This learning activity allows the readers and myself to explore our experiences to shape our opinions on what we think of the word deity means to us. We on a daily basis are exposed to what society has brought us up to believe in but this class continuously allows us to challenge the norm and what people consider to be the norm. 

Questions:

What are some of the metaphors for deity which you are familiar? 

Some of the metaphors for deity that I am familiar with are words such as, god, lover, him, lord, christ, holy spirt, mother and king. Some that i do not consider to be natural to say are words like master, and companion. I feel that i have chosen words that represent a male figure, since all through our my life i have been brought to believe that god is a man and not a women. 

In what ways have those metaphors been helpful?

The words that truly are helpful for all is “holy spirit”. This word allows any person to pray and believe in a deity. Whether female, male, black, white, spanish, etc, you are not limited and your faith in this “holy spirit” grows stronger rather than weaker. 

In what ways are those metaphors limiting?

As you can imagine some metaphors tend to have people innately picture a man rather than a women. Words like “king”, “lord”, and “christ” all are connect to being a man. This is very restricting because women and all others are seeing a gender ranking in within a system that preaches of equality. The church is now an influence to all at such a young age to reinforce this norm that being a man, is being strong, and being a man is being the figure of authority. Church for many is an escape from reality, whether its an escape form work, friend, or any personal problems, church is supposed to be a place where your not judge but loved for who you are. But if you look closer at the details, you can see how the church is dominated by men, and the men are perceived as a greater gender and held up to a different light than women are.

What do you perceive as the consequences of taking these metaphors literally?

Since believing in a god, is believing that god is a man, this can only occur to having problems in one’s life. To view god ad being a man, you are believing in generality that men are superior in life. Sub-consciencelly you are experience a gender rank within yourself without you even noticing. This is seen on a daily basis, men are view as the provider for the family, men hold higher position in corporations, and men even make more than women. The church is an influence that many do not dare to question, so the church continues to preach and will continue to influence society the way it chooses.

Are there some metaphors you think have outlived their usefulness?

I believe some have but are hard to reshape. Obviously the male enforcing metaphors hare outlived their purpose. But to say that the female metaphors should replace them is still sparking the same problem of gender ranking. So we must be able to choose gender neutral metaphors such as lover and companion to be the metaphors that correctly portray the word deity.

What do you think of these metaphors?

These metaphors are some what shocking and go against the norm. God as mother is truly the one that sticks out. It encourages us to believe that god is a female. I would have to dislike this metaphor the most. It encourages gender ranking and i believe the goal of this learning activity is to find a place of equality rather then put one gender superior than the other. My favorite would be “God as companion” since it allows people to have a feeling that god is with us and will love us for who we are. the word companion can mean man or woman, but most of all the word companion gives us hope and faith for a brighter tomorrow.

In what new ways do they cause you to think about deity? What new ideas about deity do they suggest to you?

The one that caused me to think the most of deity is, God as gambler. It makes you think that god and us are alike. It allows you to believe that god is human and can make mistakes. That god is not perfect just like we are not. But more importantly god can related to our struggles and relate to our pain of being human. But there is one the only strikes confusion into my mind and that the one that states, The earth as God’s body. I truly do not know what this means. Does it mean that when we die we become one with the earth? that we as human do not have an after life? 

In what ways do they call you to reappraise images of deity?

They allow me to think of deity as more of a gender neutral spirt. It allows me to not perceive god as a man, which can have positive impact on my daily life. It will allow me to view everything with an open mind and to start rejecting the norms that have been place by society. 

Can you think of any shocking new metaphors that help you think about deity in original ways? 

