As said previously, black people lose their ‘blackness’ when black fashion is worn by someone more socially acceptable. Contrary to this belief, black people cannot lose their blackness because there are many other factors that make them black. In addition, the cycle of black fashion trends is more beneficial to black people as well as the world. When someone more socially acceptable wear trends that are from black fashion it is not cultural appropriation it is cultural appreciation. When people style their hair in dreadlocks or wear earrings with their name on them it is to show that people who are not black can show how much they like the culture. White people capitalize on black fashion because they understand that black people are not appealing towards society, so it becomes their responsibility. When different people come together and wear black fashion they are essentially expanding and spreading black culture. Black fashion is worn by everyone so by default black culture becomes a natural trendsetter. As soon as society begins to wear the hairstyles and clothing of black people they immediately know it is time to find something else to standout. This pattern is the reason why most trends are born, why some trends go out of style, and why some become revamped. As a result of this phenomena, black people influence the world only by the way they look. If anything, this should be seen as a privilege to black people since not many cultures can say the same. Black fashion has not always been a source of happiness for the black community. In many ways black fashion can hold black people back since it reinforces that black people are “dirty and poor criminals with no intelligence” just by attire. However, this way of thinking is curbed when everyone starts to dress in mainstream black fashion trends. Know people are targeted equally since they are all dressed the same. This also allows for black people to be discreet since society dresses like them and it is harder to be noticed if everyone is following the same trends.
Month: April 2018
Research-Dohertyk9
In America alone, another instance of sexual violence occurs every few minutes. Astonishingly, as reported by The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Approximately 1 in 5 women in the U.S. (19.1% or an estimated 22,992,000 women) experienced rape at some point in life.” This stems from, among other things, a lack of understanding as to what rape is, because no one knows what it is.
In the article, “The Latest: Cosby jury ends Day 1 without a verdict” by the Associated Press, the jury asks the judge what consent is:
The jury returned to a suburban Philadelphia courtroom less than two hours into its deliberations to ask for the legal definition of consent. Judge Steve O’Neill said he wasn’t able to answer it, telling jurors they’ve already been given the definitions of the charges they are considering.
It’s frightening to consider that even judges, the people we put in charge of determining criminal charges, don’t know what consent is. Although rape has existed since the beginning of humanity, and continues to exist worldwide, it does not have a standard, universal definition. Even within one country, and within the same system of government, the definition varies.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics defines rape as,
Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object, such as a bottle. Includes attempted rape, male and female victims, and both heterosexual and same sex rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.
The FBI’s definition of rape as defined by the Department of Justice is,
Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website defines “sexual violence,”
Sexual violence is defined as a sexual act committed against someone without that person’s freely given consent.
These are only a few of the myriad of existing definitions, but they illustrate just how different rape is based on the agency that is considering it. The Bureau of Justice Statistics defines rape to provide a count for the number of instances a crime has occurred. The FBI defines rape to explain under what circumstances a crime has been committed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define rape to provide better assistance to their patients. It would be difficult to argue that any one of these definitions is wrong, because there is no proof of a “right” definition. It is not the responsibility of simple observers of this phenomenon to provide the “right” definition.
Governments have struggled with the question of how to define rape since their beginning. In around 1780 B.C., laws stated that rape of a virgin was property damage against her father. In 1290, women who became pregnant from rape were not raped. In the 1300s, whether or not a woman was raped was affected by how promiscuous the woman was; a sexually active woman’s charges were less legitimate. After the 1300s, girls younger than 12 could not consent. In 1670, it was concluded that a man can legally rape his wife, because the marriage contract forfeited his wife’s right to consent. In 1814, it was decided once again that rape could be determined by pregnancy. In the 19th century, it was agreed that if the woman did not actively resist her rapist, she was not raped.
More inclusive definitions of rape have been created over time; the FBI’s definition listed above, for example, is an update from a older and less encompassing definition. Yet despite having a number of more inclusive definitions, we are still far from perfect in determining what sexual contexts can be characterized by these definitions. This is clear in the case of Bill Cosby’s retrial for the alleged sexual assault of Andrea Constand. The article, “Bill Cosby’s Defense and Its Twisted Argument About Consent,” by Jia Tolentino, states,
Everyone agrees that, on the night in question, Cosby invited Constand over to his home; that he gave her three pills; that he digitally penetrated her without obtaining any sort of affirmative consent; that he left her passed-out body on the couch and went to bed.
This case is demonstrative of the power of terminology; according to the FBI’s definition, this situation is clearly rape: “Penetration, no matter how slight…without the consent of the victim.” Yet the entire argument of Cosby’s defense is not that he did not commit this act, but rather that it was in a “romantic” context, that Constand was lying as to the nature of her and Cosby’s relationship, that there was full consent given in the situation in question. However, regardless of whether or not the relationship was romantic, Constand was unconscious at the time of the penetration and therefore could not give consent, which is rape by all three aforementioned definitions above. The refusal to call the situation what it was according to the definitions of several reputable sources-rape-has allowed Cosby’s defense to formulate an argument that is at best absurd and at worst completely wrong. However, the nature of the definition of rape is that it will always be different based on who is defining it. If the legal system rules that in romantic contexts, penetration of an unconscious partner is in fact consensual, the system has merely created another definition of rape, which cannot be considered wrong, only different. In such a case, if Cosby could prove that his relationship with Constand was “romantic,” he would be innocent of that definition of rape.
Another case, that of former NFL cheerleader Kristan Ware, illustrates this same confusion of terminology that leads to ambiguity in consent. It is never specifically outlined that to be an NFL cheerleader, a girl must be open to sexual objectification, sexual harassment and molestation. Yet the situation of Kristan Ware conveys that our culture expects just that; the article “Another Former N.F.L. Cheerleader Files a Complaint,” by John Branch, states,
Ware said some Dolphins cheerleading coaches mocked her after other cheerleaders learned that she was a virgin, planning to wait for marriage to have sex. At a 2016 rehearsal for a fashion show at which cheerleaders modeled bikinis, Ware claims, she was dressed with angel wings — something Ware believes was a poke at her virginity — and then physically grabbed and verbally harangued by Grogan as she exited the runway.
If this response is expected, accepted even, then the NFL should create its own definition of consent. This new definition would state something similar to, “In accepting the job of cheerleader in the NFL, a female consents to the receipt of all forms of sexual language and sexual touching.”
Granted, the definitions created in this paper would likely never be adopted by any institution, but they serve to demonstrate how even the most clear situations can be skewed with unclear language. Because the legal system has not altered the definition of rape to exclude “romantic contexts,” it should be clear that by the existing scholarly definitions, Cosby has committed rape, yet actors in the criminal justice system still struggle with their determinations. It should also be clear that because the NFL has no contract explicitly stating that cheerleaders consent to “sexual language and sexual touching,” Ware’s case was one of illegal sexual harassment. Unfortunately, the number of definitions of consent and rape in existence serve to further confuse an already difficult concept.
If we start with radically different premises of what the definition of rape is, then we end up with radically different data. Wikipedia itself admits, “Data on the prevalence of rape vary greatly depending on what definition of rape is used.” This is why the number of reported rape cases varies so greatly between the different sources.
As a result of disparate definitions for rape, data are dissimilar. In the same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported nearly 1.3 million incidents of “sexual violence,” while the FBI accounted for only 85,593 incidents of “rape.” If the two had used the same terminology, or if the words, “sexual violence,” and “rape,” shared the same definition, they may have attained very similar numbers. But despite such an enormous difference in number between the two agencies, it can’t be said that either count is wrong.
