I Shot a Man in Reno...

The other day I watched MSNBC's "Lockup: Extended Stay". I was interested because it was filmed in Indiana State Prison, which is located in Michigan City, Indiana. It is a maximum security prison which houses the most dangerous criminals in Indiana, and all executions of male inmates in the state of Indiana are carried out at Indiana State Prison (ISP). John Dillinger was housed at ISP for awhile before being released on parol.

The majority of the inmates of ISP are serving life sentences. As one might imagine, there is little motivation for an inmate to follow the rules when they know they are going to be in prison for life. So, understandably, ISP has its share of fights, riots, and rebellious inmates.
That was, until Major Cabanaw (effectively the warden of ISP) enacted a program that was to revolutionize the way the inmates felt about themselves, their crimes, and their interactions with officers and fellow inmates. The program also lowered crime in the prison significantly. What is this miracle program, you ask?

Kittens.


OK, the program is technically called "Cats". The prison gives each inmate the opportunity to adopt a kitten from a local humane shelter. How does that decrease crime, you ask?
OK, Sociology time!
Let's talk about the effects of alienation, powerlessness, and self-estrangement on personality and mental health. Alienation is the sense that one is uninvolved in the social world or lacks control over it. Never has a sense of alienation been more legitimate than when one is in prison.
We can break alienation down into two parts:
1. Self-Estrangement- the awareness that one is engaging in activities that are not rewarding in themseves
2. Powerlessness- the sense of having little or no control over events

According to Karl Marx, whether or not a person experiences self-estrangement is based of his or her relation to the means of production. Marx referred to such workers as the proletariat. As Paul Fussel will tell you in "Class: A Guide Through the American Status System", there is no group more proletarian than the "bottom out-of sights" which is made up of prisoners.
An inmate is powerless over even the simplest decisions and many of his daily actions have no value.
Conditions such as these can make an inmate depressed and reckless, which leads to truculent behavior.
So, let's get back to this program.
The inmate is then completely responsible for taking care of his kitten, paying for all of its litter, food, and cat-proofing his cell. The kitten can be taken away for bad behavior.
The inmates, many of whom never graduated from high school, read books for months in advance on how to take care of their incoming cats. They construct cat toys from feathers, strips of cloth, and anything else they can get their hands on. Inmates also build shelves and ramps around their cells, because they know that cats like to be up high.
Neighboring inmates line up to baby-sit the cats when their owners go off to work everyday.
Many inmates commented on how they felt they had nothing to live for before they got a cat. Now, the cats are, "my only family." The cats offer unconditional love, and they rely on the inmate for everything. One inmate that MSNBC interviewed who was, prior to getting his cat, one of the most disruptive inmates said that he can't get in a fight or misbehave anymore because his cat needs him.
In this program, the inmate feels complete responsibility for the life of another, which makes him feel control over some events around him. The inmate also feels that each of his decisions and actions have value; the choice to stay out of trouble means everything.
This program ends the feeling of alienation by connecting the inmate to the social world around him.

Hate Crime or Mitigating Factor?

I have been watching a court case on CourtTV, now known as TRUTV. The case goes as follows:
Allen Andrade met Justin via a social networking site, on which Justin presented himself as a heterosexual woman. They interacted for 3 days, during which time Justin performed oral sex on Andrade. At some point, Andrade killed Justin "Angie" Zapata after discovering that "she" was actually a he. Andrade beat Justin to death with a fire extinguisher found in Justin's apartment.
Once arrested, Andrade gave a full confession. He was also tape-recorded in jailhouse conversations with his girlfriend, friends, and other inmates referring to Justin by the pronoun "it". He also made statements such as, "Gay things deserve to die."
The prosecution hopes to use these statements, along with the fact that Justin was transgender to increase Andrade's punishment by prosecuting it as a "hate crime".
Andrade's defense is using a "transpanic defense", arguing that when Andrade discovered that he had been deceived by Justin, he flew into a rage and murdered him. They believe that this qualifies as a mitigating factor.

