"When the dust settles and the pages of history are written,
it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have
made the difference, that reward will go to those who dared
to step outside the safety of their privacy in order
to expose and rout the prevailing prejudice."
- John Shelby Spong
Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Newark, NJ
November 21, 1996
A Struggle for Acceptance
During World War II and especially the twenty years after brought great political and social changes to the U.S.. Undoubtedly, one of the major changes was the new awareness of homosexuality. If this new awareness was to the advantage or if it was really wanted by the gay and lesbian population is a question that arises; if they really had a choice in the matter is another.
I think gays= relentless struggle for acceptance into mainstream society came from the American constitution itself. After all, the gay liberation movement started in America, the land of the free, where all men are created equal and with an inalienable right to pursue their own happiness. No one should be able to take these rights away from anyone. Also, in the 1950s, the civil rights movement became active and words like desegregation and equal rights for all became synonymous with the American way of life. Stand up and fight against those who have done you wrong! This is what gave homosexuals such a conviction to start fighting for their own cause.
This paper will follow the progress of gay and lesbians in the twentieth century before, during and after World War II. What was their position in the armed forces during the war and what was government and military policy during and after the war on gays in the army and in government positions? How did gay and lesbians respond to the new policies after the war and why were organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis founded?
On December 7, 1941 at 7:55 a.m. local time, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The Unites States declared war on Japan and was suddenly a participant in the largest war in the history of mankind. A massive military force of 12 million men was assembled. American soldiers were sent to Europe and Japan to participate and win the Big One. The military bureaucracy grew accordingly and thousands of new jobs were created. With the military=s enormous demand for personnel, drafted American men found themselves in isolated gender segregated environments. All the big war movies depict this with the GI=s longing for leave so he could go downtown and find himself a prostitute. What these movies do not show is a new community, within the military, of homosexuals who until now lived socially isolated lives because they were either unsure of what they were or of their sexual preferences or just plain scared of what people would think if they found out their secret. In the military, these people found other gay men who were in the same predicament. They weren=t alone.
Before the war, gays and lesbians were almost invisible from society. They were not mentioned in the popular media and the general population was oblivious to their existence. An occasional arrest or school expulsion of a Asexual psychopath@ were the only vague signs that the public would hear about. Now that the military accepted or at least needed the cooperation of all men, including homosexuals, an important page had been turned in the progress of gay rights, however, it also set the scene for discrimination and prejudice.
Homosexuals were in all branches of the armed forces, from paper pushing to front line combat. Before enlisting, interrogators had forced them to describe their lifestyle, which in turn made it impossible for homosexuals to continue hiding in the closet but instead had to take the first step in living a new open lifestyle. They were classified as Asexual psychopaths@ on their military records, however, they were not being discriminated by the military at this point in time. An apparatus was even set up to accommodate gay personnel. Through this apparatus, the military ended up with quite an extensive record of homosexual behavior and was considered an expert on the subject. Military scientists much later said that through studying homosexuals' behavior could find nothing to support evidence that gay and lesbians were in any way psychopaths or had any form of mental disorder. This report came out after the 1940s and 1950s; until then, the military denied having made any research on homosexuals.
After World War II, the military suddenly made a decision not to have gay or lesbians in the armed forces anymore. They would be discharged without any benefitsa even though they hadn=t done anything wrong. This caused gay veterans to unite and fight against sexual discrimination and some were later the founders of organized gay rights movements.
Exposed by the war, gays and lesbians decided to continue living their lives in the open, although many still preferred living quietly in discrete suburbs, coming out only under pseudonyms in articles or books.
Bars for gays and lesbians became a major gathering place. Here they could mingle and be themselves. These bars became wide spread and were not only confined to the major U.S. cities but were established in many small towns as well. The general public and media started noticing this growth and with the common knowing of homosexuals being perverted sexual psychopaths, child molesters, sex offenders and sex degenerates, a fear spread for the safety of women and children who could be snatched by these dangerous people. This fear initiated the anti-gay policies and sex psychopath laws of the late 1940s and early 1950s, where gay and lesbians were witch hunted and fired from their work place. The policy that had the greatest impact was President Eisenhower=s signing of Executive Order #10450, stating that sexual perversion was reason for prejudice hiring and firing of workers
Gay veterans were a select group of American patriots, who, for the most part wanted things to go back to how they were and just lead secure and stable lives. These new policies caused much irritation and the veterans felt they were constantly being mistreated, which gave them all the more reason to speak up. They could have continued to live quiet lives but they were pushed into the open by the government, and now that they were exposed, they weren't going to go back in the closet without a fight. The new strict moral values of the postwar period and the nuclear family did not help gays and lesbians blend into society. Instead, homosexuals were being scapegoated and considered sex deviates. The idea of deviates and wave builders went well together with the red scare and homosexuals were feared even more than before. Communist homosexuals would mean the downfall of western society as we know it....at least that is what the government wanted us to believe. The theory of homosexuals being sex deviates was also supported by psychiatrists who wanted more influence over the criminal justice system and allowed for the incarceration of homosexuals into mental institution. This caused arrests for sodomy, perversion and indecency to skyrocket and many men and women ended up in these institutions.
The military=s turnaround and postwar treatment of homosexuals and the homophobia and irrational fear of gays that they caused, made its way to the civilian bureaucracy. In the 1950s, senators launched an attack on gay employees. Senator Joseph McCarthy led the crusade against homosexuals and communists and was feared by nearly all American; he had the power to dismiss you from your place of work and put you in an institution. Homosexuals were even considered to be easier targets for communist propaganda and were also the main reason for the purges in the government sector. People were afraid gays would deliver U.S. secrets to the Russians.
Even though gays and lesbians were hounded everywhere, they didn=t defend themselves from the attacks. Homosexuals had no one to speak up for them at that time and were unsure of what to do. Instead they isolated themselves and bottled up the anger and fear they felt for society. Gay veterans were no exception, however, they didn't accept the circumstances and conditions that had been set before them. They understood it was impossible for them to live the way they used to; in order for them to lead an open life, the hounding had to stop. They had fought a war to preserve their liberty and no one should be able to take that away from them now.
The first organization for gays was founded in Germany. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee wanted to abolish the German anti-gay penal code and to educate the public on being gay. The movement was short lived and was disintegrated when the Nazi regime came to power. There was also an effort for gay organizing in Chicago during the 1920s but they dissolved without major recognition. Then came the Mattachine Society. It was founded in 1950 in Los Angeles as a response to anti-gay campaigns in Washington, the constant police raiding of gay bars and that gays were an oppressed minority and should have someone to speak for them. The Mattachine Society would help gays out of jail, consult gays and refer them to psychiatrists, if they needed one. However, staying above budget was not easy. Call says the active members were doing more than they were getting paid for. Publishing the Mattachine Review, a gay magazine, was a demanding occupation and member fees did not cover all the work that had to be done. A bar directory was also published by the Society together with the Daughters of Bilits=s own magazine, the Ladder. The original founders were gay veterans from WWII and consisted of Chuck Rowland, Bob Hull, Harry Hay, Rudy Gernreich, Konrad Stevens, Dale Jennings, Stan Witt and Paul Bernard. The most charismatic of these was Chuck Rowland. He himself was an army veteran and an idealist. After the war, he had joined the American Veterans Committee and later the communist party. Being a member of the communist party would later cause him his seat with the Mattachine Society. These founders had a vision that all homosexuals would eventually come out and parade down the streets of LA. Until then, they sought refuge under pseudonyms when publishing anything of homosexual nature.