Until a definition of rape is standardized and universalized, this trend will continue, and none of the statistics across the board will agree with each other. As it stands, few conclusions can be drawn from data, unless we choose to use only one source, with one definition, for our conclusions. Unless we achieve the universal definition, we will never come close to knowing just how many cases of rape truly exist in any given year. However, it is unlikely that such a definition of rape would ever come about, because of the differences in all of the institutions that define rape. The Bureau of Justice Statistics defines rape to provide a count for the number of instances a crime has occurred. The FBI defines rape to explain under what circumstances a crime has been committed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define rape to provide better assistance to their patients. Each agency has entirely different interests in its definition for rape, and a universal definition may not best serve the needs of each agency. Take, for example, if the FBI’s definition of “penetration, no matter how slight,” was used for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A person seeking mental health services for “attempted forced penetration,” which would be included in the CDC’s definition, is excluded from the FBI’s definition. The FBI’s definition would therefore be ineffective for the CDC to accommodate all of its patients.
The unreported nature of rape furthers the preexisting disparity in statistics. Some victims are more likely to report the crime than others. This is clear in an article that cites the Department of Justice’s statistics- “New DOJ Data On Sexual Assaults: College Students Are Actually Less Likely To Be Victimized,” by the Federalist Staff, compares the numbers from DOJ statistics and attempts to prove that non-students are more likely to be raped than students. It states,
The full study, which was published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division within DOJ, found that rather than one in five female college students becoming victims of sexual assault, the actual rate is 6.1 per 1,000 students, or 0.61 percent (instead of 1-in-5, the real number is 0.03-in-5). For non-students, the rate of sexual assault is 7.6 per 1,000 people.
However, within the article itself, it admits that, “Unfortunately, according to data from the BJS study, a huge percentage of sexual assaults — upwards of 80 percent for female college students — go unreported, and students who are victimized are far less likely to report the crime than are non-student victims.” It even goes so far as to list that 80% of students do not report rape, compared to 67% of non-students that do not report rape. If students are so much less likely than non-students to report rape, than how can it possibly be determined that non-students are more frequently victims of the crime? The data can be trusted to prove neither that students are more often victims of rape nor that non-students are. In addition, the accuracy of the percentages must be called into question as well; the rapes that are not reported can only be counted through surveys, which may include a greater number of circumstances than police reports. This contributes to increasingly skewed data.
The article, “This Rape Infographic Is Going Viral. Too Bad It’s Wrong.” by Amanda Marcotte seeks to point out the shortcomings of an infograph displaying rape data. Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post published the infographic, created by the Enliven Project, that Marcotte’s article analyzes:
The article notes, “The graphic assumes one-rape-per-rapist,” “The graphic overestimates the number of unreported rapes,” and “The graphic overestimates the number of false accusations.” The impact of unintentionally misinterpreting the data is that it may be further misinterpreted; as the article points out,
Nearly one in five women have been raped, according to the latest substantive government numbers, and infographics like this might make people conclude therefore that one in five men is a rapist. In reality, a much smaller (though still troubling) number—an estimated 6 percent of men—are rapists. Your average rapist stacks up six victims. That’s hard to capture in an infographic, but could be clearer by just labeling the little dudes ‘rapes’ instead of ‘rapists.’
The second stated error with this particular graphic, that “The graphic overestimates the number of unreported rapes,” explains that, “It’s hard to measure how many rapes go unreported, because, duh, unreported.” The article suggests that we use “government numbers” to make the number of unreported rapes more accurate; the only problem with this suggestion is that even the government numbers cannot be trusted because they immensely disagree with each other. Finally, the article mentions, “The graphic overestimates the number of false accusations.” It explains that combining data and assuming that it can be summarized accurately is another way to horribly misinterpret data; the article states,
The problem is that the Enliven Project conflates ‘false reports,’ which only require the claim that a crime has happened, with ‘false accusations,’ which require fingering a supposed perpetrator.
These seemingly minor misrepresentations can result in incredibly inaccurate data; if the original numbers cannot even be trusted, the conclusions drawn from a combination of those numbers, which are not counting the same definition to begin with, are even more inaccurate.
Not only do these differing definitions produce different statistics, but also, the data can only measure rapes that are reported; they can say nothing about the rapes that aren’t reported. Even with the standardized and universalized definition of rape previously mentioned, we would still be unable to achieve completely accurate statistics. To do so, we would need to ensure that every case of rape is reported, and the data would start there, not accounting for previous years where this was not the case. If this was somehow possible, the data could then be trusted.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would argue that it can accurately and reliably account for 1.3 million incidents of “sexual violence.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website even outlines a number of specific circumstances that fall under its definition of “sexual violence,” namely:
Completed or attempted forced penetration of a victim, Completed or attempted alcohol/drug-facilitated penetration of a victim, Completed or attempted forced acts in which a victim is made to penetrate a perpetrator or someone else, Completed or attempted alcohol/drug-facilitated acts in which a victim is made to penetrate a perpetrator or someone else, Non-physically forced penetration which occurs after a person is pressured verbally or through intimidation or misuse of authority to consent or acquiesce, Unwanted sexual contact, Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences.
This definition is clear and indisputable; instances of sexual violence can easily be determined on its basis. Statistics can be generated based on the rape counted by this definition.
But the clarity of the definition isn’t the problem; the problem is that there are many more definitions than this one by the CDC. Each definition is just as likely to be reliable when compared to itself, but equally unreliable when compared to others. Any data that sums up rape and draws conclusions using a variety of different sources is inaccurate, because the different sources are not even counting the same thing. CDC’s “sexual violence” is different than the FBI’s “forcible rape,” or simply “rape,” which is also different from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ “Forced sexual intercourse.” An additional problem arises when people attempt to count the CDC’s 1.3 million incidents of “sexual violence” as rape and compare it as such; the CDC includes in its definition instances of “unwanted sexual contact” that may not require penetration, which makes it astronomically different from the BJS’s and the FBI’s definitions. Wikipedia explains the problem in its own terms even as it reports rape data in its article titled “Rape Statistics,”
Inconsistent definitions of rape, different rates of reporting, recording, prosecution and conviction for rape create controversial statistical disparities, and lead to accusations that many rape statistics are unreliable or misleading. In some jurisdictions, male-female rape is the only form of rape counted in the statistics. Countries may not define forced sex on a spouse as “rape.”
The disparity in definitions often results from differences among agencies. The CDC is concerned with defining rape as it relates to public health, while the FBI is concerned with defining rape in relation to crime. If patients report rape to the CDC seeking medical attention, the CDC is unlikely to discount the patients’ claims of rape. Thus, the number of counted instances of sexual violence may be higher simply because the patients may consider a broader definition of rape, which the CDC inadvertently adopts by accepting patients’ claims. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) asks very specific questions related to rape that suggest a narrower consideration of circumstances that constitute rape. The BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey 1 asks its participants,
Have you been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by:
(a) Someone you didn’t know before
(b) A casual acquaintance
OR
(c) Someone you know well
The survey does not include the BJS’s definition of rape, or any examples of situations that would fall under its category of “forced or coerced,” “unwanted sexual activity.” Participants may underreport their instances of rape simply because they do not understand which situations fall under this category. The BJS is concerned with counting rape only to understand how many instances of crime are unreported, not to charge a person with the crime or to improve the victim’s health. This led to the simplified, “forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity” definition in its survey. This is radically different from its specific, official definition on its website:
Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object, such as a bottle. Includes attempted rape, male and female victims, and both heterosexual and same sex rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.
Because agencies that define rape have entirely different considerations in their definitions, they utilize different terminology, account for different numbers, and come up with different statistics. Attempting to summarize data from several different agencies will only result in inaccurate data.
