Category: Blog ENG110 (Page 2 of 2)

1. Question: Do negative stigmas drive shame and prevent social cohesion?
2. Possible Answers: Yes and no, this really isn’t a black and white answer. Both Hallward and Epstein touch upon stigmas in very different ways, and Hallward doesn’t do it very clearly. In Hallward’s ted talk she discusses how people don’t want to talk about their seemingly shame ridden stories because they’re afraid of what people will say or how they’ll act towards them. We see this example in the LGBTQ community or with mental illness. People don’t want to speak up and get that weight lifted off their shoulders because they’re afraid of the stigma that been placed around them. Things run through their heads like, no one will accept me, people will think I’m crazy or, no one can relate to me so what’s the point? This is a really scary thing because these stigmas that society’s placed upon people are so strong to the point that it’s preventing any kind of social cohesion from happening at all. Stigma’s are definitely a huge part of shame and people not opening up to others. They might even be the backbone of it. In Epstein’s article she writes about the AIDs epidemic and how it’s being handles in Africa. Stigma and the negative affect it has on social cohesion is introduces here when talking about the people who already have the disease. They’re seen as less than and are avoided by the younger, healthy population. They live in extreme poverty. No one gives much thought to them and AIDs prevention programs use the money they get to start discussion about safe sex, instead of, or in agreement with talking about how to help people who already have the disease. Because of the negative stigma around the disease and second handedly, the people who have it, no one wants to talk about the disease or do anything about it really. This prevention of social cohesion isn’t seen in Uganda however. Because the people are literally living closer together and know family members or friends with the disease, they are hungry for more information about it and want to stop the disease and bring help to their communities. People in Uganda have overcome the negative stigmas AIDs in enveloped in and social cohesion is occurring because of the close relationships they have with each other due to being family members and living close together.
3. Position: Overcoming the negative stigmas society has placed upon different experiences or orientations would rid any shame associated with them, or at least minimize it. When people come together and share their stories their creating a type of bond that can be an extremely powerful political force. Social cohesion can only happen if the negative stigmas are transformed into empowering, positive ones. Social cohesion cannot happen if people aren’t willing to talk about their hardships and bring them to life. Doing this humanizes everyone and levels the playing field, casting out shame and negative stigmas.
4. Thesis: Social cohesion can only occur if the negative stigmas that feed into shame are changed to positive ones through open conversation and mindsets.

Safe Space definitely creates social cohesion, I’d even go as far to say that it’s a perfect present-day example of it. Safe Space creates an area for people to band together and share experiences that wouldn’t have ever been brought into light if it weren’t for this radio show. Hallward’s whole ted talk about how bringing shame enveloped stories to light pushes for social change and releases people of baggage they had previously been carrying around is perfectly displayed in the Safe Space radio.

I listened to the segment about Male Sexual Violence and Rape Culture with Daryl Fort and even the opening of the radio show is displaying social cohesion. It opens with a bunch of bits stringed together of people saying how sharing their stories, even if it wasn’t face to face, healed them and set them free of all the extra, unnecessary baggage they’d been carrying around.

With this rape culture segment, it offers a place for people to hear stories about gang rape, sexual assault, etc. and the culture around that. Safe Space creates social cohesion because it, in and of itself, is an area for people to come together and be close with one another through various shared stories and experiences. Even if someone isn’t personally telling their own story on the show and discussion is just being had about something that happened to someone else; someone coming on to listen who shares a similar story can really relate to that. That one person who shares that story turns into dozens and maybe even hundreds and suddenly this experience that had been so shame filled for so many people is being openly talked about and it’s not shame ridden anymore; it’s turned into an empowering story and people are freed of the weight they’d been carrying on their own.