Many joined the Society but no one knew who ran the organization. Rowland and the others thought it safest to keep it that way in the beginning. In 1954, the founders decided to become an open democratic organization and a vote was held as to whom should be the leaders. Rowland and the others wanted a radical group of expansionists and protesters. Hall Call, their opposition, wanted to take a more conservative approach. He meant that for the group to survive, they did not want to attract unnecessary attention to themselves; also to have an open organization, they had to eliminate everything that could give the government, especially McCarthy, an excuse to shut the organization down, which meant removing the communist faction from the group. Call won the vote and most if not all of the original founders were asked to resign. This decision left them very bitter and the question whether they had done the right thing by going "public" they way they had is still asked. Rowland claimed Call was the reason for the Mattachine=s downfall, having not an ounce of organizational spirit in his whole body. Call on the other hand, who was a journalist, saw the McCarthy threat as real and if the Mattachine Society wanted to enhance the Society and do some good, staying low was the only answer. Membership later decreased in the late 1960s and members instead joined a seceded branch of the Society called SIR.
Up until 1950s, no Aopen-minded@ study had ever been made of male homosexuals. However, in 1956, Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a professor at UCLA, presented a paper to the American Psychological Association in Chicago, in which she had conducted an experiment of homosexuals and heterosexuals to study their Afundamental personal behavior@ using the Rorschach, the Thematic Apperception and the Make a Picture tests. The judges were internationally recognized scientists and were not told who had been taking the tests. The result came out and the judges could not find any relation between the subjects= sexual preferences and their answers. Dr. Hooker received the Distinguished Contribution Award for her study.
Dr. Hooker was also confronted by many lesbians, asking her to conduct a test on them as well. She refused on the grounds that a woman conducting tests on women would be considered biased and not be taken seriously.
In 1955, lesbians in San Francisco founded the lesbian equivalent to the Mattachine Society; they called it the Daughters of Bilitis. The movement was unsure on how to proceed; whether they should engage in picketing and other civil rights activities or whether it should challenge the medical profession's claim that homosexuality was an illness. Their task consisted of counseling lesbians and educate mothers who thought their daughters might be lesbian. One sad case was when a daughter confronted her parents and told them of her being a lesbian. The parents didn=t take it as well as she might have hoped for. Instead they raised a gravestone with her name on it and declared her dead by listing her in the obituaries in the local newspaper.
In June of 1969, the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village, was considered the dawning of the gay liberation movement. A police raid caused homosexuals to riot, not accepting the constant terrorizing from the authorities. The three day rioting led to the beginning of a new mass movement, the Gay Liberation Front, derived from the controversial Vietnamese National Liberation Front; wanting radical change, much like Chuck Rowland and the founders of the Mattachine Society and fighting fiercer and with more pride and confidence than before. Gays and lesbians began joining forces and recognized their common cause; to stand up for their rights as human beings and not willing to be suppressed any longer. This historic event is every year embodied in New York's Gay Parade.
There was a nationwide protest against the discrimination of gay military personnel but it didn=t have much impact. Military policy is still very much biased against homosexuals in the armed forces; even after government institutions loosened up their restrictions on gay policy. The military argued that homosexuals in service would threaten the moral and job performance of enlisted personnel. The discharge policy backfired. Instead of producing Asexual security@ for the soldiers, it reinforced hostility and prejudice among personnel. This policy goes against the secret military reports that say gays are suited for the military and the gay history of World War II, which showed that gay men could be just as courageous as straight men. It only leaves us to believe that the military has no respect for gay personnel and are only using them when in a crisis and being in need of cannon fodder.
Looking back, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis were the pioneers for all gay and lesbians. They created a sturdy foundation on which to build a national recognition and understanding of homosexuals. Without them there would most probably not have been a Stonewall Inn incident. Who is to blame for homosexuals having to fight for recognition and acceptance against what seemed to be the entire American public? Before World War II, the public was uneducated and unaware of the gay and lesbian society they lived with. Like a child, they were easily affected by government doctrine, justified by the government=s need to keep the economy growing by uniting the people with false anti-Communist anti-gay propaganda and thereby creating an illusionary external and internal enemy. From a purely economic view, the government wanted Keyen=s AAnimal Spirits@ (herd mentality) to be positive and united and not have them go into another depression of pessimistic thinking. The postwar years were the first time the government had this much control over industry and officials thought it should stay that way. To do this, the public had to be satisfied and not worried about another recession. Communism and the gay threat were just the excuses the government needed to unite the population. They would foster the American ideal on how to be and act and deviance from this ideal, would cause the ARussian Bear@ to invade the American peace loving neighborhoods.
I think homosexuals were used as scapegoats and were a minority that could be sacrificed for the governments proclaimed Agood@ of the nation.
SOURCES:
$ The American Record; volume II: since 1865, by William Graebner & Leonard Richards, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
$ Making History; The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights 1945 - 1990, by Erik Marcus, HarperCollins Publishers
INTERESTING AND MORE DETAILED EXCERPTS FROM INTERNET SOURCES FOR FURTHER READING:
The Stonewall Inn, (named after the Confederate General 'Stonewall' Jackson), was a gay bar (said to be sleazy and Mafia-run) at 51-53 Christopher Street just east of Sheridan Square in New York's Greenwich Village. On the night of 27/28th. June, 1969, a police inspector and seven other officers from the Public Morals Section of the First Division of the New York City Police Department arrived shortly after midnight, served a warrant charging that alcohol was being sold without a license, and announced that employees would be arrested.
The patrons were ejected from the bar by the police while others lingered outside to watch, and were joined by passers-by. The arrival of the paddy wagons changed the mood of the crowd from passivity to defiance. The first vehicle left without incident apart from catcalls from the crowd. The next individual to emerge from the bar was a woman in male costume who put up a struggle which galvanized the bystanders into action. The crowd erupted into throwing cobblestones and bottles. Some officers took refuge in the bar while others turned a fire hose on the crowd. Police reinforcements were called and in time the streets were cleared. During the day the news spread, and the following two nights saw further violent confrontations between the police and gay people.
The event was important less for its intrinsic character than for the significance subsequently bestowed on it. The Stonewall Rebellion was a spontaneous act of resistance to the police harassment that had been inflicted on the homosexual community since the inception of the modern vice squad in metropolitan police forces. It sparked a new, highly visible, mass phase of political organization for gay rights that far surpassed, semi-clandestine homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s, exemplified by the Mattachine Society. The Mattachine Society newsletter described the rebellion as 'the hairpin drop heard round the world'.
