21st Century Male Civil Rights

You might be a bit dumbfounded by the title of this blog and its relevance to what we have learned, read, and discussed so far.  I realize I will probably be ridiculed for this blog post and have stereotypical comments thrown my way, but I feel this needs to be addressed immediately in our society.  I feel, throughout this year, I have become a man against the mainstream.  What I mean about this is that I have a tendency to refute a lot of the common popular belief among those in our society.  One of those I have found in the United States is the misconception of gender equality in the twenty-first century.  Historically, the female gender has been the gender that has been oppressed, look down upon, and considered to be worthless in terms of traditional societal progress outside of the home.  But, I feel that in our modern day United States society there has been a subliminal reversal of roles.  Much of the reading we have done in this class and much of our discussion has been within the context of men being "evil" or "bad".  Basically, going back to pre-21st century gender role concepts.  Though I feel now that it is now the male gender that is under oppression by popular belief.  Every time I read an article regarding anything to do with gender roles seems to have a negative connotation to the male race.  I see this in education, media, and many other influential categories.

In education, specifically, in post-secondary education.  I have just finished going through the college application process and have learned so much about the distribution of gender that consists in the higher-education schools.  The gender distribution for students in college is now fifty-seven percent women.  It seems now women are either receiving an ample amount more consideration for post-secondary education than males, or males are just becoming dumber at an exponential rate.  Though, it is possible that the males may becoming more idiotic at this crazy of a rate just like how the Liberty Mutual commercials depict almost only males as the humans who make mistakes.  Yet I find it very difficult to believe that as a truth, there has been no scientific discovery suggesting that females are genetically more inclined to want to expand their knowledge or intelligence levels.  I believe that the result of the gender distribution is faulted to the colleges and universities that select students.  For some reason, it has been shown that being female leaves you with a higher chance of acceptance over being male.  The example of a male, who has a grade-point average of 4.2 on a 5 scale and an ACT score of 30, applies to a state university is one of two candidates who will get in.  His competitor a female with the same academic and personal credentials.  In summation, they were practically identical, except for their gender.  As you can see from the gender spread, the chances a female is selected is a much higher probability than males.  This does not suggest an equal opportunity for males.  Though this gender role flip does not only apply to academics it applies socially, also.

We now see in society that there are more and more stay-at-home fathers.  I am not saying this is bad, but I am displaying how the gender roles have switched.  One can observe this being depicted in our media today.  The hit show on NBC, Parenthood, follows a fictional family that is depicted as realistic as possible, with experiences that many families also face.  Though with one of the sisters, who is a lawyer and whose husband is a contractor.  Though when they get married and have a child he becomes the stay at home father.  This situation happens again later in the show where two of the brothers get laid off and are searching for jobs, but their wives start working.  Then the two brothers also become stay-at-home dads, while the women work.  Just some other quick background, the writer and producer of the show are both men so it is not the bias of a woman writing the show.

With this shift in our society, men should now proceed to act back.  We, men, need to now develop what women have used to propel themselves into their roles and equality.  We need to start promoting and believing in masculinism.  If women have feminism, why can a form of masculinism be socially absent?  Even as I proof read this post, I notice how there is no word for masculinism.  Thus, why can it be that women can have a system of ideals for pride and progress of their gender, but not men?


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-10-19-male-college-cover_x.htm

Best Dystopian Book

It is very difficult for me to determine what might be the best dystopian novel.  There are so many I have read and so many that I have yet to read.  Based off of my previous readings, the best dystopian book I have read has to 1984.  It was fairly enjoyable to me, but was not the most gripping of stories.  Now, it might seem strange that I would pick this book since I did not enjoy the story as much as the others that I have read, but what sets 1984 apart from the others is that it is one of the beginning ground works for dystopian literature that would later follow it.  It was written by George Orwell in 1948 and published in 1949.  It was outstanding how in depth Orwell was able to predict this future society and his composition was unlike any other author of his era.  He was also able to implement ideas and messages subliminally that were very clever and applicable to today's society.  Thus, his writing style and his innovative ideas lead George Orwell and his book 1984 to be the BEST DYSTOPIAN BOOK.