To begin with, I would like to address the included charge of a hate crime.
1. Surely everyone can agree that there is a gigantic difference between finding a transgendered person and killing them just because they are transgender, and being deceived into a sexual encounter which leads to the discovery of the transgender's biological sex, which drives you to kill the transgender person. A hate crime occurs "when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her membership in a certain social group." Andrade did not target Justin because of his transgender status. It just so happens that the subject of Justin's deceit was his gender, hence Andrade's anger over finding that he was transgender. In fact, it could be argued that Andrade was targeted by Justin because of his heterosexual male status.
2. Yes, Andrade made anti-gay comments in jail.
Two points as far as this goes:
A)a person is allowed to be homophobic or transphobic and not have murdered a gay or transgendered person for that reason. I might hate women, and I might have murdered a woman, but that does not in any way, shape, or form prove that I murdered the woman because of her sex.
B) This is a murderer. A murderer called a transgender "it". To expect an uneducated murderer to know the politically correct pronoun to use for a transgendered person is ridiculous; and, to expect Andrade to use said pronoun out of courtesy for the transgender that he just murdered out of rage is ridiculous. Dude was talking to his girlfriend and other prisoners! He was probably feeling extremely insecure about his masculinity at this point, and he was trying to convince those around him that he is not a homosexual.

Next, I would like to explain why I not only disagree with this being charged as a hate crime, but also think that the circumstances of the case should be a mitigating factor.
1) Justin deceived Andrade. He pretended to be a heterosexual female when he was, in fact, a homosexual male. His MySpace made no allusion to his true sex. He interacted with Andrade for three days, at no time revealing his transgender status. He initiated oral sex on Andrade in order to interact sexually while still hiding his male genitalia. I fully believe that Andrade was actually molested. Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual acts by one person upon another. If given true and accurate information, Andrade would never have participated in the sexual encounter. He was tricked and deceived into engaging in an undesired sexual act.
2)I believe that sexuality is so personal, that a heterosexual man realizing that he has unknowingly had a sexual encounter with a transgender male produces the same biological rush of adrenaline, hate and contempt as many other circumstances that commonly qualify as mitigating. A common mitigating factor is finding your spouse in bed with another man and murdering them both. I believe that the physiological reaction that Andrade must have had was equal, if not greater, to the type experienced by a spouse being cheated on.
3)Andrade is Hispanic. He was brought up in a culture with an idea of machismo. This is a strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness. Justin's actions went right to the core of Andrade's identity. Justin should have understood how strongly people feel about their sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender; after all, he obviously felt very strongly about his own orientation and gender!

I can't help but wonder what leads people to ignore the obvious mitigating factors in this case. My best guess comes from sociology, and the problem of attribution.
Attribution Theory is concerned with the way people explain the behavior of others and themselves. It seems that when looking at the behavior of others we give internal or "dispositional" attribution. This means that we assign behavior to a person's morality or character. When we look at our own actions, however, we assign external, or "situation" attribution. This means that we assign our own behavior to the circumstances that we find ourselves in.
In this case, we are assigning Andrade's behavior to a homophobic and hateful character. We are not considering the situational impacts at all. However, if we can just think for a moment of what we would feel like if we had done the murdering, we would probably be saying something like, "Deep down, I am not a bad man, but a transsexual just performed oral sex on me. I snapped."
It is of vital importance that we consider situational factors before assigning complete fault to internal flaws.
None of what I have just said excuses Andrade's actions. He is a murderer, and he deserves to go to prison. I do, however, feel very strongly that this was not a hate crime, and instead should be viewed as a mitigating factor. The law has incorporated mitigating factors for a reason; it believes that certain circumstances should result in a reduced charge or a lesser sentence. This includes evidence that the defendant was under extreme mental or emotional distress. I find it hard to argue that Andrade wasn't.

Is That All She's Got?

As an assignment for my social research methods class, I was required to conduct 20 hours of phone surveys in the CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing) lab.

This is just about as close as you get to hell for a girl who hates to use the phone even to order a pizza.
The problem is, you not only have to get someone to not hang up on you right away (as soon as they realize they don't know you), but you have to get them to agree to take a 25 minute survey over the phone. WTF, Purdue? It's like Mission Impossible.
Those first 10 hours of calling were awful. People thought I was a telemarketer (do those even exist anymore??) and accused me of all sorts of things, including abusing senior citizens.
I finally got my shtick down half way through the calling. All I had to do was act like a timid, helpless girl and people were lining up to take my survey.