-Stigma

• This drives shame/racism
• How people look at certain situations
• Hallward=stigma around mental health?
• Epstein=stigma around disease
• Dictates how people are treated

-how something’s handled

• Stops change from happening

-or drives change to occur

-Connections between articles

• Starting conversation
• Changing shame to normalcy
• Relationships=power

-Complications

• Living close together=literal in Epstein

-metaphorical for Hallward

• Personal experiences are universal
• Can’t be recognized as universal if they’re not brought to light

Emotions and pain that come with various experiences in life can be challenging to bring to light. Opening up to other people and getting help to carry that emotional baggage can be harder said than done. In Epstein’s “AIDS, Inc.” she dives into the world of a country run rampant with AID’s and explores this very issue. Starting a conversation with a younger generation about this disease is very difficult and the goal of getting the ball rolling on discussion about AID’s can oftentimes be lost in solely talking about safe sex practices. Epstein states, “It turns out that talking about the pain, both physical and emotional, that the disease creates is far more difficult than getting over the embarrassment of talking about sex” (115). This quote really hones in the fact that it’s not just the disease that’s hard to talk about, it’s the emotions and real-life struggle that accompany it that’s the challenging part. AIDs affect seemingly every part of people’s lives who have it and the harsh reality of that is oftentimes pushed to the side and ignored. This idea connects really well to Hallward’s ted talk and the whole point she was conveying about the difficulty of sharing stories enveloped in shame. It’s difficult to push past the emotional/shame-ridden side of experiences and bring them to light, but once this happens it can be life changing.

Helen Epstein’s “AIDS, Inc.” really opened my eyes up to what life is like in Africa because of the aid’s epidemic and the stigma surrounding aids in that country. I wasn’t surprised when Epstein was discussing the negative connotations that come with aids and the stigmas that come with that, but I was surprised when she talked about how dismissive the population is of the disease. The fact that people in Africa with aids are shunned and looked down upon, yet healthy young people still aren’t open and willing to create conversation about prevention of this disease is mind-blowing to me. The younger population of Africa sees how aids can ruin your life and is aware of the great amount of people who have it, yet conversation about safe sex practices and prevention is not something that they’re talk about.

I thought it was interesting that campaigns like loveLife are using the “cool effect” to get the younger generation to start a conversation about abstinence, safe sex, and healthy relationships. While this is a cool initiative it neglects the other part of the population who is already suffering from aids and does nothing to address or improve the horrendous quality of life these people affected by the disease are experiencing. Same thing goes for the Y-Center, the younger generation is gathering to talk about safe sex practices, yet there’s no talk of the actual disease. The only program actually helping these people is Inkanyezi.

Overall, the article kept connecting to Hallward for me. The whole idea of speaking out about stories that are surrounded by shame to bring awareness to larger problems and change the negative stigma around certain things directly relates the aids situation. Epstein states, “…HIV-positive twelve-year-old boy…challenged South African president…to do more for people living there with the virus” (118). While Hallward states, “…shame is at the heat of suffering…if we can bring it out…it ultimately becomes a source for social change” (9:20). These two quotes are connected by the same idea; suffering and shame, whether it be about a mental illness, aids, or whatever, can be turned into an unstoppable political force that pushes for change if people come out and talk about it.

A claim that Hallward made in her ted talk, “How telling our silenced stories can change the world” was that sharing stories that are hard to tell normalizes emotions and feelings that were previously surrounded by shame. Hallward provided evidence to this claim through discussing the various health effects that come along with telling stories and by sharing a personal experience of her own. This claim resonated with me so much because I’ve experienced that weight being lifted off my shoulders by hearing other’s tell their hard stories. Finding out someone is experiencing similar hardships as you and seeing how they’re dealing with them is like taking a fresh breath of air. It makes you hopeful and helps to disperse the shame you were carrying because now it’s not just you, it’s someone else who’s dealing with that as well.
Hallward supports this claim by showing that telling our silent stories can improve our health. Hallward states, “Immune system function improves, wound healing improves, visits to the ER are minimized.” All these are benefits from telling our silences stories and she also states that, “when you listen to a story told by someone like you… your blood pressure goes down” this is just another benefit, but from the other perspective of telling silenced stories.
A text to text connection I found between Hallward and Davis was when Davis was talking about breaking up the dog fight. Davis stated, “Everyone was… doing nothing… I rushed in and tried to pull the dogs apart. It wasn’t until after the adults pulled me away that I thought about the danger.” This connects to when Hallward says, “…and you’re alone in the dark. So you can feel really afraid” Hallward is discussing the fear around standing up and speaking out about difficult topics, while Davis is on the other end of that. Davis is saying that she jumps into situations and speaks up when no one else is without thinking of the consequences.