“God is us”, “God is accepting”, “God is gender”, “God is Mentor”, “God is Friend”. All of these new metaphors allow anyone to view god as a spirit and not to pass judgement n gender but to accept that god accepts. It will keep all of us open minded and will allow us to have a stronger faith in him and in mankind as a whole. It will also challenge the norms that society has continued to enforce, But most importantly it will allow everyone to know that a high being is watching out for us and will continue to be a spirit of faith .

ning activity just like many before, allowed the readers to view another aspect and institution in a mind blowing perspective. The website has multiple categories that one can look into to learn about the struggles that women have had in prison. Some categories are such like motherhood, poetry, state and private violence, sexuality: stigma and punishment, etc. But what is most important about this website, is not the categories but how the website is a voice for women worldwide, to voice their stories, and to shed light on the negative side of the criminal justice system. Gender experience of women in the criminal justice system is not fair, they are still being treated as objects in or outside the prison. But worst of all, the stories of rape allow the notion of women being sex objects to be further reinforced. Women see discrimination in all aspect of life, and while being confined in prison should not be one of them.

Some of the stories that women choose to share are cruel and for the most part strange and unjust punishment. One article that truly stuck out to me is the one, which deals with surviving rape in Iran’s prison. Throughout the years, there are more and more victims telling their stories about being raped in Iran’s prison, but these stories do not give us a ballpark estimate on how many have actually been raped. Like the article states, many victims choose not to share their story for one of two reasons. First, government pressure and acquiescence, and lastly social stigma. Both reason are in their own way huge on why women choose to avoid telling their stories, but why are so many women still being raped? This problem is not only a problem that occurs in Iran, but worldwide. America is still needs to do its role on decreasing the amounts of rape that occurs in its own nation. Many thought that passing the Prison Rape Elimination Act would be the solution, but this is not true. The article written by Rachel Roth depicts one of many women’s stories “A Wisconsin woman in a prison mental health unit fell for an officer’s attention, but said their sexual encounters quickly turned into rape. When she became pregnant, prison personnel responded by sentencing her to a year in solitary confinement.” 

As we read more and more we can see why there is a big resistance to this system. The way women are being treated is dramatically harmful to their wellbeing and in some cases to their offspring. I decided to read an article about a mother who gave birth to a healthy young girl. In the article she was supposed to have twins but lost one while being in prison, can it be assume that she lost on for the lack of care and proper attention that she needed? But that’s a story for another day, to make a long story short, she ended up losing her daughter to the state, since a women in jail for two years, loses her parental rights. These poor women lost two children due to the criminal system. Isn’t the criminal system supposed to be fair and just, where is it right for a parent to lose two children for a small criminal charge? 

But there is hope. Washington governor Chris Gregoire signed a law to prevent the shackling of pregnant women during labor and childbirth. This law will allow women who are pregnant to have more maneuverability, and less pain due to the leg chains and shackles. They way I can help and how many others can help, is to make the issue of the how unjust the criminal justice system actually is, and too stand with the women who have been victims, and if we stand tall and strong, we will see a change all throughout the country. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Corporate_Gender_Bias

I thought long and hard of what topic I wanted to address. The topic of the corporate world and how women in the labor force are daily discriminated by their gender was one that I felt needed to be addressed. There are many websites one can go on to gain knowledgeable information about the topic but since there truly was not one in wikipedia about gender bias in the corporate world, I thought I would take this chance to share information on the matter. 

I not only choose this topic because it a very concerning matter, I choose it because I am business major and like all business major have a dream to be a CEO one day, which statistics have proven is tremendously hard for women to accomplish. I hope this allows readers to think on how to make equality a reality in the top positions of a business, since obtaining these profound and prestigious position is difficult but what it seems, impossible for women. But one thing that can shed some hope for women is that in the fortune 500 companies, women CEO are increasing, which shows that change is happening but at a slow rate, but still occurring.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/chad-johnson-domestic-violence-incident-revealed-911-recording-article-1.1135864

Since this blog share had to address the topic of violence, I choose an article about domestic violence. This article pertains to Chad Johnson, also Kknown as Ocho Cinco, and how he head-butted his wife after she found a receipt for box of condoms. This article addressed many things that chapter ten discusses, one for starters is the term known as Gender violence. The book defines this term as, “Gendered Violence implies that harm evolves from the imbalence in power between women and men”. As we continue to read we see that the chapter ten also states that interpersonal relationship make women vulnerable, and that more violence actually occurs in their own home. But this is not what is shocking, the statistic of women are ten times more likely to be victimized is mind blowing. 