Children of Men

Recently, I watched the film Children of Men.  This was a movie about a future society, in which a disease caused the majority of women to become infertile.  This has led to war a corruption throughout the world.  The story is based in England, specifically London.  London has become one of the few sane nations left, with many fugitives trying to enter the country.  Sane, on the otherhand, is a very nice word to use for the government has become an oppressing system with extreme efforts to control its citizens.  I really enjoyed this movie because it provided a message of hope.  An intangible aspect in an otherwise very tangible world.  It showed that even in the darkest of times, during a time of war and violence, hope can be found.  The main example of this was towards the end when the baby was walked through the battle and everyone stopped fighting and were awstruck by the presence of the baby.  It temporarily brought hope and peace among the soldiers and rebels.  Though, most of this movie depicted human kind as evil, dark, inhumane, and despicable, the flashes of hope in the movie really made it a great film and enjoyable to watch.

Propaganda, A Parasite On Society? Or A Leach To Our Infection?

In our lives, we have all been exposed to many, many types and variations of propaganda.  You can date propaganda back hundreds of years.  Before, the use of propaganda was to promote authority such as the church or to promote nationalism and trust in your government during times of war (i.e. World War 1).  Though, the times have changed.  Propaganda has now become a very negative, hostile world in the eyes of today's citizens.  It has come off now as a "parasite attached to society."  What I mean by this is that propaganda is animated as a parasite that lives off of society, only to use, take, and thrive off of its host (society) without giving anything in return.  The most common use of propaganda is to try to appeal to the weakest human emotion, fear.  Propaganda only works if it can appeal to the thought process of a being observing it.  Most propaganda that attempts to install fear to those it is targeting use the rhetoric appeal of pathos, appealing to human emotion.  The propaganda usually depicts gruesome images to put the audience it targets in a sense of paranoia.  Though, there is propaganda that is suppose to be positive and tries to promote hope for its audience.  Yet, they many times draw the ideas.  For example, a proactive ad suggesting that you have to use this product to remove your acne imperfections, implying that you have to have perfect skin.  In reality, this is not a positive image being promoted.  This is why overall propaganda has evolved into an evil beast to say the least.

My H-G handicap according to Harrison Bergeron

My handicap according to Harrison Bergeron would be weights on my body and an earpiece in my ear.  I would have the weights because I am an athlete and considered “stronger” physically than the average man.  I would have an earpiece because I choose to think more logically about topics, thus I would have a loud, annoying siren that would go off in my head to digress me from my thought process.

What is Utopia?

What is a Utopia?  By definition, a utopia is any visionary system of political or social perfection.  To many this is interpreted very differently.  A utopia can only truly be perfect to the perspective of the person envisioning it.  For example, Sir Thomas Moore’s version of what a utopia consists of is not the same as that of mine, mostly because his was written in the classic Utopia a couple hundred years ago.

Sir Thomas Moore believed that the concept of utopia is essentially the idea that a perfect society needs to be based off of any idea that prevents conflict, specifically keeping all of those busy with work.  My concept of a utopia is very similar to that of Sir Moore.  In my opinion, it is impossible to achieve a utopia, but if it were to happen everyone would be equal at birth and stay equal throughout their lives.  The economy would be based off a barter system, so no one man, woman, or child has more money than the next, just skills to trade.  Next every child and young adult is required to attend primary and secondary educational schools, but tuition is free.  Officials will be unknowingly elected by the people.  This means the people will elect the man who is, in their opinion, the fairest, except this man will not know he is running for office.  I feel the distribution of wealth, power, and busyness would lead to a perfect, functional society.

Unfortunately, I feel it is impossible to achieve this “perfect world.”  The main reasoning being, the human natural sense of emotion affecting judgment.  The human trait of emotion often times clouds our judgment especially with the emotions of anger and sadness.  Many of times this is the leading cause to conflict and great example of this are the acts of war between the Soviet Union, Middle East, and United States.