References
An Updated Definition of Rape. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape
Branch, J. (2018, April 12). Another Former N.F.L. Cheerleader Files a Complaint. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/sports/football/nfl-cheerleaders.html
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – Rape and Sexual Assault. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317
Definitions|Sexual Violence|Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (2018, April 10). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/definitions.html
Eichelberger, E. (2017, June 25). Men Defining Rape: A History. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/men-defining-rape-history/
Marcotte, A. (2013, January 8). This Rape Infographic Is Going Viral. Too Bad It’s Wrong. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/01/08/the_enliven_project_s_false_rape_accusations_infographic_great_intentions.html
Matthews, D. (2013, January 7). The saddest graph you’ll see today. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/07/the-saddest-graph-youll-see-today/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.88a8618f65b1
NCVS 1 [survey]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs104.pdf
New DOJ Data On Sexual Assaults: Students Are Less Likely To Be Raped. (2014, December 11). Retrieved from http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/11/new-doj-data-on-sexual-assaults-college-students-are-actually-less-likely-to-be-victimized/
NISVS Summary Reports|National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey|Funded Programs|Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (2017, September 25). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/summaryreports.html
Rape statistics. (2018, April 3). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States
The Enliven Project – Sarah Beaulieu. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://sarahbeaulieu.me/the-enliven-project
The Latest: Cosby jury ends Day 1 without a verdict. (2018, April 25). Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/latest-cosby-courthouse-jury-start-deliberations-54717264
Tolentino, J. (2017, June 14). Bill Cosby’s Defense and Its Twisted Argument About Consent. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/bill-cosbys-defense-and-its-twisted-argument-about-consent
Research- Ugandanknuckles
When we think of ways to improve our self-esteem, most people suggest a change of diet, getting a gym membership, or joining a club. Mantras are often dismissed as a fad and are chalked up as just another weird scheme promoted by celebrities that they don’t even care about. In reality, mantras are a self-help tool promoted by the personal-enrichment community that promises to help practitioners to improve their attitude and mood towards their everyday lives. Celebrities dominant in the fields of television such Oprah Winfrey practice mantra usage themselves, and promote it as a way to squash negative thoughts and attitudes towards ourselves. The power of words has been observed for centuries, and modern-day practitioners are just the most recent people to have recognized mantra usage as a way to improve their everyday lives.
Wildmind, a site about Buddhist meditation, defines mantras as “words or phrases that are chanted out loud or internally as objects of meditation.” Many cultures throughout the ages have believed in the power of words whether it be for meditation or for spiritual reasons. The power of words expands beyond just Buddhism, however. Even in modern-day English the connections between magic and words can be found. For instance, the word “spell” can mean both how “to write a word” or “mystic words said to use magic.” Further back in time, the words glamour and grammar share an interesting origin, all based on how words reached and evolved in different parts of Europe. Wildmind states,
Gramma-techne was the Greek term for the science or art of letters. This came into English as the word grammar, but also came in Scots (as “glammer”) to mean “to cast a spell upon”… The word “glammer” was anglicized as “glamour,” and came to have its more contemporary romantic and aesthetic associations, where someone is able to influence us, not by the power of their words, but by the beauty of their appearance.
If we travel to India, words, specifically names, had powers of their own. It was believed that if someone knew the true name of a god, then that person would be able to call upon that god for help. All religions in one form or another see words as powerful. Prayer is found in many religions, and it both uses words to help us ease our minds of something we may want or hope for, and acknowledges the possible existence of a higher power.
Even as kids we acknowledged the existence of power in words. Many of us pretended to be magicians by saying “Abracadabra” while moving our magic wands over our hats, and pulling out an invisible rabbit to the amazement of our parents. Pop culture cultivates new words all the time that have strong meanings. Every few months, there are new, fad words created, and people use them to try and seem cool. Not saying them make us seem like outcasts, and saying old ones make us seem slow.
In the modern era, mantras are popular because of how easy they appear to be. Giovanni Dienstmann, a meditation teacher and coach, helps us to better understand the thought process behind repeating a word or phrase. He says, “Sound is vibration. And all the cells in our bodies are vibrating. Everything in the universe is vibrating, and each has its own rhythm. Our thoughts and feelings are, indeed, vibrations in your body and your consciousness.” He goes on further to claim that it even affects our hormones, thinking, behavior, and our psychological well-being. Dienstmann says,
Sound, rhythm and speech have profound effects on your body, thoughts, and emotions. Mantra meditation is the use of these three elements with the purpose of purifying, pacifying and transforming your mind and heart.
Dienstmann calls mantras “instruments of the mind” that can help us change our body and psyche. For mantras to be effective, we need to focus only on the word or words so that we are no disturbed by other thoughts. Mantras create a peaceful feeling that can be held for as long as we can focus on just the words of the mantra.
According to Dienstmann, the next step is for us to select from the two different types of mantras, secular and spiritual. The secular approach is for those who wish to keep their mantra usage separate from their religion, and is commonly used to try and help someone feel better, relax, or grow as a person. Secular users—following recommendations from TV personalities—often try out several mantras that correspond to attributes they want to instill in themselves. In minutes they can find one that feels right.
The other type, spiritual, is meant to have more meaning. There’s normally a specific religious goal, or something very specific that a person is looking to achieve. Dienstmann recommends picking, “a traditional mantra – a word or sound that has been used by spiritual seekers for centuries, with noble attitude and intention.” The usual origins for a lot of these words come from many middle eastern countries. That said, he insists that the replicating the exact pronunciation and intonation of the word or words is important since there is a specific sound vibration being looked for.
Spiritual mantras feature a more rigorous process to use than secular does. The first step, he says, is to “Find a teacher/master of that tradition – someone you respect – and ask him or her to suggest a mantra for you.” Given that mantras aren’t popular to the common person, this can be a difficult process. Once we’ve found it though, experimentation is key. Rather than trying each one for a few minutes, he insists that we experiment with it for a few days, until we find the one that works best for us. The key difference between secular and spiritual mantras is that we must keep the mantra a secret because “sacred is secret.”
Mantras, as we’ve just learned, are used to help us improve our self-esteem, and to help us improve a chosen quality based on the mantra. Self-esteem is measured on the same scale that was made more than 50 years ago called The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. It features ten questions, and a point scale out of forty, and a higher score means a higher self-esteem. Men and women don’t feel self-esteem in the same way, contrary to popular belief. Most people don’t realize there is another factor that affects how we feel, self-concept.
Self-concept is defined in a study done at Dartmouth University as “the totality of cognitive beliefs that people have about themselves; it is everything that is known about the self, and includes things such as name, race, likes, dislikes, beliefs, values, and appearance descriptions, such as height and weigh.” Self-esteem in itself is defined as “the evaluative aspect of the self-concept that corresponds to an overall view of the self as worthy or unworthy.” The article reasons that low self-esteem is brought on by people having key figures in their lives reject, demean, ignore, or devalue them. Men and women normally gain self-esteem boosts in different ways, too. Females tend to gain self-esteem through positive relationships while males tend to receive self-esteem through objective success.
Now that we know what a mantra is and what they affect, why should we support the use of them? Mantras by themselves can be used to only slight effectiveness, but can be combined with many other activities throughout our days like getting ready for the day, walking the dog, or, for the more active users, yoga or working out. Yoga is especially good for mantra usage because we’re already relaxed. We’re always told that actions speak louder than words, but what happens when you put them together? Richard Wiseman wrote a good article for The Guardian about how positive action can be helpful while mere positive thinking can hinder us.
The article references a study done at the University of California, and it found that students who envisioned themselves getting a good grade on an exam were less likely to get that good grade. They were less proactive in studying and less likely to seek help because they had a finishing point in mind already- a preconceived vision of what their success would be like. This is excellent evidence that we need to focus on the now, be in the moment, and take actions to help improve ourselves.
While a mantra alone would be moderately useful, Wiseman suggests taking it a step further and that physical action is necessary to improve our emotions and wellbeing. He cites a a study done by Iris Hung at the National University of Singapore as an example of how muscle movements can be effective.
Studies led by Iris Hung from the National University of Singapore had volunteers visit a local cafeteria and asked them to try to avoid temptation and not buy sugary snacks. Some of the volunteers were asked to make their hand into a fist or contract their biceps, and thus behave as if they were more motivated. Amazingly, this simple exercise made people far more likely to buy healthy food.