What many people don’t understand is that gendered violence does not only entail physical abuse, it can come in other forms such as intimidation, harassment, stalking, force prostitution, and a lot more. But what is not publicized is that in a relationship something called mutual abuse can exist. This is rarely heard of because in reality women are more likely to be the targets of abuse, but men can also be the victims. Men are seen to be able to control women and to be able to avoid being targets, but in reality men are targets as well. However women are majority of the time not the ones who are causing the abuse, but when men are the abuser, its more likely from the hands of another man. 

I feel women and men can benefit from doing research on ow to prevent domestic violence, but most importantly want to knowledge themselves in the topic. here is a website with useful information for both men and women. http://lauradutoit.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Prevent-Domestic-Violence. I hope this helps readers and victims to prevent the situation from happening or reoccur. Domestic violence is an ongoing problem that needs to be address in order for a change to occur. But the problem is that, man are viewed as superiors and reinforce gender ranking, which leads to unfair and unjust treatment to women, I hope to see the day where men and women are truly equal in all aspects of life.

This learning activity will allow readers and fellow TCNJ students to understand how safe our campus actually is. Throughout my years at TCNJ I have only experienced one act of violence towards myself with a fellow student. After being attacked I approached the campus police to get them involved which lead to an campus informal hearing. This trial was enlightening on how the TCNJ’s judicial procedure works, at the end of the day they found me innocent. After I was found innocent I actually took it to the Ewing civil courts and won my case and charge the other TCNJ student with assault and brutality.

 Questions:

 How many acts of violence were reported on your campus last year?

To the students knowledge there were two sex offenses and one aggravated assault. But I would assume some were not reported, due to the embarrassment that many feel to publicly announce that they had been sexually assaulted. But TCNJ also arrested a sex predator who, did not act out on the TCNJ campus but was wanted at Rider University.

 Does your campus have a security escort service?

TCNJ indeed does have an escort service. The escort service is run by the campus police by multiple forms of transportation but majority of the escorts are done by vehicle. I know many who have taken advantage of this system/service, but sad too say, all of which were women.

 What resources does your campus provide to ensure safety?

They are multiple forms that TCNJ ensures safety. There is a safety escort program, which I stated above.  Also if one were to visit the campus police website, one can see that TCNJ provides an Emergency & Safety alerts. These alerts are commonly alert students through text messages. When visiting TCNJ one can see many Blue Light emergency telephones, which is crucial for the safety of many.  But what ensures safety the most is that the campus police are active 24 hours, 7 days a week.

What training and educational opportunities about safety does your college provide?

 When browsing through their website, I found a program called, Crime Awareness Program, for short CAP.  CAP provides information that is very useful, but in my opinion many “tips and Information” is common knowledge.  But what I do not need to research is the Green Dot program. TCNJ all through out its campus and in many of its buildings provide a map with “Red dots” that allow students to see where a past threat has occurred. An Anti-Violence program is provide as well to learn more about sexual violence and drunken violence as well.

 What specialized about violence is offered to fraternities and sports teams on campus?

Since I am a varsity athlete it is mandatory that all athletes attend the Anti-Violence program, which athletes come together to talk and learn about sexual assaults. Athletes go to this program every year and its shocking to find out that the red dots occur in the same location every year, and if only students took two minutes out of their day to realize this information that is exposed to them daily, the number can decrease. Also since I am part of a fraternity, I also attend a meeting about risk management, which all fraternities take very seriously. My fraternity has a committee just for risk management, which I was the chair of one year, and let me say, it was time consuming, But very worth it at the same time.

 How does your school encourage the reporting of violence?

Well students have multiple forms to report violence. Some are through the campus police, Office of Anti-violence initiatives, peers, teachers, Dean of students, and much more. But also TCNJ hire outside people to come out to talk to students and let them know that their voice is important, and that to speak out is a choice that must be made on their own and never be forced.

