Gender Representation and Objectification in Advertising

Hello Everyone,

I want to thank you for all for your participation and the great points you shared yesterday. Before the class ended, we were talking about how masculine images usually represent power, virility, and dominance whereas feminine images show beauty, cooperation, and submissiveness. O’Barr mentions that masculine and feminine attributes vary based on the culture. Having in mind O'Barr's idea, I want to ask you to answer the following questions: How and where did you learn gender roles. What are the gender roles in your culture how does this issue affect our own self-esteem and how we look at others? How can we fight against the objectification of gender?

We Are All Sexual!

Hey Guys!

Yesterdays class was great! I think everyone really had great points and asked the right questions. In class we really focused on the actual verses the socially constructed differences between people with and without disabilities. We touched on the social and financial difficulties that arise from sexually intimate relationships with in the DD community. Unfortunately, in class we were unable to really discuss the actual assessment for becoming sexually consenting as an adult with a developmental disability. As I mentioned briefly in class, each agency relies on evaluations from different psychological clinics to assess participants for psychosexual functioning. I contacted a few clinics to receive a voided copy of the evaluation but all declined to send me the forms. However, I did find an overview of the guidelines that YAI uses to evaluate it's participants.

 http://www.yai.org/services/staying-healthy/4-for-better-health/2012/january/4-for-better-health.html

This evaluation is a risk assessment. No one can definitively evaluate the choices any individual will make in every situation, and there for evaluators are weighing the likelihood a participant will make a knowing choice in most situations against the risk of being sexually victimized in these same situations. Based on the above criteria an evaluator, who deems the risk low enough and the knowledge of healthy sexual behavior high enough, will distinguish the patient as sexually consenting.

My Question to each of you is: do you think these criterion are an effective indicator of a persons ability to sexually consent and why? Do you think a risk assessment is a proper way to assess sexual functioning and why?


Also for anyone who is more interested in the topic her are some amazing videos that I found while researching. I highly recommend watching them. However, if you find the video uncomfortable, you are not forced to watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pq4Gs-QnCs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA020ShNQr8

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/30/i-have-cerebral-palsy-and-i-enjoy-having-sex)

Thanks again for your attention and valuable insight into my topic!

Solidarity!

Hey guys! Thanks for being a part of my workshop on solidarity. I hope you enjoyed the class as much as I did. As I mentioned during the seminar, I have often found myself struggling to work in solidarity with my clients and coworkers. In one scenario I found myself extraordinarily upset at one of my bosses and a schlew of clients for showing up an hour and a half late to  a presentation that I had worked very hard to put together only for the boss to not acknowledge that she was so late to the workshop and for the clients to fall asleep during or not pay attention when I was speaking. I felt extremely disrespected and wondered why the clients didn't respect my effort more. The truth is that I wasn't really seeing them or their experiences, but rather holding them to the expectations that I grew up learning as a person of a privileged position. I expected my clients to know the things that I had been taught  growing up as I did. But they didn't, of course, because most of them didn't get the sort of opportunities that I did. I wasn't seeing this, wasn't thinking about our differences as constructive. I got caught up in what separated myself from them and became angry and disrespectful instead of using it as an opportunity to grow and learn. I let differences "divide and conquer" instead of "define and empower".

My question for the blog is, how do we see solidarity in our experiences in our internships? How will the ideas we discussed and explored in class impact the way we interact with our coworkers and clients? What does it look like to live in solidarity with everyone we encounter despite our differences?

Resumes and Reputations

To begin, I would like to thank Lidia Shelley and Hester Lyons for taking time out of their day to come and speak with us regarding professional development. This class was very informative and I feel much more confident that the professional writing will improve after being a part of today's class. One specific point that seemed to resonate throughout the entire class was the idea that each cover letter, resume, and email we send to a perspective employer is a direct reflection upon ourselves.

That being said, I would like to open the blog this week with a couple of questions and I hope to see more questions follow!

For my first question, I would like to touch upon post-interview etiquette. After interviewing, is it recommended to send an email to the interviewer, thanking them for this opportunity? I have been told that this is an execellent way to stand out.

I also thought the conversation about word choice was very interesting. That being said, is it important to avoid certain words in a resume or an interview? (e.g. Instead of saying if I get this job...should we say when?) 

Thank you again for joining the Verons today in an effort to help our professional growth. It is truly appreciated!