That’s just one tiny movement that made those people resist temptation. Yoga stretches your whole body, and mantras hit our minds making for a fully body vessel of focus and motivation.
Ellen Langer, a psychologist at Harvard, conducted an outlandish experiment in 1979 on a group men who were over in their 70s. She tested many of their physical attributes like strength, eyesight, memory, and posture, and then encouraged them to act as if they were 20 years younger for the rest of the week while at a retreat. They were treated as if they were 50 years younger as well, and had little to no help going throughout their days. Within the week, the men started to show improvement, and some even dropped the use of their walking sticks. Acting as if they were 20 years younger helped them to feel younger, physically.
Mantras work in a similar way. To most, the different words have no meaning, so knowing the meaning of the words is important to effective mantra use. An article by the popular site, Sunnyray, defines the meaning of the different popular mantras. The one everyone thinks about right away is “aum.” Aum stands for the three different different levels of consciousness. “A” stands for walking, “u” stands for dreaming, and “m” stands for deep-sleep.
Another popular mantra is “Aum Namah Shivaya.” Since we already know what Aum stands for, Namah stands for respect, and Shivaya stands for God. It’s meant to ask god to bring help bring peace to the user. One popular mantra that’s an absolute mouthful is “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare.” It’s sixteen words long, and all three words are different words for God. One mantra that has been recently made popular is “I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.” It is taken from Hawaiian tradition, and is considered the most popular among new members to the mantra using group.
There are many who oppose mantras altogether, and they bring up a good point. To many, the biggest issue with mantras is that they are ineffective and limited only to the chosen few who devote their lives to it. A study done by The University of Waterloo and The University of New Brunswick is in support of that idea as it says,
…present results suggest that for certain people, positive self-statements may be not only ineffective, but actually detrimental. When people with low self-esteem repeated the statement, ‘I’m a lovable person,’ or focused on ways in which this statement was true of them, neither their feelings about themselves nor their moods improved—they got worse. Positive self-statements seemed to provide a boost only to people with high self-esteem—those who ordinarily feel good about themselves already—and that boost was small.”
Scientific proof of this common claim is enough for most people to shut out mantras completely, but this concern is flawed as it was never argued that mantras would work for just anyone. Also, mantras are more than just saying a basic statement of “I’m a lovable person,” as most would seem to believe it is.
Mantras are made to work for people who have high self-clarity. Self-clarity is defined by Melissa Dahl as, “how well we know our own strengths and weaknesses, as well as our ability to accept them.” This is where most people run into trouble. They think that self-esteem is the key. For the most part, self-esteem is overrated. Melissa Dahl, a writer for the New York Times, states that,
…high self-esteem inflates your ego, which can make the reality of how others see you harder to bear. With high self-clarity, though, you can see and accept yourself much more easily–even your flaws. But this form of self-acceptance doesn’t leave you there, gaping at your imperfections.
Boosting our self-clarity is important to using mantras because we need to be in-tune with ourselves. We have to have a good understanding of who we are on the inside before we can look introspectively for positive energy and power. Self-clarity can be learned through embracing mistakes we have made, and realizing that everyone makes mistakes. Changing ones’s philosophy from that of a pessimist to that of a optimist isn’t necessary, but looking at things from a neutral standpoint rather than a negative one is key.
Mantras harness the power of sound, and Gabriel Axel wrote a great article on how sound affects the body on October 2, 2013, in the US News Website. Different sounds have different meanings, such as a car screeching to a halt followed by a crashing sound is connected with an accident and all that entails. Axel states that the word mantra is Sanskrit for “sound tool,” and that many languages evolved to include onomatopoeia to make use of the movement of energy through those words.
This evocation is qualitative and subjective and is linked with interoception (inner body sensations) and emotional sense of self, both predominantly represented in the right hemisphere of the brain. Conversely, the narrative strand of sounds in which we give them meaning is done predominantly through the left hemisphere.
Sound itself, from a physics standpoint, will resonate in different parts of the body and mind before it is assigned a meaning. The different areas where the sound resonates can make us feel different emotions, or remember old memories. Feelings and effects will vary from person to person, but the best effects are found in people who know themselves. The better the condition of the body and mind, the better the outcome. People who become well versed in mantra usage can eventually not even have to use their voices because the feelings produced by their voice can be replicated through their thoughts alone.
If my arguments still haven’t convinced you, then at least let me convince you of the power of sound. Buddha Weekly wrote a good article about the science of mantras, how they work with and without faith, and how they effect the environment. In the medicinal field, mantra usage has been found to be beneficial to people with PTSD. The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science states that patients experienced,
lowered levels of tension; slower heart rate, decreased blood pressure, lower oxygen consumption, and increased alpha wave production. The benefits experienced in 20 minutes of meditation exceed those of deep sleep, thus indicating the regenerative power of meditation and saving of wear and tear on the body.
Chanting and other self-created noises have been found to help oxygenate and synchronize the right and left sides of the brain, reduce our heart rate and blood pressure, and calm brainwave activity.
Researchers attribute a large portion of the benefit of mantras and chanting to sound’s effect on water. Maseru Emoto, a researcher, published his findings in the peer reviewed journal, Journal of Scientific Exploration. He photographically demonstrated the effects that mantras had on water. Negative sounds and thoughts created common and negative ice formations, while positive sounds and thoughts created rare and positive formations. His work is commonly debated, but most researchers agree that sound can positively and negatively impact humans (who are made up mostly of water).
Many people have their own tales of how mantras have helped them. Lori Majewski, a contributing writer to the website Sonima, states that Oprah herself turned her onto the idea of using mantras. She finds that we hear mantras all around us, and don’t even know it. Happy little notes posted on our fridges and songs like “Let it go” are filled with mantras that we use each day, and nobody ever realizes it.
At first, she found that her use of mantras was clunky, and she didn’t really get it at first. Persistence is key though, and slowly but surely she was able to start finding the usefulness in them. She as well cites their usage in yoga being a staple with a lot of instructors. “You’re doing a mini-meditation when you’re saying a mantra,” says Psychologist Vanessa Pawlowski, Psy.D.. “When we are feeling flooded by obtrusive thoughts, it gives us something we can hold on to.” Mantras are everywhere, and we all use them whether we realize it or not, and it’s there that their true effectiveness shows. The unconscious, not the conscious.
References
Axel, Gabriel. “Your Brain on Om: The Science of Mantra.” US News, 2 Oct. 2013, 11:27, health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2013/10/02/your-brain-on-om-the-science-of-mantra.
Bodhipaksa. “Mantra Meditation.” Wildmind Buddhist Meditation, 2006, http://www.wildmind.org/mantras.
Breeze, S. (2016). The Meaning of World’s Most Popular Mantras. Retrieved April, 2018, from http://www.sunnyray.org/The-meaning-of-the-most-popular-mantras.htm
Dienstmann, George. “Mantra Meditation – The Why, the How, and the Methods.” Live and Dare, 2 Feb. 2018, liveanddare.com/mantra-meditation
Heatherton, T., & Wyland, C. L. (2003). Assessing self-esteem. In S. J. Lopez & C. R.
Snyder (Eds.), Positive psychological assessment: A handbook of models and measures
(pp. 219–233). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
Horton, A. P. (2018, February 16). Positive Self-Esteem Is Overrated, Here’s What You Need Instead. Retrieved March 17, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/40531879/positive-self-esteem-is-overrated-heres-what-you-need-instead
Majewski, L. (2018, March 05). 9 Empowering Mantras to Shift Your Mindset. Retrieved February, from http://www.sonima.com/meditation/mantras/
Pham, L. B., & Taylor, S. E. (1999, February 1). From Thought to Action: Effects of Process-Versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance. Retrieved April, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167299025002010
The Science of Mantras: Mantras Work With or Without Faith; Research Supports the Effectiveness of Sanskrit Mantra for Healing – and Even Environmental Transformation. (2017, March 05). Retrieved March 23, 2018, from https://buddhaweekly.com/science-mantras-mantras-work-without-faith-research-supports-effectiveness-sanskrit-mantra-healing-even-environmental-transformation/
Wiseman, R. (2012, June 30). Self help: Try positive action, not positive thinking. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jun/30/self-help-positive-thinking
Wood, J. V., Perunovic, W. E., & Lee, J. W. (2009). Positive Self-Statements. Psychological Science, 20(7), 860-866. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02370.x
Research – PaulaJean
From the beginning of time, women have been looked at as inferior to men in one way or another. As the stereotypes slowly diminish, people still find themselves with certain thoughts towards females, whether they are one or not.