 What supported services does your school offer to victims of violence?

The Center for Student Wellness

 How does your school’s code of conduct address violence?

Here is the URL to the code of conduct of The College of New Jersey.

http://conduct.pages.tcnj.edu/files/2011/08/Student-Conduct-Code-FINAL-APPROVED-07.12.2011.pdf.  This Code of conduct is very detailed with many aspects of violence and the procedures that can occur if violated.  It touches upon, Sexual harassment, Physical Abuse, Mental Health, Stalking, and much more. All of the things that I just listed can lead to an informal or formal hearing, which can have consequences as extreme as expulsion.

 Are there dark areas of your campus that need additional lighting?

TCNJ has many dark areas that need for sure additional lighting. When walking from the business building to the library I even found myself worried and frighten at how dark it as at times, and even have thoughts that someone could be following me and have their way if they tried.

Are emergency phones available around your campus?

 TCNJ does indeed have emergency phones available, which can be seen from a far since they are lit with blue lights and provide direct contact to campus police.  But sometimes I wonder how often they are put to use.

 Closing thoughts:

What I found to be most interesting about this learning activity is the sheer fact that it changed my opinion on TCNJ’s security. I always thought we, as students did not have ways to communicate with people of authority when we are put in situation when we are violated. Also I did not know that security was this tight and that if student wanted and needed, they could reach out for help and actually prevent unwanted violence. I’m glad to know that TCNJ does it role to protect its students and happy to be a student attending not only a great school academically but security wise as well. 

Magazine Title:       Vogue          Cosmopolitan      Fitness          Vanity Fair

Makeup:                    7                         4                     0                       3

Cloths:                      13                       4                     0                       6                

Hair:                          5                         5                     1                       0 

Sex/Dating:              0                         22                    0                       5

Dieting:                    0                           3                    17                     1

Food/Recipes:          0                           3                     2                      1

Home decoration:    0                           1                     0                      2

Work:                       1                          3                      0                      2

Politics:                    11                        4                      0                      3        

When looking through these four magazine, there was a trend that starting to reoccur. I would have to agree with the book when it states that pop culture helps to reinforce, and reflect on the dominant systems and ideologies that help shape gender. But it also helps this norm that women serve men, and that they are only objects for men. It provides the sense that being a female is being part of the wrong gender. These magazine portray women to be weak, magazines like the ones that i have chosen reinforces gender ranking, and social and sexual scripts. It only allows men to continue to have the upper hand on all aspect of a relationship since, in comparison men do not have to alter anything to obtain a women, a women must change everything to get a man.

In each magazine we can see how women are being degraded and given a certain stereotype. Cosmopolitan as the book says, emphasizes sexuality and relationships with men, this can be seen through its remarkable 22 count in the sex and dating section. we can see why young and older women are being brainwash to believe that they are inferior and that there purpose is to be sex objects or to try a way to be one for their male counterparts. But this is not true, women are strong, but magazines do not portray this, they display women in dehumanizing positions, to further ingrain the norm that being women, is only being weak, and an object for men. 

But it does not stop there, Vogue is another magazine that does not do women justice. The magazine seems to focus on how women are reliant on makeup and cloths to feel confident and to gain a man’s attention. This magazine can be the reason why we see the younger generation of girls apply and buy more and more make-up, like make-up will solve their problems. But what happened to natural beauty? why do women want to apply makeup? what women don’t understand that many men actually like a women who wear less than more. Men like to say that their girlfriend doesn’t need to wear make-up to look “hot”. Many men consider women who wear makeup to be “fake”, since they are hiding how they truly look.