Everyone wanted to rescue me from my horrible job and help me overcome my anxiety over calling. They all started calling me "honey" and "sweetheart". By the end of my survey, I had about a 50% chance than the person I called would agree to take my survey; most wanting to talk for a full hour, telling me stories and asking me questions.

Normally such a blatant use of gender, femininity, and voice pitch to manipulate a person into doing what I wanted would make me feel like I was spitting in the face of feminism, trying to hide my successful and intelligent self in order to make others like me.

Instead, I am starting to see that we all have unique weapons in our arsenal of charm. I was giving a cynical performance; I fooled everyone I talked to. It was I who had the upper hand, who, at any moment, could have shattered the facade that I presented to get them to take the survey. I wasn’t sincere or actually scared or intimidated by them; I let them feel important in order to take advantage of them, there’s nothing weak about that.

It makes me angry to think that some people would try and make that skill less than what it is; that because it’s feminine, it must be less potent or less respectable an attribute than a more masculine alternative.

I think that is vastly undervaluing femininity, which doesn’t seem feminist at all.

An Audience to Recieve Our Show

In Social Psych we learned about the theories of Erving Goffman who is my new favorite sociologist.

If you'll remember, I have complained in the past about people not hiding their true feelings enough. No one wants those around them to be completely genuine, trust me. You don't want to know what others actually think about you.

Goffman believed that all the world is a stage (perhaps Shakespeare was a Sociologist as well). He talked about the Dramaturgical model of Sociology, where every action is a performance for others or ourselves.
"In a public space, the individual appears to be indifferent to the strangers in his presence; but actually he is sufficiently oriented to them so that, among other things, show he feel the need to perform corrective rituals, he can transform the strangers around him into an audience to receive his show."-Goffman
Goffman said that the sincerity of a performance has to do with how much the actor believes his own portrayal of himself. Some performances are "cynical" ( example: a person lies about being rich or pretends to be a hot teenager over the internet), some are "mixed performances" (for example, we think we are an attractive person but we flex a little to make sure that others notice), and some are sincere ( a student who really is interested in learning and takes very detailed notes in class).

One day while writing his dissertation, Goffman studied a restaurant. He noted that the back of the restaurant filled with dishwashers, cooks, and waiters was very different than the front of the house where the customers would sit. The kitchen area was filthy, the cooks foulmouthed, and the waiters who were so polite to the guests while serving them food, made fun of their speech and dress among themselves.
Goffman concluded that it is very important it is to have a front stage and a back stage.
The frontstage is where you give your performance, with the proper demeanor, props, language, and clothing.
The backstage is where the illusion is openly constructed. As anyone who has ever been in a play can tell you, backstage is nothing like the frontstage during a play.
We try and keep the backstage and frontstage from ever meeting, because the result, according to Goffman, is embarassment.
We've all experienced this: when a friend finds out we were talking about them, when a customer accidently walks into the kitchen, when someone reads something that wasn't meant for their eyes, when we spot a celebrity without makeup.
It is out duty as decent human beings to try as hard as we can to keep these two stages separate! I'm very aware that not everyone is an awesome actor and that sometimes people's frontstage is not very convincing, or they just decide, "Hey, I can't help feeling they way that I do, I'm just gonna let it all hang out; what have I got to be ashamed of?"
Well to them I say: for the same reason the waiters don't go out to the patrons of the restaurant and say, "I think you're wearing an ugly dress today, madam." Because it's RUDE.
While yes, to a certain degree you put on a show for self preservation (you would get fired for saying that), it is also in order to spare other's feelings!
So according to Goffman, we should not strive to be genuine. In fact, a society where everyone is genuine is where all social interaction breaks down.

Adventures at Ivy Tech

It's the middle of Spring Break and I am taking time out from the awesome week that I'm having to blog. It has been a little while, and I think it's time.