Women are strong and independent, but this does not make them immune to expectancy bias and stereotype threat. As extremely emotional beings, women may be seen as weak. And when emotion overrides logic, they can be seen as unintelligent. Although being emotional is nowhere near a bad characteristic, some stereotypes can make society think otherwise. Some of these attributes may not be prevalent in a woman’s head all the time, but there are ways that they can be triggered into becoming entertained.
Expectancy bias is a simple yet interesting concept. Say a sibling “never does anything wrong”, so when the mother sees the broken lamp, she automatically assumes it was the other sibling and grounds them, when it was really the other sibling. The mother expects it to be the other child being that the other one usually is well behaved. An expectation can really control the way we perceive and believe things.
Josh Aronson, a New York University professor, has done multiple studies based around expectancy bias and stereotype threat. A study was done with high school students who were taking an AP calculus test. They were split up in to two different groups. One group was asked to confirm their gender before the test and the other afterwards. “Females who received the gender inquiry before the test scored an average AP Formula Score of 12.5, while males scored an average of 16.5. In the groups that received the gender inquiry after the test, females scored an average of 15, while males scored an average of 14.” (Anderson, 2011) Aronson’s study really sheds light on the importance of what we say and how.
In another study by John Bargh, a social psychologist at Yale University, he had NYU undergraduate students rearrange words into a sentence. The words appeared to be random, but they were not at all. “They were words like “bingo” and “Florida,” “knits” and “wrinkles,” “bitter” and “alone.” Reading the list, you can almost picture a stooped senior padding around a condo, complaining at the television. A control group unscrambled words that evoked no theme.” (Bartlett, 2013) After these students rearranged the words, there was a woman outside who appeared to be waiting for a meeting. She had a stopwatch hidden under her coat and timed how long it took for the subjects to get from outside the door to a specific spot marked by tape on the ground. The words above lead the subjects walk slower than the control group.
Just the words that were used resulted in people actually walking a different pace than normal. Knowing now that just the collection of words said changed a person’s actions, society should be careful with how they speak to people. For example, a proctor may say something that does not mean to be discouraging, but it could turn out to really affect the way a person takes a test.
This concept is demonstrated in multiple studies done by Steven J. Spencer, Claude M. Steele, and Diana M. Quinn. These individuals were interested in stereotype threats and women. More specifically, they wanted to see how different variables effected women and their performance on varying math tests. Within their research, there were three different studies done. The first study involved twenty-eight women and twenty-eight men who were introductory psychology students at the University of Michigan. There were also other criteria that needed to be met to be considered for this study. “All participants were required to have completed at least one semester (but not more than a year) of calculus and to have received a grade of ‘‘B’’ or better. They also were required to have scored above the 85th percentile on the math subsection of the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) or the ACT (American College Test).”
The first study involved the subjects taking a math test. They took either an easier test or a more difficult one, not knowing which one they were taking. This was to compare women’s and men’s scores on both levels of difficulty. Comparing these scores can show whether or not stereotype threat is present and if women are just not as intelligent as men. The tests were given on a computer to compare time and effort and see if that had anything to do with the results. In the first study, women did just as well as men on the easier test, but did significantly worse on the harder test. Although these students were selected carefully and are very sufficient in mathematics, the thought in the back of the women’s mind altered the way they took the test.
The second study was designed to see if mentioning that the exam is gender sensitive would effect the scores. They wrote a statement for the students to see before taking the test. This statement was put in place to see if mentioning the stereotypes will effect the results from the first study.
“As you may know there has been some controversy about whether there are gender differences in math ability. Previous research has sometimes shown gender differences and sometimes shown no gender differences. Yet little of this research has been carried out with women and men who are very good in math. You were selected for this experiment because of your strong background in mathematics.” (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999)
After reading this and taking the test, women averaged significantly less than they did in the first study, making the men the higher scorers in both studies so far. These results lead the experimenters to conclude that stereotype threat can most definitely lower a women’s score. In the third study, they had less highly selected subjects from a different college. The test given in this study was on paper and slightly easier than the tests from the first and second study. Before taking this test, they were asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate evaluation comprehension, self-efficacy, and anxiety. One group of subjects was told there are no gender-differences on this test and the control group was not told anything about gender and how it relates to performance on math and science exams. The subjects who were told there are no differences came up with interesting results. The women did better in this group than they did in the control group. Men beat out the women in the control group as they did in the first two studies. Additionally, men actually did worse when told that there were no gender differences. Stereotype threat is everywhere and can always be altered.
“How Stereotypes Can Drive Women Away From Science,” by Shankar Vedantam is another article that proves stereotype threat in women is very real in the math or science field. Toni Schmader and Matthias Mehl are two experimenters who studied women and men at work. These subjects are math professors and were wired with a recording device while at work. The main thing Mehl was trying to record was the interaction between the female and male colleagues. This study was prompted by the fact that women are not only less likely to go in the science field, but less likely to stick with it. Women drop out of this type of career at a much higher rate then the male scientists.
The recording devices recorded 30 seconds of audio every 12 minutes. This was a good size sample for analyzing random and casual conversations between colleagues.
Mehl and Schmader immediately proved one stereotype wrong. They debunked the common thought that women talk a great deal more than men. “When Mehl actually measured how many words men and women speak each day, he found there was practically no difference — both men and women speak around 17,000 words a day, give or take a few hundred.” (Vedantam, 2012)
They also found that the more self conscious or worried a women was about whether or not a man (who they were conversing with) held the stereotype about women not being as competent in this particular field, the more incompetent they sounded.
When a woman spoke to another woman, they were fully engaged no matter what the topic was. Meanwhile, when a woman spoke to a man about work or research they were greatly disengaged. Though they could speak to males about other topics and be just as engaged as they would with another woman. Women who focus on the stereotype end up falling into the stereotype threat trap. They do not realize that their fear of not living up to expectations or their fear of being a stereotype, actually makes them a part of the stereotype.
A huge thing that goes along with discussing stereotype threat is talking about how to completely eliminate it from classrooms and work places. Anybody can be (and probably is) effected by stereotype threat. Promoting a growth mindset is very important. Making mistakes and thinking out loud should be encouraged and should be taken as chances to learn more. Effective feedback is also something that should be considered in classrooms everywhere. Most feedback is short and not helpful to some students and even demeaning. Effective feedback includes reassurance and shows areas where improvement is suggested. Teachers who call on students less and give them easier problems are making the stereotypes real. They are subliminally causing students to stop believing in themselves and causing them to be comfortable with the easy material rather than challenging themselves and learning. The threshold of leaning and retaining new material will never be met by keeping students discouraged or at a lower level just because they do not want to put in the extra work. Finally, creating a sense of belonging in the classroom like sharing experiences (anonymously or not) could help students feel more as one rather than a single stereotype that they do not even want to try to disprove.
Other factors outside of school that will eliminate stereotype threat could be having more women in the scientific field, mentioning that everybody has the same abilities when it pertains to gender, race, and/or ethnicity, and getting rid of the questions before the test that ask the students to confirm their gender or race.