The event has been commemorated by a parade held each year in New York City on the last Sunday in June, following a tradition that began with the first march on 29th. June, 1970, and by parallel events throughout the United States.@
STONEWALL: THE HISTORICAL EVENT
The confrontations between demonstrators and police at The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village over the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 are usually cited as the beginning of the modern movement for Lesbian/Gay liberation. What might have been a routine police raid on a bar patronized by homosexuals, became a signal event which sparked a movement. The Stonewall riots have developed into the stuff of myth, about which many of the most commonly held beliefs are probably untrue.
In 1969, it was illegal to operate any business catering to homosexuals in New York City-as it still is, today in 1991, in many places in the United States and elsewhere. The standard procedure was for the New York City police to raid such establishments on a semi-regular basis, to arrest a few of the most obvious 'types' and to fine the owners prior to letting business continue as usual by the next evening. It has been suggested that the majority of the patrons at the Stonewall Inn were black and Hispanic drag queens, but perhaps the goddess has always valued these rare creatures much too highly to ever let them become a majority. In fact, most of the patrons that evening were most likely young, college-age white men expecting to spend the rest of their lives in the quiet desperation of the middle-class closet. They knew that it was reasonably safe to enter the Stonewall Inn precisely because there were a few colored drag queens, butch bulldykes and others whose double-minority status made them far more likely candidates for arrest; this gave everyone else time to cover their faces and run for the nearest exit.
After midnight June 27-28, 1969, four men and two women from the New York Tactical Police Force called a raid on The Stonewall Inn at 55 Christopher Street. After leaving the bar, many of the patrons decided to wait around outside while the police dispatched the 'usual suspects' into the vans. It is said that this was the first time where Lesbians and Gay men fought back; in fact, there had already been several incidents in both Los Angeles and New York where sizable groups of Gays had resisted arrest. More to the point, the queens targeted for arrest had always fought back, alone and unsupported as they were led time and again to the vans. What was unique about Stonewall and gives it a resonance which continues to inspire today was that it was perhaps the first time when Lesbians and Gay men as a group were able to see beyond the lipstick and the high heels, beyond the skin color and recognize the oppression which threatens us all.
The greatest great myth concerning the Stonewall riots is that it was a Lesbian/Gay event. It is likely that many of those who began pitching pennies, then beer bottles, at the police that night weren't even homosexual. The only publicly reported arrest was a straight folk singer who was appearing next door and who joined the melee after leaving work. The streets of Greenwich Village were home to many young people whose politics were defined by the blossoming anti-war movement, left-wing political ideologies and the successes of the Women's liberation and Black Civil Rights movements. Like their Lesbian/Gay brothers and sisters, they were prepared to recognize oppression and thus willing to respond to it. (Anyone who thinks being able to see oppression is easy has to only remember the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.)
In all, some 300 to 400 people became involved in the attempt to stop the arrests, erupting into violent protest. The police and the bar owners, who were perceived to be part of the repressive system at work, barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn for protection. While they awaited reinforcements, the crowd outside attempted to burn the bar down with the cops inside. Eventually, a squadron of patrol cars arrived and chased the crowd away from the bar, and then around the narrow village streets for several hours. The following night, a new crowd assembled outside the Stonewall and rioted when the police attempted to break it up. Provocative articles appearing in the NY Post, Daily News and especially The Village Voice helped to consolidate Gay willingness to fight back.
Within a few days, representatives of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis organized the city's first ever "Gay Power" rally in Washington Square. On July 27, 1969, speeches by Martha Shelley and Marty Robinson were followed by a candlelight march to the site of the Stonewall Inn. Five hundred people showed up, thought to have included almost the entire 'out-of-the-closet' population of Lesbians and Gay men in New York, as well as their supporters from the political left. The rest as they say is history... STONEWALL: The Movement
Before Stonewall, there were a number of groups working for homosexual rights, ever since the concept had been defined in nineteenth century Germany, home to the world's first politically organized movement. In the United States, since April 1965, Frank Kameny of Washington, DC had been organizing Homosexual Reminder Days on the ellipse across from the White House and at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. These were sedate affairs of a few dozen picketers with the men in jackets and ties and the Lesbians in skirts and dresses. Their principal demand was for civil service protection and the right of homosexuals to hold government jobs. The New York delegation that attended the July 4th picket in 1969, one week after Stonewall, held hand and shouted down the other marchers. This was the last Homosexual Reminder Day and a clear sign that the Stonewall riots had set something new in motion.
During the first year after Stonewall, a whole new generation of organizations emerged, many identifying themselves for the first time as "Gay" meaning not only a sexual orientation, but a radical new basis for self-identification and with a sense of open political activism. Older groups such as the Mattachine Society or the Westside Discussion Group whose members had used first names or altogether fictitious ones to protect their identities soon made way for the Gay Liberation Front and the various regional Gay Activists Alliances. The vast majority of these new activists were under thirty, new to political organizing and believed everything was possible. Many groups were affiliated with specific colleges and universities, again with "Gay" replacing "Homophile" in the names of most older groups and almost all new ones. By the summer of 1970, groups in at least eight American cities were sufficiently organized to schedule simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots for the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York to a parade with floats for 1200 in Los Angeles.
MATTACHINE SOCIETY
One of the earliest gay movement organizations in the USA. It began in Los Angeles in 1950-51. Its name was given by the pioneer activist Harry Hay in commemoration of the French medieval and Renaissance SociJtJ Mattachine, a musical masque group which he had studied while preparing a course on the history of popular music for a workers' education project. The name was meant to symbolize the fact that "gays were a masked people, unknown and anonymous", and the word, also spelled matachin or matachine , has been derived from the Arabic of Moorish Spain, in which mutawajjihin , relates to masking oneself. Such an opaque name is typical of the homophile movement of the time in which open proclamation of the purposes of the group through a revealing name was regarded as imprudent.
At first the structure of the society followed that of freemasonry with a pyramid structure, where cells at the same level would be unknown to each other. The founders were Marxists and analyzed homosexuals in terms of an oppressed cultural minority. The communist leanings of the organization put it under some pressure during the anti-Communist phase in the USA. The era of McCarthyism had begun on 9th. February, 1950 with a speech by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, at Lincoln's Birthday dinner of a Republican League in Wheeling, West Virginia. Paul Coates wrote in a Los Angeles newspaper in March 1953 linking "sexual deviates" with "security risks" who were banding together to wield "tremendous political power". The Mattachine Society was restructured, with a more transparent organization, and its leadership replaced. It also changed its aims to the assimilation of homosexuals into general society, which reflected its rejection of the notion of a homosexual minority. However the Society declined, and at its convention in May 1954 only forty-two members attended.
The Mattachine Society produced the monthly periodical ONE Magazine , starting in January 1953 and eventually achieving a circulation of 5000 copies. The regular publication of the magazine ceased in 1968, but its publisher, ONE Inc., still exists.
In January, 1955 the San Francisco branch of the Mattachine Society began a more scholarly journal, Mattachine Review , which lasted for ten years. The periodicals reached previously isolated individuals and helped Mattachine to become better known nationally. Chapters functioned in a number of USA cities through the 1960s. However, they failed to adapt to the radical militantism after the Stonewall Rebellion and faded away.
a to loose your benefits in the military, such as a military pension, you normally had to act undisciplined, refuse orders and putting your buddies life in danger.
