Sex/uality Artifacts

Hi class! My name is Amanda Tanzer and my artifact that I presented in class yesterday was a clip from the movie Easy A. This movie is about a girl named Olive who faked sleeping with her guy friend to help everyone believe he wasn’t gay. Other boys then find out from him that she did this so they all begin to ask her to do the same thing in exchange for gift cards. So at this point in the movie she is known for “sleeping around”. Then the man you see in the clip below learned he got chlamydia and so he blamed it on Olive since she was known for “sleeping around” when it was really the guidance counselor who was also seen in the videos above. When Olive goes to the guidance counselor about the matter, she basically convinces Olive to act like it really was her so she could keep her job/marriage.

I related this movie to the article “Damaged Goods: Women Managing the Stigma of STDs” by Adina Nack. Guilt and deception were both common reactions mentioned in the article for women with STDs. These were both reactions that could be seen in the movie Easy A as well as the guidance counselor chose to deny her STD, lie about it, and use a cover story (Olive taking the blame). This all eventually led to guilt once her husband finds out it was her later on in the movie. Everyone in the study, in the article, eventually disclosed the truth about their STD to a loved one, as did the guidance counselor in the movie.

The article also talked about how a woman living with a chronic STD has a shadow of disease cast on her and the health and desirability of her body as well as on her perceived possibilities for future sexual experiences. This can be seen in Easy A as everyone talked about Olive behind her back and the news spread around so quickly after the boy in the video said she gave him chlamydia. Later on she mentions how no one ever asked her on a real date anymore. They just paid her to say they did stuff with her, but everyone thought she had an STD from “sleeping around” too much that she really had no opportunities for sexual experiences. This made it seem as though Olive had an aura of undesirability around her as the article mentioned.

Videos shown in class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsHeCTEQ34o(started at 0:58)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhCmqzi5CL4 (started at 0:52)

Hello everyone, my name is Catherine Weaver. Today I presented an artifact in class about interracial relationships based off our article we had to read called Interracial Intimacy. Interracial relationships have always been something that is weird or made a skeptical of to the public and in the eyes of the media that is all around us. If heterosexual interracial couples are being made a skeptical of in the public, then homosexual interracial couples definitely are as well. In the reading, Interracial Intimacy, it explains how interracial couples have moments of invisibility and also moment of visibility to the public. Sometimes they feel like they don’t matter and aren’t given the time of day so they feel invisible. But other times, they have moments of visibility but not the good kind of visibility. It is the type of visibility that the interracial couples get prolonged stared and hearing the whispers of bad and rude comments. People’s reactions to interracial couples just goes to show how we view interracial relationships and what stereotype of relationships we see in our head. For example, if we think of white woman in a relationship in our head… we automatically pair her with a white man right along side of her. Or if we think of a black man, we automatically pair him up with a black woman in our head. Which in my opinion, is crazy. Love is love and it should not be discriminated in any way shape or form. Who are we to judge or decide who should love who.

The video that I found as my artifact that relates to the reading, Interracial Intimacy, is called Interracial Relationship Confessions. This short video was made by BuzzFeed and I thought it was a great example of how interracial couples actually feel about how people view their own personal intimate relationship. One of the lines from the short video that stood out to me the most was: “Yeah, people do stare. Sad, but true.” To interracial couples, it doesn’t matter what race their partner is or what culture he or she is from. And, if it doesn’t matter to them, then why should it matter to us?

Here is the link for the video I found:

Hello everyone, my name is Nichole Davenport. Today in class on December 1, 2015, I presented my first artifact regarding interracial intimacy and marriages. From last week’s readings, we were required to read the article entitled “Visibility as Privilege and Danger: Heterosexual and Same-Sex Interracial Intimacy” written by Amy C. Steinbugler. I felt that this article was very interesting and made very valid points. The article differentiates how respect and acceptance is demonstrated between different sexuality identities and preferences. Gayle Rubin wrote the pivotal essay entitled “Thinking Sex” in 1984, where she argues that sexuality is organized into systems of power: rewarding individuals and activities while suppressing others. This is referred to as a “sex hierarchy”. Rubin stated that “good, normal, and natural” sexuality is heterosexual, monogamous, same-generation, procreative, vanilla, which refers to “non-kinky” sex, and also in private. Basically, this version of what “good” sexuality looks like is based around societal norms. “Bad, abnormal, and damned” sexuality, however, is homosexual, unmarried, promiscuous, non-procreative, casual, cross-generational, or sadomasochistic sex. Rubin also explains that “good” sexuality receives respect, mobility, and legality while as “bad” sexuality receives dis-reputability, restricted mobility, and criminality. In this article, Rubin also introduces the concept of interracial sexuality and how it is looked over in research. In the United States, interracial sexual relations is not only frowned upon, but is also strongly discouraged as it is perceived to be “wrong” or as “betrayal” to the family. This is especially true for interracial relations between African-Americans and Whites, who have actually been restricted and criminalized for such relations. Mono-racial and heterosexuality, however, is legally, politically, and socially sanctioned. While researching more on this topic and why it is so much worse for African-American and White interracial couples compared to other races, I came across a video clip of an interview on the Bethenny Show with Tamera Mowry-Housley, who is a famous actress and has her own reality show with her twin sister. Tamera explains in the video that she is biracial or “mixed”, with her father being White and her mother Black, and that she herself is in an interracial marriage, with her husband being White as well. Tamera discusses her feelings about this aspect in her life and how her and her husband receive a lot of negative comments and looks because of their interracial marriage. She consistently expresses her opinion, stating “Who cares?!” regarding her social and personal life. She was receiving nasty Tweets on social media site Twitter, with individuals giving her grief about supposedly not having Black friends, and that all her friends are White. Not only was this assumption false, as Tamera pointed out, but also ties into the article written  by Steinbugler. Tamera and her husband’s interracial marriage is being looked at as “bad” sexuality, as it doesn’t tie into societal norms. Although Tamera is seen as a celebrity, individuals are still uncomfortable with her interracial marriage and are not afraid to voice their opinions about it. As Rubin indicated, interracial sexual relations have been restricted and criminalized, specifically between African-Americans and Whites. Respect and acceptance for interracial marriages and relations is still an issue in the United States, and needs to be addressed.

To find the link to this interview:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-SJYYaaLgE

To find the article by Amy C. Steinbugler: Files–interracial intimacy.pdf (Retrieved on November 24, 2015)

Hello, my name is Sami Parave and for my second artifact I chose the movie The Birdcage. In The Birdcage, Robin Williams plays a character that is the owner of a drag show club and he is in a relationship with the star drag queen. The couple has a son together who comes home from college and tells them he’s getting married, but soon the conflict of the other family’s values comes into play. The woman who the son is marrying has very conservative parents. They are not approving of homosexual relationships and they are not accepting of the type of lifestyle she’ll be marrying in to. In the video clip I picked, the girl’s father has just found out that it is a gay couple that raised her fiancé and he is not pleased with this discovery. He claims that because he is running for reelection and they are going through a scandal that this is the last thing that he needs. He also states that her mother is crying at the time and asks her how many more lives she is going to ruin before she realizes what she’s doing. He believes that the way her fiancé was raised is wrong and that the whole situation is preposterous. He is putting his family above others because of its “traditional” morals within it. In the “Proper Families” article, it is discussed how families see the importance of certain values and the value of early family experiences, but the conflict is that some believe homosexual households don’t provide the same type of positive experience. There is the idea that values should remain the same among all families and shouldn’t differ. Some people worry about “bad genes” being passed on or entering a family because they come from a homosexual background. These ideas are outdated and untrue in the majority of cases because it has been proven in many studies that children of homo and heterosexual relationships develop and grow the same way, which relates to the “Freeman Queer Belongings” article. This article also states that kinship can be skewed based on who is really taking care of the children and who is teaching the children the morals based off what their perception of parenting is. These morals that some families believe makes a traditional family so specific are slowly being phased out because the LGBT community is creating a safer living environment for people around the world.

The link to the video is below!

Hi my name is Chelsey Dupler. For my second artifact I choose a movie called the kids are all right. This is a film about two lesbians who wanted children so they went to a sperm bank so that they could make this happen. They ended up having two children with the same sperm donor. The children begin to grow interest in who their father is. The children legally have to 18 to go to the sperm bank to get information about their father. Thankfully, the daughter turned 18 pretty soon into the movie. This allowed her to go to the sperm bank and figure out who their father was. After that, she called her father and met up with him and her brother. They all enjoyed learning about each other. This prompted them to hang out more than their mother’s would like. At first when the mother’s found out that the children went to find their father, they weren’t very happy about it. Thankfully, they eventually came around to the idea that the children did want their father in their lives.