Having more women in the field will make the other women more comfortable. The more women, the more validating it is for each female individual. As seen in the Mehl and Schmader study, women are more engaged when talking to women no matter what the topic is than when they were talking to men. Before a test or task, teachers or proctors should mention that everybody has a chance of doing good (no matter the demographics). Hearing this could give anybody more confidence, male/female, black/white, etc.. The questions before standardized tests that ask to confirm gender, race, and ethnicity actually make students who are effect by stereotype threat struggle more. Eliminating these or moving them to the end will create a more comfortable and fair for everybody.
Evidence even shows that stereotype threat can not only inhibit performance but also prevents people from learning new things. In a study done by , , , and
They also found that where the stereotype that women are not as good at math is where the women’s math performance is lower.
Women today are so much more than a stereotype. The fact that women are basically living their lives due to a false thought placed inside their heads by society is absolutely mind baffling. Stereotype threat is everywhere around us and the ways to prevent it are so simple.
Reference
Bartlett, T. (2013, January 30). Power of Suggestion. Retrieved April 18, 2018, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Power-of-Suggestion/136907
Expectancy Bias. Retrieved April 18, 2018, from https://psychlopedia.wikispaces.com/Expectancy Bias
Reducing Stereotype Threat. Retrieved from http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/resources/inclusive-teaching-learning/reducing-stereotype- threat/
Rydell, R. J., Shiffrin, R. M., Boucher, K. L., Loo, K. V., & Rydell, M. T. (2010, August 10). Stereotype threat prevents perceptual learning. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/107/32/14042
Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. (1999). Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35(1), 4-28. doi:10.1006/jesp.1998.1373
Vedantam, S. (2012, July 12). How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156664337/stereotype-threat-why-women-quit-science -jobs
Why Stereotype Threat Keeps Girls Out of Math and Science, and What to Do About It. (2011, June 01). Retrieved April 18, 2018, from http://theglasshammer.com/2011/06/01/why-stereotype-threat-keeps-girls-out-of-math-and-science-and-what-to-do-about-it/
Visual Rhetoric- Nreina34
0:00-0:05 There is a large open room and instantly a dog runs into the screen. He is a medium sized beige dog with beige short fur and has big eyes with brown floppy ears. He seems very excited, his tail is wagging very fast and his mouth hangs open, as if something is about to happen. He skips to the center and looks at the camera and nudges his face forward. But is abruptly stopped by a wall that the audience cannot see, there is a glass wall between the dog and the camera. His mouth closes in confusion, he is taken off guard by the barrier. The dog looks to the side as his ears raise in suspicion and then runs away to the left as if something had distracted him, just leaving only an empty room. The walls are grey, but it does not show the whole room just a section of it.
0:05-0:09 The dog now runs back from the left and then stands in the middle of the room as his tail still wagging and you can see that he is panting, he is still very excited. He seems as if he just wants to play but is lonely. The dog then looks into the camera with a sort of a look of disappointment and then bolts to the right and out of our sight, leaving just an empty room again.
0:10-0:19 The pup runs back into the picture and to the center of the screen, in the same spot where he hit his nose and sits down facing the audience. The dog then takes his paw and bangs it on the glass twice, mimicking a prisoner in a jail cell wishing for an escape. The expression on the dog’s face changes during this, he looks confused and distraught. Then, he looks off to the left quickly but almost instantly back at you, but hesitates for a second before sprinting to the left and gone. When the dog looked back at person watching, it is almost as if he doesn’t want to run away but then ends up going.
0:19-0:23 The jumps jogs back into the room from the left side and stands in the middle of the room towards the audience and pauses. He then jumps once up in the air as if he is having the time of his life running around and having a good time, clearly happy about something.
0:23-0:28 The next thing to happen are bold letters appear on the back wall saying “There’s a shelter pet who wants to meet you”. At the same time, the dog appears on the bottom at the screen smiling at you, looking very content and of course, still wagging his tail. At the end the dog gives you a look for help one more time before running out for the last time.
Rebuttal Argument- Nreina34
My Worthy Opponent is Wrong
Rebuttal Argument: Police officers are not allowed to make mistakes
A main rebuttal argument to my thesis here is that police officers are not allowed to make mistakes which is in fact, a very controversial topic in today’s society. But, what most people do not realize is that they are people too, nobody is perfect. There are going to be times in our lives that we make the wrong decision and it is just something that is apart of life. We learn from our mistakes and gain knowledge from the experiences as we go through life and grow up. Actually, there are rules that back policemen and the people for mistakes made by law enforcement. The Exclusionary Rule is a legal rule tied to the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution. In an article published by the Legal Information Institute it states, “The decision in Mapp v. Ohio established that the exclusionary rule applies to evidence gained from an unreasonable search or seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment”. This both protects the officer and the defendant by freeing of them of their mistakes from this situation. The officer would probably be disciplined accordingly for violating a constitutional right and at the end of the day the officer made a mistake and they’ll learn from it. This also protects the person because they are freed of the possible charges that would have been brought upon them, the law enforcement violated their rights and they were compensated for it. As you can see, rules are even set in place for the mistakes law enforcement makes because we know that they happen. It is an ignorant statement to say a person can be trained to the extent that they will never make another mistake in their life, police officers are people too and they need to start getting treated like one.
Works Cited
Carlson, David. “Exclusionary Rule.” LII / Legal Information Institute, 22 June 2017, www.law.cornell.edu/wex/exclusionary_rule
Research – picklerick
Reading more nonfiction literature is a fantastic way to sharpen your brain. This sounds obvious, but so many people have the wrong idea when it comes to fiction vs. nonfiction. When one reads informational text, it requires careful attention and effort to be fully comprehended. Whereas when fiction or science fiction is being read, it’s likely being read purely for pleasure.
There are, of course, exceptions to this. Plenty of people may read fiction with excellent focus and attention to detail. The thing is, these people are missing out on the immense amount of knowledge and understanding of the world that nonfiction junkies get to experience. Those who just read books for fun can stick to whatever they want to read, but those who are trying to get real, practical benefits from their reading should always lean toward nonfiction.
Public schooling often fails to teach the proper way to close read text. According to Ness (2011), students are struggling with close reading at an increasing rate. A few factors play into this. Kids in elementary school through high school are often given assignments where they’re asked to independently read and log a brief description of what they read in a reading journal. This sounds like a simple and reliable way to get kids into reading. In reality, though, this form of reading assignment gives adolescents major apprehension towards reading and is often the reason why they are so turned off to reading by the time they get to highschool. When kids feel forced to read, they won’t want to. This is why many schools need to rethink the way they’re teaching kids to read by focusing heavily the basics of close reading.
Caitlin Dakin states, in her thesis paper, “It is essential in today’s educational world that teachers begin to transform their classroom instruction of fiction literature into short informational complex texts to give the students the opportunity to meet the demands of the common core learning standards.” Read what you will, but be aware of how much benefit you are really getting from your reading.
Books are really just another form of media. There may be obvious physical differences between these medias, but at their baselines they are both delivery methods for a story. People often feel as if a hobby of reading is something that has higher acclaim than a hobby of watching TV or movies. Film has its perks though. For example, a screen can deliver language as well as picture, whereas a book will only give you the language. This may make it more difficult to get an idea of the mood of a piece of writing. Whereas, in a movie, you can see the the emotion on the face of each actor and often hear it in the music.
This is not to say reading is worse than film, as there are many benefits to reading as well. Books will often present an internal dialogue of its characters. Whereas, in television, only the exterior motives are shown. Also, reading will improve one’s vocabulary. Anyone who reads often will probably come across words that they do not know very well. This causes them to make inferences about the meanings, thus improving their ability to interpret words.
Both reading and film have wonderful benefits, including improvement of knowledge, empathy, and vocabulary. But too much of anything is bad. There is a growing problem of adults staying sedentary for too long. A study by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) concluded that an average of 60% of adults’ waking hours are spent sedentary (Matthews). This is detrimental to our health because without an active lifestyle, your whole body slows down. In his manuscript, “Too Much sitting: The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behavior,” Neville Owens suggests, “Canadians who reported spending the majority of their day sitting had significantly poorer long-term mortality outcomes than did those who reported that they spent less time sitting.” It may sound appealing to sit down these medias all day. But it’s always important to watch how much time is spend on these activities.