1
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The pros and Cons of Pornography
As the debate over pornography and its place in society grows hotter every day, several authors in particular shed a new light on the subject. Both their intuition and insight involving their beliefs can help the reader a great deal in seeing aspects of this debate that might have otherwise gone without the consideration that they so deserve.
I believe that pornography is not only okay, but is allowing our country to take a step back and ask ourselves how far we are willing to go and what we are willing to sacrifice in order to preserve free speech and our rights to personal choice.
The argument over pornography is not merely the debate over right or wrong, but also involves the theory that its existence requires, or possibly even causes, an inequality between men and women.
I ask you, how could something like pornography cause an in-equality between men and women when women are the major contributors to the industry? Who is going to watch a porn without women in it? Therefore, at least at first glance, it would seem that since women are actively contributing to the business of pornography maybe they should be criticized at least equally if not more so than the men who watch it.
According to author J.M. Coetzee and his article "The Harms of Pornography", the real questions here are, "what is the difference between obscenity and pornography", and even more importantly, "where do we draw the line between the two"? Coetzee brings up a good point here. A point on which the entire debate over pornography hinges. What is the defenition of "obscenity"? An excerpt from a speech by Mike Godwin, Online Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, gives a good definition of obscenity in his on-line article: "Fear of Freedom: The Backlash Against Free Speech on the 'Net'".
Everybody more or less knows something about what qualifies as obscene.
You know it has something to do with "community standards," right? And
with appealing to the "prurient interest." A work has to be a patently
offensive depiction of materials banned by state statute and appeal to the
prurient interest to be obscene and it also has to meet one other
requirement. It also has to lack serious literary, artistic, social,
political or scientific value. That's how something is classified as
"obscene."
Godwin states that one of the criteria for decency or absence of obscenity is that something must contain social political or scientific value. Is it possible that pornography is an outlet for people that prevents ideas that start out as fantasies or desires from becoming real? If so, then it's possible that the porn industry is doing us a bigger favor than we know. In an article written by Donna A. Demac, the history of censorship, obscenity, pornography and the rights of "the people" are conveyed with a decidedly liberal attitude. Demac's article gives an intelligent overview as to the actions of various political parties, groups and activists that have fought either for or against some of the issues regarding pornography, and his article can be effectively used to defend free speech.
The most opinionated and conservative of the authors included is Catherine MacKinnon, who touches on the thought that there is a great deal of similarity between pornography and black slavery. In her article "Pornography, Civil Rights and Speech" she states that "the harm of pornography does not lie in the fact that it is offensive but that, at least in developed societies, it is an industry that mass produces sexual intrusion, access to, possession and use of women by men for profit". MacKinnon approaches pornography not from a "moral" standpoint, but strictly from the "political" point of view that says pornography is a threat to the gender equality of our nation. I say she is wrong and that not only is pornography okay, but in many cases could contribute to the health of our society. I will quickly agree that pornography should be kept away from the eyes of our children, and that there is a proper time and place for it, but consider some of the acts that, providing that pornogrpahy was made illegal, would not only go under ground but might actually become real instead of acted out.
Coetzee goes to great lengths to bring to light indescrepancies and unclarified ideas throughout MacKinnon's article. One of Coetzee's most prominent points is that the differences between "obscenity" and "pornography" go far beyond a difference in term based on either political or moral argument. While at times Coetzee seems to generally disagree with or at least greatly challenge MacKinnon's ideas, there are times at which the two authors trains of thought almost seem to coincide. One such issue would be that MacKinnon is not necessarily looking to hunt out all occurrences of pornography in today's literature and media, but to snuff out the commercial end of it. The end that makes billions based on women being "used" by men, and does nothing at all to improve their social standing in our society. But why must everything be used to bolster the social position of women? It is this topic specifically that seems to have gone un-argued by Coetzee.
Coetzee's stand on this issue of pornography and obscenity as a part of today's culture is never quite addressed may very well remain a mystery to the reader. From many of the author's statements and criticism's of MacKinnon, one could gather that he takes a much more liberal stand and yet somehow successfully avoids pressing his opinions. He also does a wonderful job of highlighting some of the more minute intricacies related to MacKinnon's writing which may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
If you read Demac's article you may find that "Sex", throughout history has been more than merely a method of procreation. In Demac's article it is also stated that the editorial and news press at times found sexual content the only way to keep the political news interesting. Based on Demac's article, sex has always been sort of a "mystery" or something dark that nobody liked to talk about, and yet everybody was interested in. Maybe this is the reason that our society today has such a hard time talking to there children about sex and the prevention of such things as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. I am often amazed that people have such a hard time talking about sex and sex related topics when it rates second in priority among human drives. Second only to the drive to eat.
Pornography is nothing new, in fact prostitution is sometimes called "the world's oldest profession". All that has changed is the degree in which it is used. People become numb to what once was erotic or dangerous and eventually want more. Demac's article illustrates this extremely well as he gives a general overview of the history of pornography. His view is very helpful in seeing how pornography has progressed and where it is now, relative to where it has been.
Unfortunately as all of our authors have, in their own way stated, sex is not the real issue at hand here. The issue is "Obscenity". Pornography in these writers eyes seems to be a mixture of sex which is completely natural and nearly every person enjoys at one time or another and obscenity which is the element that MacKinnon says "keeps sex interesting for men". It seems that if things (sex and pornography) were less extravagantly portrayed on the television, print and even the radio, that less would be needed to fulfill one's "appetite" for eroticism. If there actually were some "line" that were drawn, unable to be crossed, would that given amount of "danger" be enough? I doubt it. The thing that keeps men (the major supporters of the pornography industry) so interested in women according to MacKinnon is the idea of having the power over a woman. It's this power that breeds obscenity as men want more and more of this "power". Sometimes it's taken much to far, but where can you draw the line? When is too much too much?
Coetzee brings up a good point when he quotes Mackinnon:
"In visual media...it takes a real person doing each act to make what you see; pornography models are real women to whom something real is being done".
Coetzee challenges this argument by asking the reader about violence in movies. He asks, "Are knife thrusts and gunshots not just as real?" According to Coetzee, the acts of sex portrayed on a television screen are happening to real people, yet one of the greatest attributes of sex, and one of the things that make it sacred are the feelings involved between the two people. Therefore, if there are no feelings between the two actors, isn't it merely acting? The models are being paid and have most likely been made aware of what will happen and therefore given their consent. What about the possibility that the problem not only lies in the hands of the men who watch these acts on a video tape, but the women who make them. Without the availability of women who were willing to produce this kind of material the pornography industry would come to a screeching halt. What's there to watch without women? Maybe it all comes down to; "If you're not a part of the solution, you're part of the problem".
The lines between right and wrong are often much more gray than black and white, which is most likely where most people live. No one can say to another what is right and wrong, or what should or shouldn't be done, that decision has to be left to the individuals themselves. It's this issue of pornography having an effect on women who aren't even involved in the industry of making or even watching it. We as a nation and even a world stand to learn a lot from simply listening to ourselves. We like to stand up and say what is right, and yet acting on it rarely happens. In order for our society to come to any sort of peace on this issue of pornography, it needs to be accepted that people need to be allowed to make decisions for themselves without the intervention of some government medium, but only as long as those decisions don't effect or hinder the rights of others.
