#scholarlysource1

           In this article, written by Douglas Haldeman, it discusses how conversion therapy or treatments alike are still continuously used even though homosexuality was taken out of the DSM as a disorder. Interestingly this journal article touches on the side of the medical professional which provides an interesting view considering we usually focus on the participants. Haldeman focuses on two main facets of conversion therapy. The first concern is the discourse surrounding the ethics of the person giving the therapy. Essentially this is questioning how far a medical professional could carry out this treatment before going against the APA guidelines for what is deemed as unethical treatment. The second concern is regarding how credible the research on conversion therapy is that makes a claim that conversion therapy in fact does have the intended results.

           While this article is useful in that it questions if society is the one to blame for these treatments happening at the rates that they do due to lack of acceptance , Which I can agree with, there are some other questions to expand this research. I would expect people to question how this work can be translated into bigger population meaning other identities than just the assumption that men and women in these treatments only identify as homosexual. If this research was being done by Haldeman today I would encourage the expansion to finding results regarding all different identities including gender and sexual ones.

Analysis of First Scholarly Source.        

            In the article, The Familial Socialization of Culturally Related Values in Mexican American Families, a research study was conducted to “examine a model suggesting that Mexican American mother and fathers born in Mexico are more likely to endorse Mexican-American values and engage in more ethnic socialization of their young adolescents.” (Knight et al., 2011). To be able to further comprehend the relationship of ethnic identity and ethnic socialization, the study consisted of 750 Mexican American young adolescents whose families all consisted of a mother, but only 62.3% of them had a father present.(Knight et al., 2011) The participants all came from different social classes. The procedure consisted of computer assisted interviews at the privacy of the families’ homes and the interview lasted 2.5 hours long.

            The way that the researchers were able to determine the values each family had they used a program called the Mexican American Cultural Value Scale (MACVS). (Knight et al., 2011)It had 5 categories: Familism-Support, Familism-Obligation, Familism-Referents, Respect, and Religiosity. Each category had a scaling system from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much) to respond to the questionnaires in each category. The participants were all interviewed separately and gender was factored in the experiment. It was concluded that mother was the person who had a greater influence at the development of the adolescent’s identity was the mother.

            When people hear machismo, one usually thinks of the father of the family facilitating this notion. However, based on the evidence of the study the machista ways are more likely to be formed from the mothers. Although the research was not conducted considering the factor of machismo, it can be assumed that most Mexican traditional values have machista tendencies. Therefore, when the study talks about ethnic identity development or family values, machismo is inherently involved.

          When I learned about the mother being the perpetrators of the development of ethnic identity, it didn’t really come as a shock. Based on personal experiences, the mother is the teacher and the caretaker. My mother had the patience to tolerate whatever help I needed. So, what I learned was taught by my mother. I believe many can relate to this because, if one grows up in a Mexican-American family, the mother usually knows everything; and if she doesn’t your last resort would be the father. The study does support my family’s circumstances, but there is some discrepancies. For example, the addition of families with no father makes the results more in favor to the mother rather than the father. There is no right answer to who can be the one that can help create the identity of a person.

Pictured above is one of Nina Arsenault’s “self-portraits.”

3rd post –Analysis of a scholarly source

 I read chapters 1 and 2 of Judith Rudakoff’s book Trans(Per)forming Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work. Chapter 1, “Affirming Identity with Your Friendly Neighbourhood Cyborg” by Sky Gilbert was about the author’s work as a queer writer and what it was like to identify as a queer effeminate man before gay liberation in the 70’s and 80’s. Gilbert wrote a stage play for Arsenault called Ladylike in 2007. The author shares how he believes himself to be similar to Nina in many ways, but dissimilar in that he doesn’t like body modification surgeries. Gilbert shows interest in identity politics of queer people and their implications in his chapter. He analyzes Nina’s identity politics and what identity her “art” takes on in the realm of queer identities. Lastly, Gilbert compares Arsenault to a cyborg in that way that she has created her own gender of being “an artificial, super-sexual woman” (Gilbert, 22).

Chapter 2, “Unreal Beauty: Identification and Embodiment in Nina Arsenault’s “Self-Portraits”” by J. Paul Halferty talks about Arsenault’s art, specifically, her body. In the chapter, Halferty talks about how the only commonalities in Arsenault’s different art forms, that being her “self portraits” or her body modifications, and her theatrical and photographic collaboration is the embodiment of “unreal images of femininity” (Halferty, 29). Throughout the chapter, Halferty essentially argues how Arsenault’s different artistic representations of herself are representative of the desired persons in which Arsenault internally imagines and desires herself to be.

I agree with Gilbert’s comparison of Arsenault to a cyborg in his chapter. Arsenault is a mixture of fake and real parts. She has created a new human identity with the body she created for herself –hence why she can be compared to a cyborg. I also agree with the idea that Arsenault embodies unreal images of femininity in her artistic representations of her body in her promoting of whiteness and unreal thinness with her body. There is nothing I don’t agree with from the chapters I read.

Analysis of a Scholarly Source

This scholarly source, “Good Girls”: Gender, Social Class, and Slut Disclosure on Campus made some very good points and go a little more I depth about slut shaming. They brought up a good point that I feel doesn’t always get recognized or is generally looked over and that’s the women slut shaming each other. This is just as common if not worse than the males doing it to females. I feel like more often than not as women they kind of get a pass and I think it’s long overdue that it starts getting some recognition. They also mentioned how it has a lot to do with the way you dress. They even did a social experiment where they had girls get dressed up in front of the mirror and as they were doing that they often asked or wondered if what they were wearing made them look promiscuous. They talked about the different mindsets that women have on what it means to be a slut some thought having se while not in a serious relationship was slutty, others would say no it depends on your number, then some would say it not about the number some thought it was the way the way you dress which plains the social experiment. I would think that someone concerned about this topic would want to figure out a way for women to be more empowering towards each other I mean seeing as slut shaming “reinforces male dominance and subordinates women. (p.101, Armstrong)” so as one gender I think we should be uplifting and not bring us down further.