Joe Coleman Newman Chapter 3

Joe Coleman
Reading outlines September 14, 2007
Newman chapter 3
Description
Everyday assumptions in language, words, and symbols are some of the biggest problems in the fight to stop the demeaning of gender and culture.
Analysis
· People do not even realize what they assume about people every day i.e. the Christmas assumption story.
· Symbols work in different ways to add fuel to the fire. Slurs are conditioned at young ages and stay with people all their lives. They are among the hardest habits to drop.
· The process of calling men who appear weaker “girls” or women associated slurs also fits into the symbol way that women are demeaned in our culture.
· Words also get used to lump similar looking people into groups regardless of what their background is.
· Political correctness usually exacerbates the situations that it tries to help
· Commercials and TV commonly use stereotypes of women in the kitchen roles and men as the breadwinners.

Vision
The media is bloated with all the points mentioned above, thus creating a huge task of trying to stop the everyday use in order to alleviate the problem.


Strategy
The problem is deep seeded, making it far more difficult to handle. The best advice to try to stop this is to train people to think on their feet and interpret what they see from a sociological standpoint. This will at least make an attempt at some reform.