Pornography is an immense opportunity for an experiment in freedom of speech
and democracy. The largest scale experiment this world has ever seen. It's up to you and it's up to me and it's up to all of us to explore that opportunity, and it's up to all of us not to lose it. I'm not yet a parent myself, and I may not be for some time, but I worry about my future children and pornography all the time. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 or even 20 years from now she will come to me and say, "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press and speech away from us?" and I want to be able to say I was there -- and I helped stop that from happening.
I believe that pornography is not only okay, but is allowing our country to take a step back and ask ourselves how far we are willing to go and what we are willing to sacrifice in order to preserve free speech and our rights to personal choice.
The argument over pornography is not merely the debate over right or wrong, but also involves the theory that its existence requires, or possibly even causes, an inequality between men and women.
I ask you, how could something like pornography cause an in-equality between men and women when women are the major contributors to the industry? Who is going to watch a porn without women in it? Therefore, at least at first glance, it would seem that since women are actively contributing to the business of pornography maybe they should be criticized at least equally if not more so than the men who watch it.
According to author J.M. Coetzee and his article "The Harms of Pornography", the real questions here are, "what is the difference between obscenity and pornography", and even more importantly, "where do we draw the line between the two"? Coetzee brings up a good point here. A point on which the entire debate over pornography hinges. What is the defenition of "obscenity"? An excerpt from a speech by Mike Godwin, Online Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, gives a good definition of obscenity in his on-line article: "Fear of Freedom: The Backlash Against Free Speech on the 'Net'".
Everybody more or less knows something about what qualifies as obscene.
You know it has something to do with "community standards," right? And
with appealing to the "prurient interest." A work has to be a patently
offensive depiction of materials banned by state statute and appeal to the
prurient interest to be obscene and it also has to meet one other
requirement. It also has to lack serious literary, artistic, social,
political or scientific value. That's how something is classified as
"obscene."
Godwin states that one of the criteria for decency or absence of obscenity is that something must contain social political or scientific value. Is it possible that pornography is an outlet for people that prevents ideas that start out as fantasies or desires from becoming real? If so, then it's possible that the porn industry is doing us a bigger favor than we know. In an article written by Donna A. Demac, the history of censorship, obscenity, pornography and the rights of "the people" are conveyed with a decidedly liberal attitude. Demac's article gives an intelligent overview as to the actions of various political parties, groups and activists that have fought either for or against some of the issues regarding pornography, and his article can be effectively used to defend free speech.
The most opinionated and conservative of the authors included is Catherine MacKinnon, who touches on the thought that there is a great deal of similarity between pornography and black slavery. In her article "Pornography, Civil Rights and Speech" she states that "the harm of pornography does not lie in the fact that it is offensive but that, at least in developed societies, it is an industry that mass produces sexual intrusion, access to, possession and use of women by men for profit". MacKinnon approaches pornography not from a "moral" standpoint, but strictly from the "political" point of view that says pornography is a threat to the gender equality of our nation. I say she is wrong and that not only is pornography okay, but in many cases could contribute to the health of our society. I will quickly agree that pornography should be kept away from the eyes of our children, and that there is a proper time and place for it, but consider some of the acts that, providing that pornogrpahy was made illegal, would not only go under ground but might actually become real instead of acted out.
Coetzee goes to great lengths to bring to light indescrepancies and unclarified ideas throughout MacKinnon's article. One of Coetzee's most prominent points is that the differences between "obscenity" and "pornography" go far beyond a difference in term based on either political or moral argument. While at times Coetzee seems to generally disagree with or at least greatly challenge MacKinnon's ideas, there are times at which the two authors trains of thought almost seem to coincide. One such issue would be that MacKinnon is not necessarily looking to hunt out all occurrences of pornography in today's literature and media, but to snuff out the commercial end of it. The end that makes billions based on women being "used" by men, and does nothing at all to improve their social standing in our society. But why must everything be used to bolster the social position of women? It is this topic specifically that seems to have gone un-argued by Coetzee.
Coetzee's stand on this issue of pornography and obscenity as a part of today's culture is never quite addressed may very well remain a mystery to the reader. From many of the author's statements and criticism's of MacKinnon, one could gather that he takes a much more liberal stand and yet somehow successfully avoids pressing his opinions. He also does a wonderful job of highlighting some of the more minute intricacies related to MacKinnon's writing which may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
If you read Demac's article you may find that "Sex", throughout history has been more than merely a method of procreation. In Demac's article it is also stated that the editorial and news press at times found sexual content the only way to keep the political news interesting. Based on Demac's article, sex has always been sort of a "mystery" or something dark that nobody liked to talk about, and yet everybody was interested in. Maybe this is the reason that our society today has such a hard time talking to there children about sex and the prevention of such things as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. I am often amazed that people have such a hard time talking about sex and sex related topics when it rates second in priority among human drives. Second only to the drive to eat.
Pornography is nothing new, in fact prostitution is sometimes called "the world's oldest profession". All that has changed is the degree in which it is used. People become numb to what once was erotic or dangerous and eventually want more. Demac's article illustrates this extremely well as he gives a general overview of the history of pornography. His view is very helpful in seeing how pornography has progressed and where it is now, relative to where it has been.
Unfortunately as all of our authors have, in their own way stated, sex is not the real issue at hand here. The issue is "Obscenity". Pornography in these writers eyes seems to be a mixture of sex which is completely natural and nearly every person enjoys at one time or another and obscenity which is the element that MacKinnon says "keeps sex interesting for men". It seems that if things (sex and pornography) were less extravagantly portrayed on the television, print and even the radio, that less would be needed to fulfill one's "appetite" for eroticism. If there actually were some "line" that were drawn, unable to be crossed, would that given amount of "danger" be enough? I doubt it. The thing that keeps men (the major supporters of the pornography industry) so interested in women according to MacKinnon is the idea of having the power over a woman. It's this power that breeds obscenity as men want more and more of this "power". Sometimes it's taken much to far, but where can you draw the line? When is too much too much?
Coetzee brings up a good point when he quotes Mackinnon:
"In visual media...it takes a real person doing each act to make what you see; pornography models are real women to whom something real is being done".
Coetzee challenges this argument by asking the reader about violence in movies. He asks, "Are knife thrusts and gunshots not just as real?" According to Coetzee, the acts of sex portrayed on a television screen are happening to real people, yet one of the greatest attributes of sex, and one of the things that make it sacred are the feelings involved between the two people. Therefore, if there are no feelings between the two actors, isn't it merely acting? The models are being paid and have most likely been made aware of what will happen and therefore given their consent. What about the possibility that the problem not only lies in the hands of the men who watch these acts on a video tape, but the women who make them. Without the availability of women who were willing to produce this kind of material the pornography industry would come to a screeching halt. What's there to watch without women? Maybe it all comes down to; "If you're not a part of the solution, you're part of the problem".