Lastly, the two magazines FitnessRX and Vanity Fair were different from the two. As you can guess FitnessRx dealt and solely talk about dieting and working out. Women feel as if to get a man that working out will help. Most men also feel that women only work out for them, which i can honestly say is not true. Some women work out to have a healthy life but most importantly many want confidence. Look good feels good, I have heard man women say this, which i find to be sad, why cant women be happy without wanting to change their appearance. the answer is pop culture. Pop culture is to blame and will always be the one too set the norms for women. Vanity fair was quite different. It had less articles but more advertisements. But the Ads only were of makeup, cloths, and jewelry. I find the world of advertisement to be setting the wrong example for women, and hope that we see a change.

To truly understanding the article that I have chosen, one must understand the key concepts and how the book chooses to define them in a universal definition.

Key concepts (book definition):

Pro-choice advocates believe that abortion is a women’s choice, women should not be forced to have children against their will.

Pro-life advocates believe that human personhood begins at conception and fertilized ovum or fetus has the right to full moral and legal rights of personhood.

I have always been intrigue on the matter of abortion; the topic has stirred so much chaos, which only continues to make the topic more interesting. I listed the two terms since I have both mentalities on the topic. I totally agree that all women should have the power of choice; we do not know all circumstances that push women to have an abortion. There are reasons why women choose to have an abortion, one reason could be financially, the women might have been raped, and most importantly health issues. Books states that there are more than 3 million unintended pregnancies, and many unintended are unwanted.

The article that I choose was quite alarming, I knew the issue of abortion was very serious but I did not know it could consist of harassment and most importantly threats of taking another’s life. When I read the article I instantly recalled the section of homosexuality. It reminded me of how many homosexuals choose to stay “in the closet” for reasons like, public humiliation, family, and most of all protection of their life since people stay consider homosexuals to be tainted. The safety that one feels to choose to stay “in the closet” or to not publicly announce that he or she is “ pro-choice” is something that has to be change. People must feel safe when publicly going against the norm, but as the world turns day after day it only seems to create fear in this generation and the newer ones to come. 

As we talked in class, we discussed about the trial of Roe v. Wade. To make a long story short, the Supreme Court decided to make abortions legal, but who knew that this decision would only bring more controversy. It brought up issues of, who has the right to decide the legality of abortion, what the role of religious and moral views in the political aspect should be taken into account, these are just a few of many debate topics. But in my opinion, women should be the only person who has control whether to have one or not, we can never enter the mind of a women to understand her reason of doing so, and I bet if we did we would be on her side anyways. But it is truly morally wrong to have an abortion when many do not even consider the fetus to be a baby or “alive” until after the first trimester. If this is the case, than can we consider an abortion “right” if were technically it is not taking a life?  Like I stated, I am pro-life, I do not support abortions, but I do respect women’s rights, and do indeed understand that some women are victims of rape, and incest, and in no means should a women bare a children for those reasons.  But also one question that I constantly thought about when reading about abortion, Would it be wrong to have an abortion if men were the people who went through pregnancies, and had this decision in their hands? For some reason, I feel as if society would accept abortions if men had this role.  I’m not saying that the controversy would not exist but I do believe that it would be much more downplayed, so now ask yourself, is it wrong for women to have the choice to have a abortion?

http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=13802

Job description: White men    White women   men of color   women of color

Top administration:     -                 X                      -                       -

Teaching:                    X                 X                      -                       -                    

Secretarial:                  -                 X                      -                       -

Groundskeeping:         X                -                      X                       -

Electical/ Carpentry:    X                -                      -                       -   

 Janitorial:                    -                -                      X                       -

Food preparation:        -                -                      X                       X

Security                        X               -                      X                        - 

Intercollegiate coaching: X             X                      -                        -

Job description        Person in the family       Sex of person         Hour per week

Laundry                            Mother                    Female                       12

Mowing the lawn:            Neither                   Neither                         0          

Maintaining the car:         Father                      Male                           1

Buying the groceries:       Mother                    Female                        4

Cooking:                          Mother                    Female                         9          vaccuuming:                    Mother                    Female                         4

Washing dishes:               Mother                    Female                         3

Making beds:                   Mother                    Female                         1

Cleaning bathroom          Mother                    Female                         1

Final thoughts:

 I’ve to come to a conclusion that TCNJ stands out from other schools when it comes into the category of top administration. I feel that it is rare for most schools to have women being the president or hold any other top administration positions. As the books have stated before, even when it come to matters of all girls school, all girl magazine, and books meant for girls, a man is usually behind it. When looking at the business school, we see a great mix of  men and women teachers, but i am sure if we were to look entirely at the school as a whole, we would find more women teachers than men. But this should not come to shock, women have always fit the role of being the one who nurtures, teaching jobs have always been more dominated by women. Also women tend to be secretarys as well, i’m not sure as to why but they do. It might be for the sole fact that men like to be in control and to be the one who are giving the demands rather than receiving them.

The three areas that stuck out to me when doing this activity are, grounds keeping, janitorial, and food preparation. I feel that these three areas help to ingrain stereotypes that we have about people of color. Society has shape our minds to believe that people of color are low lives, inferior, and non-educated. But it does not help when TCNJ only hire people of color in these areas, but worst of all when you try to hold a conversation with these people of color, they display these stereotypes firsthand. I believe this is wrong; my two best friends from home are men of color, both of which attended schools of prestige, such as Columbia, and Lehigh University. People view my two friends with these stereotypes, but how can they not? Society continues to enforce stereotypes in a subconscious manner. This only leads to inequality, which at the end of the day only hurts people of color, whether it be in social aspects, or even job aspects.

Inequality is ever so present when it comes to job functions in the households. These jobs roles help define social scripts and also help to maintain society’s views on masculinity and femininity, but also help enforce gender ranking as well. Men in the household feel to display their masculine side, by avoiding doing roles that might degrade this such as, washing the dishes, vacuuming, or even making a bed. Men feel that women should follow society’s view on women’s social script and women should be more than willing to do these job functions, since it is a role of a woman rather than the role of a man. These mentalities help to enforce gender ranking even within the family. Women are viewed as inferior even in something as so profound as family. Men show dominance by being labeled as the provider, and women being labeled as the caretakers. Women should cook, clean and wash our cloths, and us men should work, and provide for our wife and children. All of these mentalities have help shape all the norms that exist, and to be honest these norms will not be erased anytime soon, but i do believe we have seen a change where equality is being met with each passing day.

I found this assignment to be a lot of fun, since it allowed me to fully appreciate my living conditions. After going on the Factfinder2.census.gov website, I was even more surprise to see the numbers. As I could have figure out on my own, the area that I live in is well above the state median, which the state is recorded to have a median household income of $69,811.  I am a resident of West Windsor, which is in the mercer county region. The average median household income is recorded at $137,625. I knew the number for the statistic would be high, people here drive nice cars, own big houses, and hold good positions in the company they work for.  Also if you were to drive to other towns in the area, you would also find their median income to be high as well, take Princeton for example, which is recorded at $104,234.

The learning activity asked for us to make a budget for your cost of living. The book states that you would have a take home income of $1500 per month. After doing some research, the website Survivalinsight.com states that a person who earns between $1500-2000, he or she is eligible for a TANF. Which means you could expect between $350 and $450 per month, giving us on the high end a take home income of $1950:

Budget (monthly):

Rent (lowest that I can find on the internet):  $536

Utilities: $195

Gas: $150

Food expense: $500

School supplies: $150

Clothing:  $97.50

Car insurance: $117

Entertainment: $97.50

Medical needs: $107

Total=  $1950

This is how I broke down the budget if I were to provide for a four person family, the website Kiplinger.com helped me to come to a estimation for the numbers above. 

Question:  what does this activity suggest to you about the difficulties of living in poverty?

It has opened my eyes to how difficult it must be for those who do live in poverty. I’m sure there is more to the budget that I did not include, and for me, to make this budget work was extremely difficult. It suggest that living the way they do, seems to me as nearly impossible, the expense above are for four people when it could easily look to a third party outsider for a two person family. I hope that I never have to be in the position to barely get by in life, living In poverty is one of the biggest struggles that still exist, and a problem that will continue to exist for the years to come