Secularizing society(religion)

I do think that our society is world secularizing. I feel that religion today is not as important as it used to be back in old times. Not many people really fight for their religion like they used to. People don't even really talk about religion these days and if you do, sometimes you are looked at differently from believing in something that someone else doesn't believe in. Since religion is a form of culture, I definitel think that the culture is decreasing as time goes on. In the textbook it says, " Sociologists believed that through alienation, human beings attribute their own culturally created values and norms to alien, or separate, beings because they do not understand their own history." I think that in order for religion to become "more popular" or increase as to say, people need to know more about the past, and how their religion/what they believe in, was in the past and not just the present.

Blog on A Tale of Two

It is pretty crazy how the two stories differed so drastically. To me it seemed like the African American boy (Byron) must work more hard in life than the white boy (Max). It seems like the white boy had everything handed down to him and he didn't have to work as hard for what he wanted in life (including his house, which his parents even helped with the payment for). I feel like i relate more to Byron because my parents are already at a financial problem because my mom is going through cancer and is a therapist; so she has not been able to work for the past 6 months with all of her chemotherapy. I even work two jobs so that I can help out with some bills at home, and Byron seems to have worked hard in his life as well, considering he also helps his parents from time to time with the bills/finances. It was a pretty eye-opening story to read about how different two people's lives from two different cultures can be.

social constuction of gender

My favorite part of this weeks reading was on pages 288-289 on The Political Work of Drag. On a personal note, my best friend is a male (and homosexual) and well, with all honestly, he likes to wear heels and sometimes dress up as a girl. It's quite an interesting sight to see. I think it's definitely very cool to have homosexuals because many of them (male or female), i feel, act differently than you think their gender should. It's nice to have something break the stereotype/male/female roles. This article talked about how the performers were doing political work because "their shows solidify community among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender audience...". It's public sociology because " it stimulates discussion about what it means to be a man or a woman and what it means to be gay or straight in a number of different venues." Three of the drag queens ended up going to UCSB to put on a little act and the students were very impressed and had fun with it. The students even ended up waving dollar bills. It's nice to know that people were so welcoming and outgoing/happy about it; even though it's not a totally common thing in our culture/social norm.