The lines between right and wrong are often much more gray than black and white, which is most likely where most people live. No one can say to another what is right and wrong, or what should or shouldn't be done, that decision has to be left to the individuals themselves. It's this issue of pornography having an effect on women who aren't even involved in the industry of making or even watching it. We as a nation and even a world stand to learn a lot from simply listening to ourselves. We like to stand up and say what is right, and yet acting on it rarely happens. In order for our society to come to any sort of peace on this issue of pornography, it needs to be accepted that people need to be allowed to make decisions for themselves without the intervention of some government medium, but only as long as those decisions don't effect or hinder the rights of others.
Pornography is an immense opportunity for an experiment in freedom of speech
and democracy. The largest scale experiment this world has ever seen. It's up to you and it's up to me and it's up to all of us to explore that opportunity, and it's up to all of us not to lose it. I'm not yet a parent myself, and I may not be for some time, but I worry about my future children and pornography all the time. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 or even 20 years from now she will come to me and say, "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press and speech away from us?" and I want to be able to say I was there -- and I helped stop that from happening.
The Oedipus Complex
February 1, 1997
Michelle Bauknecht
RESEARCH METHODS TEST 1
Definition of the Oedipus Complex:
The positive libidinal feelings of a child to the parent of the opposite sex and hostile or jealous feelings toward the parent of the same sex that may be a source of adult personality disorder when unresolved. It is a pattern of profound emotional ambivalence, a troublesome mixture of love and hate.
The Oedipus Complex occurs during the phallic stage, from roughly ages 3-6 years. Freud believed that during this stage boys seek genital stimulation and develop both unconscious desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred for their father, whom they consider a rival. It was said that boys felt guilt and lurking fear that their father would punish them, such as by castration. Freud also believed that conscience and gender identity form as the child resolved the Oedipus Complex at age 5 or 6, but this actually happens earlier. A child tends to become strongly masculine or feminine without even having the same sex parent present.
Freud argues that all sons unconsciously desire to kill, even if they love, their fathers. He found his own unconscious wish to murder his father in his intensive self analysis in 1897, shortly after the death of his father.
Freud says it is only the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred for the other as a rival. Freud believed Oedipal was a normal part of human psychological growth and it is during this stage children produce emotional conflicts.
Other psychoanalysts believed that girls experience a parallel called the "Electra Complex". This comes from a Greek legend of a women named Electra who helped plan the murder of her mother.
The Oedipus Complex originates from a myth about a Greek hero named Oedipus, written by Sophocles. Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta who in the fulfillment of an oracle unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. When Oedipus and Jocasta realize what has happened, Jocasta hangs herself and he rips the golden brooches from his dead mothers gown and plunges them deep into his eyes. Now blinded, he finally sees the truth and banishes himself to a distant land. The fact that Oedipus kills his father and sleeps with his mother without knowing that he has done either shows that it was done---unconsciously.
THEORY:
If a subject in the experimental group shows more aggressive behavior toward his father and increased affectionate behavior toward their mother after receiving the subliminal messages and the control group shows no increase when shown neutral messages, then it will be proven that the Oedipus Complex does in fact exist in the unconscious. To prove this we bring the behavior out from the unconscious to the sub conscious through the subliminal messages. These boys have repressed these feelings for so long because it is too painful for them to deal with.
HYPOTHESIS:
Ho: Boys in the experimental group will not increase their aggression to their fathers or more affection for their mothers after receiving subliminal messages. (no change)
Hi: Boys in the experimental group receiving subliminal messages will show more aggression toward their father and demonstrate more affection for their mother's. The control group will not demonstrate a changed behavior (Change in behavior)
OPERATIONAL HYPOTHESIS:
Independent Variable: Experimental group receiving subliminal messages, either aggressive, affectionate or neutral.
Dependent Variable: The change in behavior observed from before the subliminal messages to after.
METHOD:
I evaluated 10 heterosexual boys from the Winnipeg area, all who were between the ages of 15 and 18 and still living at home with both parents. As the head psychologist in the experiment I entered into an agreement w/ the participants that clarified the nature of the research and the responsibilities for both them and myself. The participants were informed that they could withdraw from the experiment at anytime. Questions about the study were asked (participants were told the experiment was a visual test of some sort), therefore deception was being used. After obtaining informed consent to participate (those under age had a consent signed by their guardian) we randomly broke the boys and their families into two groups. One became the control group and the other the experimental group. I then proceeded to observe the families interaction with each other, particularily between the son and his mother and the son and his father. Observations were made through hidden cameras in the house (field research) for the first week (Monday to Friday). This was to provide a baseline measure. I was looking specifically for any type of rivalry between the sons and fathers and affection towards the mothers. Observations were made on behaviors demonstrated and recorded into categories. These categories are :
Positive affection toward the mother
Negative behavior toward the father
Positive = hugs, compliments, gazing & I love you's
Negative = swearing, hitting, rolling of eyes & glaring
On the Saturday and Sunday the boys were brought into the laboratory (laboratory research in order to control the confines) where they were shown either aggressive & affectionate or neutral messages. Examples of these messages are listed below:
Aggressive & Affectionate Neutral
Beating dad is fun Trees have leaves
Destroy father Mars is a planet
I love mom The grass is green
I am going to have mom Clouds in the sky
Mom is sexy People are human
The boys were shown a series of these messages using a tachistoscope which flashes the visual stimuli on a screen to measure unconscious perception. Note: The control group only received neutral messages. In week two (Monday to Friday) the subjects were again observed through the same methods and the data were recorded.
Data were reviewed for patterns in increased aggressive behavior towards the father & increased affection for the mother after receiving the aggressive & affectionate stimuli Data from the control group were also reviewed for any correlations.
DATA:
RESULTS:
Reject the Ho because these calculations indicate a change in behavior after receiving aggressive & affectionate messages and no change after the neutral messages.
DISCUSSION:
The Oedipus Complex appears to be a common feeling among young boys. Studies have indicated boys between the ages of 3-6 have strong feelings of desire to their mothers and hostile feelings of jealousy to their fathers. These studies have found that the boys repress these memories because they are so painful. It looks like subliminal messages cause the Oedipal Complex to come out from the unconscious by bringing it to the sub-conscious where the boys know what they are feeling but can't understand why they are having these feelings. Because we could not control all the variables we could not make a positive identity that the subliminal messages actually cause the Oedipal Complex. All though we can now assume, that from these findings boys do repress their feelings in the unconscious until they are somehow brought into the sub-conscious.
Means and standard deviations were used (which are the descriptive statistics most frequently encountered in psychological research) to describe my set of scores adequately. These calculations indicate the control group to have no significant difference from week one to week two and the experimental group a significant difference between week one and week two.
There was of course some flaws with the experiment. Having such a small sample could have lead to misleading results or a biased sample (a sample that doesn't reflect the population as a whole). A simple random sample was not used and therefore each member of the population did not have an equal chance of being selected as a member of the sample. The hidden cameras were completely unethical, the families were unaware that any taping was occurring. I may have also missed interactions that were not caught on tape and therefore not recording accurate data, this could lead to distorted data sets and calculations.
