For my current event topic I am choosing the Boston Marathon Bombing. I feel as though this event is something a sociologist would like to study for a number of reasons. As in my previous post about suicide bombers I think from a sociological standpoint it is interesting to look into why people do such radical things like fly planes into buildings or bomb large events. The second reason I think a sociologist may want to study this event is due to the affect it had on others, why in times of tragedy do people do extraordinary things for strangers?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/15/us/boston-marathon-explosions
This link is to a simple summary of what happen at the Boston Marathon Bombing, I chose it because it is well written and contains all the necessary information about the event.
"The terrorist attack, near the marathon's finish line, triggered widespread screaming and chaos, shattered windows and barricades and sent smoke billowing into the air at Copley Square.
The blasts were about 50 to 100 yards apart, officials said, on a stretch of the marathon course lined with spectators cheering runners through the final yards of a 26-mile, 385-yard endurance feat.
Authorities in Boston found at least one other explosive device that they were dismantling, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. Rep. Bill Keating of Massachusetts, meanwhile, said two more were found. One unexploded device was found at a hotel on Boylston Street near the bomb site and another unexploded device was found at an undisclosed location, Keating, a Democrat and member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said. He called the bombing a "sophisticated, coordinated, planned attack.""
This second article shows how in times of tragedy people will open their homes to others. I think it would be interesting to study why people do these things for strangers. I chose this article because it shows how will people are to help others in times of need.
"There are names, thousands of names of people in the Boston area with standing offers to help those displaced by thehorrifying explosions near the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon. By Monday evening, the Google document had become more than a resource for the stranded. It became a viral statement of solidarity from the proud people of Massachusetts. The first entry appeared at 5:39 p.m., only a few hours after the explosions occurred. The most recent entry (as of this writing) comes two hours later, at 7:40. More than 4,000 people put their personal information on the Internet for everyone to see because they wanted total strangers to come over to their houses and rest and feel better. Think about that."
The final article is about the suspected attackers and their possible motives I think it important to look into the reasoning behind such tragedies to possibly prevent them from happening again.
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are accused of setting off the two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15. The elder brother was later killed in a police standoff. Investigators are looking into whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who spent six months in Russia's Caucasus in 2012, was influenced by the religious extremists who have waged an insurgency against Russian security services in the area for years. The brothers have roots in Dagestan and neighboring Chechnya, but neither spent much time in either place before the family moved to the United States a decade ago."
The second topic I will be discussing is transgender youth. I am choosing this firstly because this topic has been in the news lately and is gaining publicity. The second reason is because I am fascinated about gender and how ones physical body can differ then what gender they feel they are. The final reason is because I think this is a topic that needs to be addressed so that people can become more accepting. First it is necessary to provide a definition of transgender. According to the article 'It's me in a different way' by Jeff Kass, "Transgender does not necessarily refer to someone who has had a sex-change operation. Advocates define transgender as a person who does not identify with the sex based on their genitalia - in other words, someone born with male genitalia who does not identify as male and someone born with female genitalia who does not identify as a female. A transgender person should be referred to as the gender they identify with, according to advocates."
An 20/20 interview with a young transgender girl
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/tony-zamazal-transgender-prom-_n_3021109.html
This article allows for us to see some of the struggles that face transgender teens; simple things we take for granted like being allowed to wear what we want to wear or going to our high school prom. The below excerpt of the article gives a summary of the triumph of one teen girl.
"A Texas-based transgender teen has won the right to wear a dress and heels to the senior prom..."All I wanted was to get to wear a dress to prom, because I wouldn't have felt comfortable at all showing up in a tux," Zamazal is quoted in a press release as saying. "I'm so grateful that my school has agreed to let me be myself on such an important night."... Zamazal's case is merely the latest challenge to high school prom regulations across the country in recent months. Students and staff at an Indiana-based high school tried to quickly distance themselves from international media frenzy over a local group's plea for a "traditional" alternate prom that would ban gay teens. The most vocal member of that group, special education teacher Diana Medley sparked the most controversy when she compared LGBT teens to special needs students and said she "honestly didn't" feel gay people had a "purpose" in life."
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/mar/01/its-me-in-a-different-way/
The article above tells they story of a young transgender girl. I chose this article because it allows us to see into the lives of transgender youth as well as shows us at what an early age a child can know that they are different. It also allows us to see that they are like any other boy or girl. Below is an excerpt of the article
"On the first day of eighth grade, Melaina Marquez wore a polo shirt, wedge shoes and denim skirt with ruffles.... At age 2, Melaina recalls playing with Barbies and her favorite toy, a kitchenette. When she played house in pre-school, "I would always want to be the mom." Melaina says she never struggled with her identity. But her mother, Michelle Benzor-Marquez, cannot say the same. When Melaina was around 8 years old, she was allowed to wear light-colored lip gloss and a little blush, but only at home. Melaina's hair grew longer, little by little, but her mom had the stylist chop it off one day in sixth grade. Melaina cried the whole 20 miles to her grandmother's home. Benzor-Marquez hoped Melaina was gay because she figured the world could better handle that than transgender."I know people think it's wrong to be transgender," said Melaina, who on a recent day was dressed in black jeans and a black and gold striped blouse with decorative bow. "But God made everyone different in his own way, and you can't change that. It's not a choice.""
