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Deviant Identity
Master Statuses
- Primary deviance refers to a stage when people commit deviant acts but their deviance goes unrecognized secondary deviance- individuals deny the label but eventually accept it reluctantly as it becomes increasingly pressed upon them
- Tertiary deviance- those who engage in deviance embracement
Accounts
-Five techniques of Neutralization
1. Denials of responsibility
2. Denying injury
3. Denial of the victim
4. Appeal to higher loyalties
5. Condemning the condmi
-Excuses individuals admit the wrongfulness of their actions but distance themselves from the blame
-Justifications individuals may invoke sad tales
Ch. 23 The Adoption and Management of a "fat" Identity
Placing
- Refers to a cognitive process whereby an individual comes to identify an appropriate status from among those available
New Status
-The final phase of the identity change process involves the internalization of a negative definition of self
- Becoming bisexual involves the rejection of not one but two recognized categories of sexual identity heterosexual and homosexual
The Stages
-Initial Confusion period of considerable confusion, doubt, and struggle regarding their sexual identity before defining themselves as bisexual
Finding and Applying the Label
- Adopting the label bisexual
Settling into the Identity
- Usually it took years from the time of first sexual attractions to or behaviors with both sexes before people came to think of themselves as bisexual
Uncertainty
- The belief that bisexuals are confused about their sexual identity is quite common
-The homosexual community believes there is no such thing as bisexuality
-Current Appearance norms stipulate thinness for women and muscularity for men these expectations like any norms entail rewards for compliance and negative sanctions for violations
-Anorexia Nervosa or purposeful starvation embodies visual as well as behavioral deviation, bulimia binge eating followed by vomiting and/ or laxative abuse is primarily behaviorally deviant
-Major health and social problems
Methodology/ Sampling and Procedures
-Banish group 2hr meetings for 2 years
Description of Members
-Ages ranged from 19 to 36 modal/21
white, 1 was female
-The sole male and 3 of the females were anorexic; the remaining females were bulimic
-College students
-In the backgrounds of most anorexics and bulimics, dieting figures prominently beginning in the teen years
-Among the agents of socialization promoting the slimness norm is advertising
-Female models in newspaper, magazine, and television advertisements are uniformly slender
Discussion
- Previous research on eating disorders has dwelt almost exclusively on medical and psychological facets
-The phenomena of eating disorders transcend concrete disease entities and clinical diagnoses
-Psychiatry has dominated the literature on rapists since "irresistible impulse" and "disease of the mind" were introduced as the cause of rape
-Rape is assumed to be a psycho-pathologic problem and individual rapists are assumed to be "sick"
-Sociologists have long noted that people can and do commit acts they define as wrong and having done so engage various techniques to disavow deviance and present themselves as normal
Justifying Rape
- Deniers attempted to justify their behavior by presenting the victim in a light that made her appear culpable, regardless of their own actions
-Five themes run through rapists attempts to justify their rapes
(1) Women as seductresses
-Men who rape need not search far for cultural language which supports the premise that women provoke or are responsible for rape
(2) women mean "yes" when they say "no"
-Victims resist but some actually enjoy it
(3) Most women eventually relax and enjoy it
-Many of the rapists expected us to accept the image drawn for cultural stereotype that once the rape began the victim relaxed and enjoyed it
Ch. 29 Negotiating White Power Activist
contingent responses that involve varying the degree to which they conceal and disclose their activist identity
Responses to Conformity Pressures of Family and Friends
-while WPM members parents siblings relatives and even non movement friends are typically aware of their white power learnings they do not necessarily share those views
Leading a double life
- Activists respond to this inner struggle in several ways some disengage from those who disapprove
-They voluntarily seperate themselves by simply not visiting relatives, attending family gatherings, or befriending non -Aryans
They describe an ironic pleasure in "getting over" or "fooling" non Aryans such as coworkers teachers, but also deep frustrations about having to deny their most salient role
Strategic Silence
- Aryans do not need to provoke non white coworkers or outwardly express the contempt they feel toward minorities in older to sustain their activists self they often secretly read racist literature , listen to Aryan music and surf white power
Active an Passive Identity Displays in Public
-Aryans must also decide how much to reveal of themselves in everyday public spaces such as restaurants stores, banks, and other services settings
Passive Displays
-Without an attitude of restraint white power activists anticipate that they would be constantly retaliating against the evils they perceive as surrounding them in everyday public settings
Active Displays
-White power symbolism are acts of courage a trait highly esteemed among Aryans
Ch. 30 Fitting in and Fighting Back Homeless Kids Stigma Management Strategies
Stigma Management Strategies
-Stigma should be understood as a language of relationships
-These kids are stigmatized because of their position in society
-Kids who are homeless manage their stigma in many ways
Strategies of Inclusion
-Forging friendships
-The language of relationships that identifies kids who are homeless as a stigmatized group is so embedded in society that it is implicit in all their social relations
Passing
- Visibility is a crucial factor in attempts at passing
- To pass successfully an individual must make his or her stigma invisible so that it is known only to himself or herself and to other similarly situated individuals
Covering
- Individuals engage in covering when they attempt to minimize the prominence of their spoiled identity
-Covering allows individuals to participate in more normative social interactions by reducing their stigma elicits
Strategies of Exclusion
-Verbal Denigration
-When individuals face a social world that labels them deviant,they are likely to fight back by maligning others as a way to augment their self esteem
Ch. 31 Collective Stigma Management and Shame: A Vowal, Management, and Contestation
The Organizational Frame of OA: Redemption
-The 12 steps of Overeaten Anonymous
1. Powerless over food/ lives unmanageable
2. Power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3. Decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood him
4. Searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove defects of character
7. Humbly ask him to remove our short comings
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted in
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to cumpulsive over eaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs
of life, an organized set of attitude, and a mode of responding to myriad situations that members face daily
-NAAFA sees social stigma as directly linked to the internalized oppression of shame