The gist of Angela’s lecture was that we need to change our perspective on how we look at and try to fight gender violence and try to create a world that truly is equal for everyone. She later noted in her lecture that when our nation talks about “all people are created equal” people have sort of twisted that from the beginning. According to our history, all people is not inclusive in the slightest. It has predominantly pertained to affluent white men, and Angela goes on to say that these presumptions of generality even in the constitution referred to only that small minority. Davis also brings up the point that we as a society have separated black lives matter and all lives matter to contradict each other. The reality is, if black lives matter, all lives matter, they’re inclusive of each other.

Throughout her lecture Davis put heavy emphasis on the connection between racial violence and gender violence and how these two are intertwined. She stated that white women overcome oppression when they reject the privileges placed upon them because of their skin color, because those privileges aren’t real. I think Angela hit the nail on the head with this one. She’s stating that white women are sort of placed on this pedestal of privilege because of the socioeconomic status that comes along with being married to a white man, when really that’s just a veil for white women being oppressed at similar levels that any woman of color would experience. I agree with Angela and do think that it’s important for white women to stand up for themselves and fight to be equal and not just fight for themselves, but also alongside oppressed women of color.

Davis also stated that prisons are gendering apparatus’ because there’s separate men and women prisons. She also said that police and prisons are oppression apparatus’ and then went on to discuss carceral feminism and the idea that the lives of women can be safeguarded of violence by police and the prison system. I see what Davis is saying here but I don’t know how she would suggest this is changed. I know that the prison system is a broken system and that there’s a lot of controversy with the police and racism within the force, but I can’t think of a better way to handle crime and the legal system. Davis said it’s ridiculous to believe that violent prisons can solve problems of violence. Davis kind of lost me at this part in her lecture, I saw the connection she was making to gender and racial violence to the prison system and the idea that it makes people who go in more violent when they come out, but I thought this part of her lecture wasn’t explained as well as it could’ve been.

She then concluded her lecture with saying that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Also, that gender violence is the most pandemic form of violence in the world. Angela seems to be an extremist when it comes to gender violence and racial/human rights. I don’t know if I can agree with her on these statements because I personally don’t know much about these topics, but I do agree with her on her statement about injustice.

Angela Davis is an American political activist and author who was born in the mid 1940’s in Alabama. When she was younger, she organized interracial study groups that were broken up by the police. She also knew several of the girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing. Davis spent a lot of her life fighting racial prejudice and discrimination growing up.

She worked with the Communist Party USA for about thirty years and then was involved with the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1969 the California Governor Ronald Reagan tried to have her barred from teaching in California but couldn’t fire her solely because of her affiliation with the communist party. She taught at the University of California in the History of Consciousness department and is the former director of the Feminist Studies department. She’s also the cofounder of Critical Resistance which is an effort to end the prison-industrial complex, which is the idea that the government uses imprisonment to solve social and economic issues.

Davis went to school at Brandeis University, University of Frankfurt, earned her masters at the University of California, and got her doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University. People knew Davis as a radical feminist.

Angela Davis also supported the Soledad Brothers, who were accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad prison. Some people thought the Brothers were being used as scapegoats due to their political activism within the prison. Jonathan Jackson used firearms owned by Angela Davis to kidnap and shoot the judge and others at the trial held for the brothers. Davis ended up being placed on the FBI’s most wanted list because of the use of her firearms in the courthouse incident and because of her connections to Jackson and the Soledad Brothers. She was charged with accomplice to conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide but was deemed innocent on all charges.

The Rolling Stone’s song, “Sweet Black Angel” is dedicated to Angela and John Lennon’s song “Angela” was recorded in support of her as well.

Angela Davis connects to Hallward’s ideas for social change. Hallward preaches vocalizing whatever brings you shame and whatever story you may have that makes you “unlovable” or that might change people’s perception/relationships with you. Angela Davis was an activist and stood up for social change by joining groups that really were trying to end racism and prejudice against black people. These two women connect because in a way, Davis is doing what Hallward is calling us to. Instead of going through life in silence as a black segregated woman, she vocalized her anger and pain, which moved others to do the same. It’s like Hallward said, courage is contagious and listening to others tell stories that are hard to tell that you can relate to has positive effects on your health. So, Angela being an activist during a point in history where everyone else wanted her to be quiet, really pushed for change. She gave other people courage to speak up and vocalize the shame they were internalizing.