Diane Ehrensaft came to this conclusion about the drugs, "The rates of depression, suicide, and hate crimes are higher among transgender youth than in the general population as a result of social stigma, familial aspersion, and internal turmoil when one’s gendered body and brain are out of sync with one another. Playing with nature by switching the tracks of an individual’s physical gender development through drug treatments or surgery admittedly generates anxiety in all of us as it challenges the heretofore basic premise that one’s biological sex is immutable bedrock in the human condition. Yet it should not be the stance of the psychoanalytic community to therefore dismiss this approach to transgender experience but rather analyze our own discomfort and evaluate the limitations of our own theories in the face of these children’s needs. As clinicians, it is not for us to bend twigs, but to recognize when a twig has been unwittingly twisted and help get it untwisted. With that said, I began this paper with an answer and I would now like to finish with two questions. If a course of drug treatment can significantly reduce extreme risk factors for transgender youth, why wouldn’t we? If a goal of development is to allow the True Self to unfold and a drug treatment proves instrumental in facilitating that process for transgender youth, why wouldn’t we?"
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
--E.E. Cummings
Araj, B. (2012). The Motivations of Palestinian Suicide Bombers in the Second Intifada (2000 to 2005). Canadian Review Of Sociology, 49(3), 211. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.2012.01292.x
EHRENSAFT, D. (2009). One pill makes you boy, one pill makes you girl. International Journal Of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 6(1), 12-24. doi:10.1002/aps.185
In this blog post I am going to be discussing why and what motivates suicide bombers. I chose this topic because Durkheim's study of suicide interests me. Many people commit suicide because they feel as thought their life is no longer worth living. However, suicide bombers allow us to see a unique view on suicide that differs from what we see as "normal" reasons for committing suicide.
Above is the link to an article titled, "The Motivations of Palestinian Suicide Bombers in the Second Intifada". This article provides an in depth look at the motivations behind Palestinian suicide bombers. I chose this article due to the large amount of research it contains as well as the detailed look it takes on the subject. The quote below provides a good synopsis of the article.
"I found that the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers were typically complex. They drew
mainly on the desire for revenge against the harsh repressive measures of Israeli forces and, secondarily, on religious inspiration. The effect of harsh Israeli state repression was very strong, figuring at least partly in 95 percent of my sample. Religious motivations varied by organization, with bombers recruited by Islamicist organizations tending to be more strongly influenced by religious factors than were bombers recruited by secular organizations. Strategic calculation—the assessment that suicide bombing would hasten the liberation of the homeland—was not the principal motivation for any of the bombers in my sample but was a secondary or tertiary motivation for about half of them. Material incentives, economic necessity, exploitation of individual by unscrupulous"
This link provides another view on suicide bombing. I chose this link because the article discuses the altruistic aspect of suicide bombing. The quote below allows us to see Durkheim's views on suicide.
"The meaning and nature of suicide in a suicide bombing are strikingly different from ordinary suicide. Suicide bombing falls into the category of altruistic suicidal actions that involve valuing one’s life as less worthy than that of the group’s honor, religion, or some other collective interest. Religiously and nationalistically coded attitudes towards acceptance of death, stemming from long periods of collective suffering, humiliation and powerlessness enable political organizations to offer suicide bombings as an outlet for their people’s feelings of desperation, deprivation, hostility and injustice."
"Fifty-three percent of the would-be bombers showed “depressive tendencies” — melancholy, low energy, tearfulness, the study found — whereas 21 percent of the organizers exhibited the same. Furthermore, 40 percent of the would-be suicide bombers expressed suicidal tendencies; one talked openly of slitting his wrists after his father died. But the study found that none of the terrorist organizers were suicidal."
Interview with a suicide bomber (2009)
"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death. I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one which I was treated. But, since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided to go to another... I wanted to fill 20, 50 Jews... yes, even babies and children" Wafa al Bass (unsuccessful suicide bomber)
Welcome to my blog, my name is Hailey Zysk. I am a junior at the University of Idaho. I am currently studying Secondary Education as well as Spanish. I find the study of sociology as a whole interesting. What I am most interested in is looking at "social outcasts" or people who simply break societal norms and how they effect society as a whole. I studied abroad last semester in Chile and I think that living in another part of the world or simply in a culture other than your own can greatly change your view on the world.