The well-intentioned strategy of allowing students to choose their own reading material most often fails. To pad their grades, unambitious students choose easy-readers below their achieved comprehension level, while go-getters overreach, sacrificing the comprehension they need. As Mark Pennington puts the case in his article on the Pennington Publishing Blog, “Students often choose books with reading levels far below or far above own their reading levels and so do not experience optimal reading growth.” One approach to this issue is for teachers who want students to enjoy reading to let them select their own material from a list of grade-appropriate choices. This gives the students moderate choice without risk of jeopardizing learning. To encourage them to read what they enjoy, teachers can permit students to nominate new material for the list.
A better way to help these kids develop their reading skills is to assign them books that the teachers have already read. This ensures the teacher’s ability to guide their students down the right path. Another way to aid students is to teach them how to close read. Close reading is a form of reading in which the reader carefully analyzes a text in order to gain maximum comprehension from it. It shows kids how to truly read a text, rather than just skimming through it. It is an essential skill for all people, and should be juiced in classrooms of all levels for its benefits.
The best way to teach these students how to properly close read is to assign them short, nonfiction texts that challenge their ability to analyze, comprehend, and make inferences. Both the teacher and the student should analyze a reading passage and examine it for details, some of which include understanding how the text works, the author’s message, providing text evidence to support thoughts and predictions the reader is developing, and making connections between the reader and the text itself (Shanahan, 2012). As long as these methods are carried out properly, students will have the reading skills necessary to make them more successful and intelligent.
References
Amanda Christy Brown and Katherine Schulten. (2012, December 13). Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/fiction-or-nonfiction-considering-the-common-cores-emphasis-on-informational-text/
Bartlett, B. (2014, June 20). 4 Bad Side Effects of Reading Fiction According to the 19th Century. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-bartlett/4-bad-side-effects-of-rea_b_5513451.html
Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.
https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=education_ETD_masters
Goodwin, B., & Miller, K. (n.d.). Research Says / Nonfiction Reading Promotes Student Success. Retrieved April 17, 2018, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec12/vol70/num04/Nonfiction-Reading-Promotes-Student-Success.aspx
Is fiction good for you? How researchers are trying to find out. (2016, July 19). Retrieved April 17, 2018, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160719131334.htm
Matthews, C. E., Chen, K. Y., Freedson, P. S., Buchowski, M. S., Beech, B. M., Pate, R. R., & Troiano, R. P. (2008). Amount of Time Spent in Sedentary Behaviors in the United States, 2003-2004. American Journal of Epidemiology, 167(7), 875-881. doi:10.1093/aje/kwm390
Owen, N., Healy, G. N., Matthews, C. E., & Dunstan, D. W. (2010). Too Much Sitting. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews,38(3), 105-113. doi:10.1097/jes.0b013e3181e373a2
Pennington Publishing Blog. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2018, from http://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/reading/why-sustained-silent-reading-ssr-doesnt-work/
Shanahan, T. (2012). What is close reading? Retrieved from
http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/06/what-is-close-reading.html
http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/06/what-is-close-reading.html
Strauss, V. (2014, September 08). Why kids should choose their own books to read in school. Retrieved March 17, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/08/why-kids-should-choose-their-own-books-to-read-in-school/?utm_term=.a1d60b23343c
Definition Rewrite – picklerick
Books are really just another form of media. There may be obvious physical differences between these medias, but at their baselines they are both delivery methods for a story. People often feel as if a hobby of reading is something that has higher acclaim than a hobby of watching TV or movies. Film has its perks though. For example, a screen can deliver language as well as picture, whereas a book will only give you the language. This may make it more difficult to get an idea of the mood of a piece of writing. Whereas, in a movie, you can see the the emotion on the face of each actor and often hear it in the music.
This is not to say reading is worse than film, as there are many benefits to reading as well. Books will often present an internal dialogue of its characters. Whereas, in television, only the exterior motives are shown. Also, reading will improve one’s vocabulary. Anyone who reads often will probably come across words that they do not know very well. This causes them to make inferences about the meanings, thus improving their ability to interpret words.
Both reading and film have wonderful benefits, including improvement of knowledge, empathy, and vocabulary. But too much of anything is bad. There is a growing problem of adults staying sedentary for too long. A study by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) concluded that an average of 60% of adults’ waking hours are spent sedentary (Matthews). This is detrimental to our health because without an active lifestyle, your whole body slows down. In his manuscript, “Too Much sitting: The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behavior,” Neville Owens suggests, “Canadians who reported spending the majority of their day sitting had significantly poorer long-term mortality outcomes than did those who reported that they spent less time sitting.” It may sound appealing to sit down these medias all day. But it’s always important to watch how much time is spend on these activities.
References
Owen, N., Healy, G. N., Matthews, C. E., & Dunstan, D. W. (2010). Too Much Sitting. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, 38(3), 105-113. doi:10.1097/jes.0b013e3181e373a2
Matthews, C. E., Chen, K. Y., Freedson, P. S., Buchowski, M. S., Beech, B. M., Pate, R. R., & Troiano, R. P. (2008). Amount of Time Spent in Sedentary Behaviors in the United States, 2003-2004. American Journal of Epidemiology, 167(7), 875-881. doi:10.1093/aje/kwm390
Definition Rewrite-Dohertyk9
In America alone, another instance of sexual violence occurs every few minutes. Astonishingly, as reported by The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), which was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Approximately 1 in 5 women in the U.S. (19.1% or an estimated 22,992,000 women) experienced rape at some point in life.” This stems from, among other things, a lack of understanding as to what rape is, because no one knows what it is.
In the article, “The Latest: Cosby jury ends Day 1 without a verdict” by the Associated Press, the jury asks the judge what consent is:
The jury returned to a suburban Philadelphia courtroom less than two hours into its deliberations to ask for the legal definition of consent. Judge Steve O’Neill said he wasn’t able to answer it, telling jurors they’ve already been given the definitions of the charges they are considering.
It’s frightening to consider that even judges, the people we put in charge of determining criminal charges, don’t know what consent is. Although rape has existed since the beginning of humanity, and continues to exist worldwide, it does not have a standard, universal definition. Even within one country, and within the same system of government, the definition varies.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics defines rape as,
Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object, such as a bottle. Includes attempted rape, male and female victims, and both heterosexual and same sex rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.
The FBI’s definition of rape as defined by the Department of Justice is,
Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website defines “sexual violence,”
Sexual violence is defined as a sexual act committed against someone without that person’s freely given consent.
These are only a few of the myriad of existing definitions, but they illustrate just how different rape is based on the agency that is considering it. The Bureau of Justice Statistics defines rape to provide a count for the number of instances a crime has occurred. The FBI defines rape to explain under what circumstances a crime has been committed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define rape to provide better assistance to their patients. It would be difficult to argue that any one of these definitions is wrong, because there is no proof of a “right” definition. It is not the responsibility of simple observers of this phenomenon to provide the “right” definition.
Governments have struggled with the question of how to define rape since their beginning. In around 1780 B.C., laws stated that rape of a virgin was property damage against her father. In 1290, women who became pregnant from rape were not raped. In the 1300s, whether or not a woman was raped was affected by how promiscuous the woman was; a sexually active woman’s charges were less legitimate. After the 1300s, girls younger than 12 could not consent. In 1670, it was concluded that a man can legally rape his wife, because the marriage contract forfeited his wife’s right to consent. In 1814, it was decided once again that rape could be determined by pregnancy. In the 19th century, it was agreed that if the woman did not actively resist her rapist, she was not raped.