It was felt that deception had to be used, because it was believed we could not do the procedure and get accurate results without the use of it. All participants were debriefed at the conclusion of the experiment. I revealed the true purpose of the experiment and reduced any stress or other feelings that the participants expressed as experiencing. At the completion of the study I provided all the participants information about the experiment and results of the research. Any misconceptions they may have had were lifted and they were reassured that no harm was done or risks taken. Complete confidentiality was maintained throughout the experiment.
By being able to reject the Ho, there by supporting the Hi hypothesis (that is ever so close to my heart) I have proven that the Oedipus Complex exists too some degree in males. So basically (and hypothetically) I have performed this entire study, went through all the proper analyses, and the difference came out to be significant at the .05 level. So now I consider my life to have immense meaning and I am sure I will impress all my friends at parties with my statistics and new found knowledge on the Oedipus Complex. I am absolutely positive that I have also impressed you with all the work I have put into this cooked experiment. :)
GLOSSARY OF TERMS:
Laboratory Research: research that occurs within the controlled confines of a scientific laboratory.
Field Research: research settings more closely match the situation we encounter in daily living & results of these studies might generalize more easily than lab studies.
Basic Research: most research is about psychological concerns, describing and predicting and explaining fundamental principles of behavior.
Applied Research: has direct and immediate relevance to the solution of a real world problem.
Mundane Realism: refers to how closely the experiment mirrors real life experiences.
Experimental Realism: concerns the extent to which an experiment has an impact on the subjects, forces them to take the matter seriously and involves them in the procedures.
Operational Definitions: science must be objective and precise, that all concepts should be defined in terms of a set of operations to be performed.
Converging Operations: psychology uses this --->the idea that our understanding of some behavioral phenomena is increased when a series of investigations, all using slightly different operational definitions & experimental procedures is performed.
Serendipity: used to refer to the kind of accidental observation that lead to creative ideas for research.
Theory: a set of statements about some behavioral phenomena.
Construct: a hypothetical factor that can not be observed directly but is inferred from certain behaviors and assumed to follow from certain circumstances. e.g.] expectation--> why a behavior occurred? because of ABC
Deduction: reasoning from a set of general statements toward the prediction of some event.
Hypothesis: an educated guess about what should happen under certain circumstances.
Induction: the logical process of reasoning from the specific (individual exp. outcome) to the general, used when the results of specific research studies are used to support or refute a theory.
Falsification: emphasizes putting theories to the test by trying too disprove or falsify them.
Parsimony: includes the minimum number of constructs & assumptions in order to adequately explain & predict.
Programs of research: a series of interrelated studies.
Replication: study that duplicates some or all of the procedures of some prior study.
Extension: this resembles a prior study and usually replicates part of it, but goes further and adds at least one additional feature.
Partial Replication: part of the study which replicates some earlier work.
Valid: if a behavioral measure, measures what is has been designed to measure.
Face Validity: granted when a measure appears on the surface to be a reasonable measure of some trait.
Predictive Validity: concerns whether the measure can accurately forecast some future event.
Construct Validity: 2 issues: whether the construct being measured by a particular tool is a valid construct and whether the particular tool is the best one measuring the construct.
Population: a group.
Sample: any sub-group of the population.
Biased Sample: a sample that doesn't reflect the population as a whole.
Simple random sample: a probability sample--> each member of the population has equal chance of being selected as a member of the sample.
Descriptive Statistics: summarize the data collected from the sample of subjects participating in your study.
Inferential Statistics: allow you to draw conclusions about your data that can be applied to broaden the population.
Frequency Distribution: way to organize a set of scores by creating a picture of them (graph).
Null Hypothesis: there is no difference in performance between the different conditions that you are studying.
Alternative Hypothesis: Ho= research hypothesis, the outcome you are hoping to find. (therefore in my study I am hoping to disprove or reject the Ho, thereby supporting the Hi, the hypothesis close to my heart)
Type I Error: rejecting the null when null is in fact true.
Type II Error: fail to reject null, but you are wrong. You didn't find a significant effect in your study, naturally feel depressed about it, but are in error.
Oedipal: resulting from or relating to the Oedipus Complex.
Michelle Bauknecht
RESEARCH METHODS TEST 1
Definition of the Oedipus Complex:
The positive libidinal feelings of a child to the parent of the opposite sex and hostile or jealous feelings toward the parent of the same sex that may be a source of adult personality disorder when unresolved. It is a pattern of profound emotional ambivalence, a troublesome mixture of love and hate.
The Oedipus Complex occurs during the phallic stage, from roughly ages 3-6 years. Freud believed that during this stage boys seek genital stimulation and develop both unconscious desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred for their father, whom they consider a rival. It was said that boys felt guilt and lurking fear that their father would punish them, such as by castration. Freud also believed that conscience and gender identity form as the child resolved the Oedipus Complex at age 5 or 6, but this actually happens earlier. A child tends to become strongly masculine or feminine without even having the same sex parent present.
Freud argues that all sons unconsciously desire to kill, even if they love, their fathers. He found his own unconscious wish to murder his father in his intensive self analysis in 1897, shortly after the death of his father.
Freud says it is only the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred for the other as a rival. Freud believed Oedipal was a normal part of human psychological growth and it is during this stage children produce emotional conflicts.
Other psychoanalysts believed that girls experience a parallel called the "Electra Complex". This comes from a Greek legend of a women named Electra who helped plan the murder of her mother.
The Oedipus Complex originates from a myth about a Greek hero named Oedipus, written by Sophocles. Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta who in the fulfillment of an oracle unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. When Oedipus and Jocasta realize what has happened, Jocasta hangs herself and he rips the golden brooches from his dead mothers gown and plunges them deep into his eyes. Now blinded, he finally sees the truth and banishes himself to a distant land. The fact that Oedipus kills his father and sleeps with his mother without knowing that he has done either shows that it was done---unconsciously.
THEORY:
If a subject in the experimental group shows more aggressive behavior toward his father and increased affectionate behavior toward their mother after receiving the subliminal messages and the control group shows no increase when shown neutral messages, then it will be proven that the Oedipus Complex does in fact exist in the unconscious. To prove this we bring the behavior out from the unconscious to the sub conscious through the subliminal messages. These boys have repressed these feelings for so long because it is too painful for them to deal with.
HYPOTHESIS:
Ho: Boys in the experimental group will not increase their aggression to their fathers or more affection for their mothers after receiving subliminal messages. (no change)
Hi: Boys in the experimental group receiving subliminal messages will show more aggression toward their father and demonstrate more affection for their mother's. The control group will not demonstrate a changed behavior (Change in behavior)
OPERATIONAL HYPOTHESIS:
Independent Variable: Experimental group receiving subliminal messages, either aggressive, affectionate or neutral.
Dependent Variable: The change in behavior observed from before the subliminal messages to after.
