Stigma Spring 2022

 Goffman asserted that everyone just wants to be accepted as "normal." If that is the case, how would Goffman explain the desire to be a "freak?" Body Building Freaks! self Constructed Freaks Judging Self Made freaks Rachael Dolezal: Race Freak What makes a person choose NOT to be "normal"? How does someone choose their "freak"? What significance does this have for our reading of Goffman? How would Bogden explain this phenomenon?

  One of Us Anatomy Matters: It influences the assumptions people make on the basis of our anatomies It limits and effects what we can experience in any given context Anatomically based rules help to maintain order Anatomical Normalization Most of us go through minor normalization procedures every day- change body to fit the identity we want to present socially But some things cannot be normalized IMPOSITION of normalization on children by adult Form of pity Pity silences the receiver of it Child’s anatomy is changed to fit the social context (desired) Conjoined Twins and the notion of Individuality Trapped in such a way that makes a normal happy life impossible Usually they feel that they are perfectly normal Intentionally “sacrifice” one conjoined twin to save another What is the CULTURAL CONTEXT in which parents and doctors make these decisions about surgery Expose the SOCIALLY TENUOUS NATURE of all human anatomies and raise the question of who should count as NORMAL INTERSEXED ...

  Miss Gee Let me tell you a little story About Miss Edith Gee; She lived in Clevedon Terrace At number 83. She'd a slight squint in her left eye, Her lips they were thin and small, She had narrow sloping shoulders And she had no bust at all. She'd a velvet hat with trimmings, And a dark grey serge costume; She lived in Clevedon Terrace In a small bed-sitting room. She'd a purple mac for wet days, A green umbrella too to take, She'd a bicycle with shopping basket And a harsh back-pedal break. The Church of Saint Aloysius Was not so very far; She did a lot of knitting, Knitting for the Church Bazaar. Miss Gee looked up at the starlight And said, 'Does anyone care That I live on Clevedon Terrace On one hundred pounds a year?' She dreamed a dream one evening That she was the Queen of France And the Vicar of Saint Aloysius Asked Her Majesty to dance. But a storm blew down the palace, She was biking t...

 example of multiple stigma  STIGMA OF MENTAL ILLNESS FOR BLACK YOUTH RACE, ILLNESS (Cancer), SEXUALITY, OBESITY Published in 1980, this a chronicle of poet Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer. She began writing journal entries a few months after her mastectomy.Lorde's eventually died from a recurrence of breast cancer. When The Cancer Journals was published in 1980, Audre Lorde was already an important feminist poet. She had often criticized the popular feminist movement for focusing exclusively on white women, and she insisted on talking about race and class as compounding forms of oppression (STIGMA), including the racist assumptions white women brought to their feminism. Audre Lorde asks in The Cancer Journals where she can find a model of how to deal with cancer, an understanding or a guide. She also questions Western medicine and asserts that women should control their own health and healing. Race & Stigma: Racial stigma and inequality The concept of an endur...

 In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote  Illness as Metaphor , a classic work described by  Newsweek  as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows  how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is -- just a disease.  Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment  and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed. "Susan Sontag's  Illness as Metaphor  was the  first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease.  It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term  'cancer personality'  and spea...