home. This lack of socialization will permanently affect the siblings, especially the oldest ones being 29 years old or shortly under. They are adults now and are expected to function in society on a level that they were not exposed to or educated on. The Turpin parents got away with not properly educating their children by registering their home as a private school residence; this drew up no red flags with the authorities and they never went to check it out. The Turpin children are not as extremely deprived as many cases of feral children, such as Genie Wiley, but by definition of feral children being “children who have had little human contact and may have lived in social isolation from a young age”, they would be considered feral (Ferris and Stein 101). The Turpin children had really only had contact with their immediate family members, having never seen a dentist and no doctors visits in roughly four years.

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When people think of water crises in the United States Flint, Michigan is usually where their minds go. However, the problem is not only in Flint, as shown in this documentary by CNN. This video directly follows the lives of multiple victims effected by water crises in Denmark, South Carolina and Enterprise, Louisiana.

Residents of Denmark, Paula and Eugene smith have been living absolutely without faucet water for over nine years. This is because for a long time the water was brown and contained rather high levels of lead. Eugene Smith’s doctor specifically advised him not to ingest or absorb the water through his skin because the amount of lead could potentially be toxic. Not only is the water high in lead, but it is high in iron, copper, and manganese, which essentially made their water impossible to use. In 2018 after almost ten years without faucet water, many lawsuits, and denied tests on the town’s well, it was released to the public that a chemical called HaloSan, a disinfectant typically used for spas, has been in the towns water for about a decade.

In Enterprise, there was a ‘boiling advisory’ for the number of dangerous bacteria in their water. This means that residents were expected to boil their water clean, at the risk of making the already illegal lead limit in the water higher. Jodie Vinson actually contracted bacterial meningitis from these events, as well as other residents being in a constant state of illness due to the water contamination.

In my sociology class this week, we briefly discussed Social Darwinism; the idea that societies evolve and adapt over time to the changes in their environment. This is apparent in every situation where there is water crisis, or just a lack of resources: the general population just learns to live without it. This is clear in Denmark, South Carolina where Eugene and Paula have to travel ten miles outside of town to find a spicket in a park to fill up many water jugs to take back home with them for the week. Social Darwinism can also be seen in Enterprise, Louisiana, where Jodie Vinson receives cases of donated bottled water, but not always enough. The Vinson family goes through about ten cases of bottled water a week for activities such as cooking, brushing their teeth, and drinking. These effected people have had to adapt to their lack of access to clean water, which should be provided by the government. Therefore, permanently changing the state of these communities until they receive the funding to provide clean water to their residents.

Word Count: 431