METHOD:
I evaluated 10 heterosexual boys from the Winnipeg area, all who were between the ages of 15 and 18 and still living at home with both parents. As the head psychologist in the experiment I entered into an agreement w/ the participants that clarified the nature of the research and the responsibilities for both them and myself. The participants were informed that they could withdraw from the experiment at anytime. Questions about the study were asked (participants were told the experiment was a visual test of some sort), therefore deception was being used. After obtaining informed consent to participate (those under age had a consent signed by their guardian) we randomly broke the boys and their families into two groups. One became the control group and the other the experimental group. I then proceeded to observe the families interaction with each other, particularily between the son and his mother and the son and his father. Observations were made through hidden cameras in the house (field research) for the first week (Monday to Friday). This was to provide a baseline measure. I was looking specifically for any type of rivalry between the sons and fathers and affection towards the mothers. Observations were made on behaviors demonstrated and recorded into categories. These categories are :
Positive affection toward the mother
Negative behavior toward the father
Positive = hugs, compliments, gazing & I love you's
Negative = swearing, hitting, rolling of eyes & glaring
On the Saturday and Sunday the boys were brought into the laboratory (laboratory research in order to control the confines) where they were shown either aggressive & affectionate or neutral messages. Examples of these messages are listed below:
Aggressive & Affectionate Neutral
Beating dad is fun Trees have leaves
Destroy father Mars is a planet
I love mom The grass is green
I am going to have mom Clouds in the sky
Mom is sexy People are human
The boys were shown a series of these messages using a tachistoscope which flashes the visual stimuli on a screen to measure unconscious perception. Note: The control group only received neutral messages. In week two (Monday to Friday) the subjects were again observed through the same methods and the data were recorded.
Data were reviewed for patterns in increased aggressive behavior towards the father & increased affection for the mother after receiving the aggressive & affectionate stimuli Data from the control group were also reviewed for any correlations.
DATA:
RESULTS:
Reject the Ho because these calculations indicate a change in behavior after receiving aggressive & affectionate messages and no change after the neutral messages.
DISCUSSION:
The Oedipus Complex appears to be a common feeling among young boys. Studies have indicated boys between the ages of 3-6 have strong feelings of desire to their mothers and hostile feelings of jealousy to their fathers. These studies have found that the boys repress these memories because they are so painful. It looks like subliminal messages cause the Oedipal Complex to come out from the unconscious by bringing it to the sub-conscious where the boys know what they are feeling but can't understand why they are having these feelings. Because we could not control all the variables we could not make a positive identity that the subliminal messages actually cause the Oedipal Complex. All though we can now assume, that from these findings boys do repress their feelings in the unconscious until they are somehow brought into the sub-conscious.
Means and standard deviations were used (which are the descriptive statistics most frequently encountered in psychological research) to describe my set of scores adequately. These calculations indicate the control group to have no significant difference from week one to week two and the experimental group a significant difference between week one and week two.
There was of course some flaws with the experiment. Having such a small sample could have lead to misleading results or a biased sample (a sample that doesn't reflect the population as a whole). A simple random sample was not used and therefore each member of the population did not have an equal chance of being selected as a member of the sample. The hidden cameras were completely unethical, the families were unaware that any taping was occurring. I may have also missed interactions that were not caught on tape and therefore not recording accurate data, this could lead to distorted data sets and calculations.
It was felt that deception had to be used, because it was believed we could not do the procedure and get accurate results without the use of it. All participants were debriefed at the conclusion of the experiment. I revealed the true purpose of the experiment and reduced any stress or other feelings that the participants expressed as experiencing. At the completion of the study I provided all the participants information about the experiment and results of the research. Any misconceptions they may have had were lifted and they were reassured that no harm was done or risks taken. Complete confidentiality was maintained throughout the experiment.
By being able to reject the Ho, there by supporting the Hi hypothesis (that is ever so close to my heart) I have proven that the Oedipus Complex exists too some degree in males. So basically (and hypothetically) I have performed this entire study, went through all the proper analyses, and the difference came out to be significant at the .05 level. So now I consider my life to have immense meaning and I am sure I will impress all my friends at parties with my statistics and new found knowledge on the Oedipus Complex. I am absolutely positive that I have also impressed you with all the work I have put into this cooked experiment. :)
GLOSSARY OF TERMS:
Laboratory Research: research that occurs within the controlled confines of a scientific laboratory.
Field Research: research settings more closely match the situation we encounter in daily living & results of these studies might generalize more easily than lab studies.
Basic Research: most research is about psychological concerns, describing and predicting and explaining fundamental principles of behavior.
Applied Research: has direct and immediate relevance to the solution of a real world problem.
Mundane Realism: refers to how closely the experiment mirrors real life experiences.
Experimental Realism: concerns the extent to which an experiment has an impact on the subjects, forces them to take the matter seriously and involves them in the procedures.
Operational Definitions: science must be objective and precise, that all concepts should be defined in terms of a set of operations to be performed.
Converging Operations: psychology uses this --->the idea that our understanding of some behavioral phenomena is increased when a series of investigations, all using slightly different operational definitions & experimental procedures is performed.
Serendipity: used to refer to the kind of accidental observation that lead to creative ideas for research.
Theory: a set of statements about some behavioral phenomena.
Construct: a hypothetical factor that can not be observed directly but is inferred from certain behaviors and assumed to follow from certain circumstances. e.g.] expectation--> why a behavior occurred? because of ABC
Deduction: reasoning from a set of general statements toward the prediction of some event.
Hypothesis: an educated guess about what should happen under certain circumstances.
Induction: the logical process of reasoning from the specific (individual exp. outcome) to the general, used when the results of specific research studies are used to support or refute a theory.
Falsification: emphasizes putting theories to the test by trying too disprove or falsify them.
Parsimony: includes the minimum number of constructs & assumptions in order to adequately explain & predict.
Programs of research: a series of interrelated studies.
Replication: study that duplicates some or all of the procedures of some prior study.
Extension: this resembles a prior study and usually replicates part of it, but goes further and adds at least one additional feature.
Partial Replication: part of the study which replicates some earlier work.
Valid: if a behavioral measure, measures what is has been designed to measure.
Face Validity: granted when a measure appears on the surface to be a reasonable measure of some trait.
Predictive Validity: concerns whether the measure can accurately forecast some future event.
Construct Validity: 2 issues: whether the construct being measured by a particular tool is a valid construct and whether the particular tool is the best one measuring the construct.
Population: a group.
Sample: any sub-group of the population.
Biased Sample: a sample that doesn't reflect the population as a whole.
Simple random sample: a probability sample--> each member of the population has equal chance of being selected as a member of the sample.
Descriptive Statistics: summarize the data collected from the sample of subjects participating in your study.
Inferential Statistics: allow you to draw conclusions about your data that can be applied to broaden the population.
Frequency Distribution: way to organize a set of scores by creating a picture of them (graph).
Null Hypothesis: there is no difference in performance between the different conditions that you are studying.
Alternative Hypothesis: Ho= research hypothesis, the outcome you are hoping to find. (therefore in my study I am hoping to disprove or reject the Ho, thereby supporting the Hi, the hypothesis close to my heart)
Type I Error: rejecting the null when null is in fact true.
Type II Error: fail to reject null, but you are wrong. You didn't find a significant effect in your study, naturally feel depressed about it, but are in error.
Oedipal: resulting from or relating to the Oedipus Complex.
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