I am going to be taking two classes at a community college this summer. I have to take Spanish 4 and a lab science in order to graduate in December, and I decided to take them at Ivy Tech. There are three reasons that I decided to do this: 1) because I hate Spanish and Biology and want them to be over ASAP and summer courses are short 2) because Ivy Tech is ridiculously cheap compared to Purdue and 3) because my adviser told me they would be incredibly easy there.

B and I went to an informational meeting at Ivy Tech yesterday so I could see the campus and learn how to register.

From the moment I was greeted at the door by a young man who was just a little too friendly and self important, a strange feeling came over me. The presenter began by saying that he himself was a graduate of community college and was very partial to it. I immediately wrote him off as uneducated.

I wanted everyone to know that I go to a REAL college, you know, a 4-year university that is for enriching my mind, and not just helping me find a job.

I resented everyone around me: the fifty year old coming back to school at this pathetic little college, the 18 year old with a seriously loathsome dye job who looked so utterly bored with life, the couple in their mid-twenties with the whiny baby who were worried about passing the placement exam and not being admitted at all (the presenter reassured them that everyone gets accepted).

On the way home I realized that it was my own insecurities that were making me want so badly to separate myself from those people. After all, shouldn't I be impressed with anyone who wants to learn and better themselves? Some of them may be getting more education than anyone in their family, they may be working full-time just to send themselves to school, they may go on to a 4-year university and end up with a PhD. Am I so much better than them? Wasn't my New Year's Resolution to be more gracious?

Unfortunately, even though I want to be more gracious, I am still me. And a part of me, even with all the reasoning that I did with myself, feels that college is about learning for the sake of learning; it's a journey which helps you discover who you are, and how to be a decent citizen, and how to think about the world. That in a way, it might be wrong of Ivy Tech to take these people's money and tell them that they have graduated from college. Yes, they gave them a credential that will help them get a job, but college? No, I don't think that is what Ivy Tech is.
So good for the people who want to make more money and better themselves, and good for community colleges all over for giving them the opportunity.
But, even though my Marxist stratification professor would kill me for saying this, college is not a right, and it's hard work, and not everyone can do it.
I think it's important to note that Ivy Tech fulfills none of those requirements.

*I just have to mention, there was a mistake on the Ivy Tech pens that the presenter handed out. A word on the pen was missing a much needed apostrophe. I mean, come on.*

If U Seek Amy

In case anyone is interested in Britney's new video for If You Seek Amy, here ya go:




Personally, I love it. I would love to talk about this video with anyone, if you're interested. Anyways, new post coming soon.
-S

Domestic Disturbia

This past week the LAPD leaked photos of Rihanna taken a short time after she was beaten up by Chris Brown. The rumor after the Grammys and before the picture was leaked was that Rihanna had two large bumps on either side of her head which looked like "devil's horns" and that she was strangled to unconsciousness and then left by Chris Brown. While it has not been verified that she was strangled to unconsciousness, the leaked photo shows both the bumps mentioned in the rumer and signifigant bruising around Rihanna's neck. What Chris Brown did was horrible, and I was deeply disturbed by it. I know that domestic violence occurs everyday all over the world, but it was startling to see a face that I know so well be so damaged.

I also happened to have been a fan of Chris Brown, up until a few weeks ago. Now I'm struggling with how to feel towards him. The way this situation relates to Sociolgy is that he and his family were abused by his step-father. He has talked about this openly in the past.
We know from theories about socialization and modeling in Social Psychology that children learn what is modeled for them. What a child is exposed to before eight years old permanantly alters his or her personality. Children of abusers are likely to marry or date abusers or become abusers themselves.
How much should I let this fact affect my opinion of Chris Brown? It doesn't lessen my disgust at what he did, or my sympathy for Rihanna.
I guess I think that at the end of the day, its up to each individual to decide who he or she wants to be. We are all equipped to develop a second nature. I am very hesitant to medicalize rage and violence. They are much like other human actions that we blame on biology, which are actually caused by a lack of self control.
One can only justify his or her actions for so long. Chris Brown is a 19 year old man, and no matter what abuse he experienced as a child, I hold him fully responsible for his actions. There is nothing to blame but his lack of self-control.