Week 3

Question 1

A sex offender story

Answer 1

• sex offences must involve the sexual exploitation, the forced compliance from, or personal motivation to sexually violate another human being
• Paraphiliacs are not all sex offenders and not all sex offenders are paraphiliacs… Paraphilia: disorders of sexual preference such as, non human objects, suffering of a partner, children or non consenting persons that occur over a period of at least 6 months
• Pedophiles distinguished from sex offenders cuz pedophiles have urges but sex offenders act on them

Question 2

Public perceptions…

Answer 2

• Public opinion towards sexual offenders in North America is negative
• We have a registry with all their info on it
• Bad for stigma but good for community safety
• Sex offenders thought to lack any socially desirable traits + are devalued

Question 3

Stigma theory and framing

Answer 3

• Goffman symbolic interactionist and structural functionalist
• Stigma as an attribute that discredits an individual, attribute thought to represent the alleged identity, from stereotypes of the individual
• Discrepancies between a person’s virtual and actual social identity

Question 4

sex offender stigma

Answer 4

• They are viewed as potential threats to public safety who can never be normal and deserve harsh punishment and shame
• Preventing the sex offender label w its stigma, it critical to their existence and social function… This transcends into the prison system

Question 5

Dramaturgy

Answer 5

• Our socialization consists of learning how to play our assigned roles
• Impression management… our desire to manipulate others’ impressions of us on the front stage versus us being us on backstage
• This imagery bridges structure + agency, enabling each, while saying that structure and agency can limit each other

Question 6

Sign vehicles

Answer 6

• Social settings : props
• Appearance : clothing, physical stature, race, stereotypes
• Manners of interacting : facial expressions, body language, personal space

Question 7

Identity management

Answer 7

• Response/adaptation to survive
• Most adaptable to change

Question 8

Process of stigma

Answer 8

• Distinguish difference… undesirable vs. normal
• Assign a label
• Place ppl into categories (us vs. them)
• Discriminate

Question 9

Identity is socially constructed

Answer 9

• Social constructionism is the underlying philosophical view that believes our meanings about the world are co-created by people, rather than reflections of an ‘objective reality
• Not the norm
• Dominant belief of where identities are coming from is essentialism which believes that our identities are linked to a fixed, innate essence
  Intersectionality

Question 10

Origins of social constructionism

Answer 10

• Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman
• Proposed meanings in and about our world are co-created by ppl… these are so entrenched that we take them for granted as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’
• Sees multiple truths being in a constant battle w one another for legitimacy
• Socially constructive doesn’t mean not real… our material reality is only meaningful to us cuz of the ideas we attach to it and when difference becomes deviant we begin to recognize it

Question 11

Identities are politically driven

Answer 11

• It is about power
• Socially constructed identities are not always externally-imposed labels
• Not the social construction of difference is in itself problematic, but the hierarchy we attach to them

Question 12

Identities are performed

Answer 12

• Judith Butler, West & Zimmerman
• Seeing identity as a performance allows us to understand how ppl in different contests may ‘do’ gender, race or class in different ways
• Doing gender, code switching, stigma (passing, covering etc.)

Question 13

Identities are connected to systems of power

Answer 13

• Seeing gender and other identity categories as social contrasts means we can recognize their dumbness

Question 14

Disability : the emergence of normal

Answer 14

• When we talk about ability we have a host of ideas and images that rely on systems of norms that create the line between ability and disability
• 1800s traits divided into normal and abnormal and the emergence of these terms = first child asylums for ‘feeble minded’ kids

Question 15

Is disability a minority group?

Answer 15

• People with disabilities do not share the same characteristics as the rest of the population in terms of income, employment or occupational prestige
• Many types of disabilities
• Not all ppl with disabilities consider themselves to be objects of discrimination

Question 16

Compulsory able-bodied

Answer 16

• Enforcing normalcy (genetic) translated into eugenic desires and many horrible things
• When intelligence testing was invented, norms for ability became even more abstract + more deeply legitimized

Question 17

Schooling difference

Answer 17

• schools enacted a form of ‘ability profiling’
• Schools sorted kids and taught them accordingly
• Kids segregated by special classes for intellectually deficient or emotionally disturbed kids, and for the gifted and talented kids

Question 18

Ableism

Answer 18

• Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior
• Ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability
• Like racism and sexism, ableism classifies entire groups of people as ‘less than’ and includes harmful stereotypes, misconceptions and generalizations of people with disabilities

Question 19

What does ableism look like?

Answer 19

• Lack of compliance with disability rights laws (refusing to provide reasonable accommodations)
• The assumption that people with disabilities want or need to be ‘fixed’
• Segregating students with disabilities into separate schools
• Using disability as a punchline, or mocking people with disabilities
• The use of restraint or seclusion as a means of controlling students with disabilities
• The eugenics movement of the early 1900s
• Segregating adults and children with disabilities in institutions
• The mass murder of disabled people in Nazi Germany

Question 20

Everyday ableism

Answer 20

• Using someone else’s mobility device as a hand/footrest
• Framing disability as either tragic or inspirational in news stories, movies, and other popular forms of media
• Casting non disables person to play a disabled character
• Using the accessible bathroom stall when you are able to use the non-accessible stall without pain or risk of injury
• Wearing scented products in a scent-free environment
• More than 2x more likely to experience violent hate crime

Question 21

3 types of stigma

Answer 21

1. Abnormalities of the body
2. Blemishes of individual character
3. Tribal (affiliation)

Question 22

4 criteria affecting level of perceived deviance

Answer 22

1. Visibility (seen by others)
2. Publicity (known by others)
3. Obtrusiveness (affecting social interaction)
4. Relevance (situational)

Question 23

How do we manage stigma?

Answer 23

• Normalizing… proving normalcy ‘I hardly ever do that’
• Neutralizing… I am not like that, this is different
• Passing… performing normalcy, lying about self and reinforcing stigma
• Covering… hiding the stigma
• Insulating… physically separating the deviance from normal society
• Distancing… physically separating from other deviants
• Embracement… pride or shame can lead this

Question 24

Dehumanization, shame and accountability

Answer 24

• Shame is seductive, but it doesn’t work
• It is part of the problem, it undermines accountability and corrodes empathy
• We suck at accountability so we move to shame cause its quick