More inclusive definitions of rape have been created over time; the FBI’s definition listed above, for example, is an update from a older and less encompassing definition. Yet despite having a myriad of more inclusive definitions, we are still far from perfect in determining what sexual contexts can be characterized by these definitions. This is clear in the case of Bill Cosby’s retrial for the alleged sexual assault of Andrea Constand. The article, “Bill Cosby’s Defense and Its Twisted Argument About Consent,” by Jia Tolentino, states,
Everyone agrees that, on the night in question, Cosby invited Constand over to his home; that he gave her three pills; that he digitally penetrated her without obtaining any sort of affirmative consent; that he left her passed-out body on the couch and went to bed.
This case is demonstrative of the power of terminology; according to the FBI’s definition, this situation is clearly rape: “Penetration, no matter how slight…without the consent of the victim.” Yet the entire argument of Cosby’s defense is not that he did not commit this act, but rather that it was in a “romantic” context, that Constand was lying as to the nature of her and Cosby’s relationship, that there was full consent given in the situation in question. However, regardless of whether or not the relationship was romantic, Constand was unconscious at the time of the penetration and therefore could not give consent, which is rape by all three aforementioned definitions above. The refusal to call the situation what it was according to the definitions of several reputable sources-rape-has allowed Cosby’s defense to formulate an argument that is at best absurd and at worst completely wrong. However, the nature of the definition of rape is that it will always be different based on who is defining it. If the legal system rules that in romantic contexts, penetration of an unconscious partner is in fact consensual, the system has merely created another definition of rape, which cannot be considered wrong, only different. In such a case, if Cosby could prove that his relationship with Constand was “romantic,” he would be innocent of that definition of rape.
Another case, that of former NFL cheerleader Kristan Ware, illustrates this same confusion of terminology that leads to ambiguity in consent. It is never specifically outlined that to be an NFL cheerleader, a girl must be open to sexual objectification, sexual harassment and molestation. Yet the situation of Kristan Ware conveys that our culture expects just that; the article “Another Former N.F.L. Cheerleader Files a Complaint,” by John Branch, states,
Ware said some Dolphins cheerleading coaches mocked her after other cheerleaders learned that she was a virgin, planning to wait for marriage to have sex. At a 2016 rehearsal for a fashion show at which cheerleaders modeled bikinis, Ware claims, she was dressed with angel wings — something Ware believes was a poke at her virginity — and then physically grabbed and verbally harangued by Grogan as she exited the runway.
If this response is expected, accepted even, then the NFL should create its own definition of consent. This new definition would state something similar to, “In accepting the job of cheerleader in the NFL, a female consents to the receipt of all forms of sexual language and sexual touching.”
Granted, the definitions created in this paper would likely never be adopted by any institution, but they serve to demonstrate how even the most clear situations can be skewed with unclear language. Because the legal system has not altered the definition of rape to exclude “romantic contexts,” it should be clear that by the existing scholarly definitions, Cosby has committed rape, yet actors in the criminal justice system still struggle with their determinations. It should also be clear that because the NFL has no contract explicitly stating that cheerleaders consent to “sexual language and sexual touching,” Ware’s case was one of illegal sexual harassment. Unfortunately, the number of definitions of consent and rape in existence serve to further confuse an already difficult concept.
References
An Updated Definition of Rape. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape
Branch, J. (2018, April 12). Another Former N.F.L. Cheerleader Files a Complaint. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/sports/football/nfl-cheerleaders.html
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – Rape and Sexual Assault. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317
Definitions|Sexual Violence|Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (2018, April 10). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/definitions.html
Eichelberger, E. (2017, June 25). Men Defining Rape: A History. Retrieved April 16, 2018, from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/men-defining-rape-history/
NISVS Summary Reports|National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey|Funded Programs|Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (2017, September 25). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/summaryreports.html
The Latest: Cosby jury ends Day 1 without a verdict. (2018, April 25). Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/latest-cosby-courthouse-jury-start-deliberations-54717264
Tolentino, J. (2017, June 14). Bill Cosby’s Defense and Its Twisted Argument About Consent. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/bill-cosbys-defense-and-its-twisted-argument-about-consent
Rebuttal Rewrite-Dohertyk9
Rape has existed since the beginning of humanity, and continues to exist worldwide. Yet despite having existed for so long, and in so many locations, it does not have a standard, universal definition. Even within the same country, with the same government, the definition varies. There is so much disparity in the definition of consent, and therefore the definition of rape, that no one’s statistics are worthwhile. The statistics cannot be compared for this reason.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would argue that it can accurately and reliably account for 1.3 million incidents of “sexual violence,” which it defines as “a sexual act committed against someone without that person’s freely given consent.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website even outlines a number of specific circumstances that fall under its definition of “sexual violence,” namely:
Completed or attempted forced penetration of a victim, Completed or attempted alcohol/drug-facilitated penetration of a victim, Completed or attempted forced acts in which a victim is made to penetrate a perpetrator or someone else, Completed or attempted alcohol/drug-facilitated acts in which a victim is made to penetrate a perpetrator or someone else, Non-physically forced penetration which occurs after a person is pressured verbally or through intimidation or misuse of authority to consent or acquiesce, Unwanted sexual contact, Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences.
This definition is clear and indisputable; instances of sexual violence can easily be determined on its basis. Statistics can be generated based on the rape counted by this definition.
But the clarity of the definition isn’t the problem; the problem is that there are many more definitions than this one by the CDC. Each definition is just as likely to be reliable when compared to itself, but equally unreliable when compared to others. Any data that sums up rape and draws conclusions using a variety of different sources is inaccurate, because the different sources are not even counting the same thing. CDC’s “sexual violence” is different than the FBI’s “forcible rape,” or simply “rape,” which is also different from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ “Forced sexual intercourse.” An additional problem arises when people attempt to count the CDC’s 1.3 million incidents of “sexual violence” as rape and compare it as such; the CDC includes in its definition instances of “unwanted sexual contact” that may not require penetration, which makes it astronomically different than the BJS’s and the FBI’s definitions. Wikipedia explains the problem in its own terms even as it reports rape data in its article titled “Rape Statistics,”
Inconsistent definitions of rape, different rates of reporting, recording, prosecution and conviction for rape create controversial statistical disparities, and lead to accusations that many rape statistics are unreliable or misleading. In some jurisdictions, male-female rape is the only form of rape counted in the statistics. Countries may not define forced sex on a spouse as “rape.”
The disparity in definitions often results from differences among agencies. The CDC is concerned with defining rape as it relates to public health, while the FBI is concerned with defining rape in relation to crime. If patients report rape to the CDC seeking medical attention, the CDC is unlikely to discount the patients’ claims of rape. Thus, the number of counted instances of sexual violence may be higher simply because the patients may consider a broader definition of rape, which the CDC inadvertently adopts by accepting patients’ claims. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) asks very specific questions related to rape that suggest a narrower consideration of circumstances that constitute rape. The BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey 1 asks its participants,
Have you been forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity by:
(a) Someone you didn’t know before
(b) A casual acquaintance
OR
(c) Someone you know well
The survey does not include the BJS’s definition of rape, or any examples of situations that would fall under its category of “forced or coerced,” “unwanted sexual activity.” Participants may underreport their instances of rape simply because they do not understand what situations fall under this category. The BJS is concerned with counting rape only to understand how many instances of crime are unreported, not to charge a person with the crime or to improve the victim’s health. This led to the simplified, “forced or coerced to engage in unwanted sexual activity” definition in its survey. This is radically different from its specific, official definition on its website:
Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion and physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object, such as a bottle. Includes attempted rape, male and female victims, and both heterosexual and same sex rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.
Because agencies that define rape have entirely different considerations in their definitions, they utilize different terminology, account for different numbers, and come up with different statistics. Attempting to summarize data from several different agencies will only result in inaccurate data.
References
An Updated Definition of Rape. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – Rape and Sexual Assault. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317
Definitions|Sexual Violence|Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC. (2018, April 10). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/definitions.html
NCVS 1 [survey]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs104.pdf
Rape statistics. (2018, April 14). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics
Rowan Counterintuitive 