This relates to the article called Proper Families? Cultural Expectations and Donor Conception as it states that these children are growing up thinking about their identity, as they do not know every person in which their genes come from. If they come from a family in which they only know one parent because of a sperm donor then these children can be longing to learn more about their identity and their genes. Thankfully, in this movie the children both get to know their father so even though their childhoods were spent with a longing for learning more about their identity and genes, they were able to find it in their father when they met him.

This movie also relates to the article as in the beginning it discusses how it used to be the norm that families would consist of a mother and father and they would only conceive that way. As we know this is not every type of family that America consists of nowadays. So over time, the type of proper family that used to be known in society has changed by allowing same sex couples and single women to be able to conceive a child. This is allowing people to become more accepting of mothers going to a sperm bank and becoming a mom on their own without a man in their lives to help. As in the movie the mother’s go to the sperm bank to get donor sperm to become help them conceive the children that they’ve always wanted. Overall, this movie helps to shed light on the subject and allows society to see that this is becoming more normal for people. Which allows for people to become more accepting of the changes that the old type of “proper family” of a man and woman is not the only type of family that can conceive a child in America today.

The trailer for the movie can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdDSqgZ87fM

Hello, my name is Jordan Nell and in this post I will be discussing my 2nd artifact that was presented on 12-1-2015. In this lesson I related my artifact to a clip from the Thanksgiving scene in The Blind Side movie. This clip relates to the proper families article. It talks about finding persona identities and goes to the extreme of a genetic connection for that to occur. The most important point from this article is that families need to create relatedness and a sense of belonging. People often refer genetics and biological aspects as relating to someone but it is more about being able to connect to their interests and providing a warm and positive environment. Kinship revolves around relating to one another and that was evident in this video clip when they all sat at the kitchen table with Michael instead of watching football while they ate their Thanksgiving dinner. Genetic kinship does not automatically lead to caring, loving, and close families. Family practices between non-genetic kinship can give rise to bonding, security, and a strong sense of belonging. The clip shows non-genetic kinship by relating the family to one another by having them sit down and having each others undivided attention while eating a very important family tradition meal. Michael grew up in an environment where he came from nothing and had a hard time relating to the rich family life style. The wife took him in as if she was his mother. In the future Michael goes on to continue to stay close with his new family due to their bond. He was very thankful for everything that they did for him to get him to Ole Miss for collegiate football and ultimately to the NFL. He would have never conquered his life long dreams if he didn’t experience the guidance and support that he did during his childhood. The follow video link that is attached shows the Thanksgiving clip from the Blind Side movie and the importance of non-genetic kinship when relating to one another. You can tell Michael feels the bond with the family in this clip and this goes a long way for developing these relationships in the future. This artifact seemed to go very well and proved the importance of relating to your family members.

Hello, my name is Jordan Nell and I will be discussing my first artifact from 12-1-2015 in this post. Billie Jean King is a former top 10 national female tennis player. She made history by taking on Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” which took place as a match in 1973. Bobby Riggs is known for being an extremely sexist individual. Billie Jean King ended up winning the match fairly easily. The only reason she chose to have the match with Bobby Riggs was to fight for equal prize money for female athletes. In 1981, a court case took place between Billie Jean King and her former ex-girlfriend. This forced King to come out publicly about her sexuality. She feared this knowledge becoming public because of the possibility that it could damage her image and relationships. Her fears became true because she sadly lost all of her endorsements. This article related well to today’s class when discussing Adults and Sexuality: Marriage and Intimate Relationships. This is because she felt that she was forced to tell everyone about her sexuality due to her circumstances. No issues occurred during the presentation but I felt like everyone was interested in the topic because no one really covered a sports figure before in any artifacts. Her story was more challenging because people were more upset that she had a husband although that was just a cover up so no one would question her sexuality. This is linked to the class content due to her situation. Many people do not understand the issues that could arise from public figures speaking out about their sexuality. This was even more challenging when discussing this issue in the 1970’s-1980’s. I cannot begin to understand the level of pain and suffering she felt keeping this secret for such a long time. I can’t comprehend how difficult it must be to come out publicly due to being forced. Unfortunately for Billie Jean King the repercussions were big and she seemed to never recover but now she is considered a major public figure. She stuck up for her own personal life and for the rights of women during this difficult time period. Attached below is the video link that I played when presenting my artifact to the class. This video gives you a background on Billie Jean King and her famous tennis match.